The Pulse | 30 July 2026

Reform and the Race to Deliver: A Week in NSW Construction and Planning

This week's delivery coverage has been dominated by state programs compressing the front end of housing and infrastructure pipelines.

The $1 billion Pre-sale Finance Guarantee brought forward almost 650 homes at Rhodes and Auburn [9], Project Swift becoming “embedded” across the state's road program [4], the Hunter Transmission Project received conditional approval [7], Ark Energy's $1.3 billion Richmond Valley project reached financial investment decision [2], and the Building Commission NSW has released a Repairs and Reinstatement Works Guide for class 2 buildings[3].

On the reform side, the Building (Approvals and Practitioners) Bill 2026 now awaits only concurrence in the Legislative Assembly [5], a Bulli planning dispute illustrated the modular-housing anomaly that the Bill is intended to resolve [1], and Parramatta's council pushed back on a Housing Delivery Authority pipeline running ahead of its planning controls [6].

Regulators

Building Commission NSW has released a Repairs and Reinstatement Works Guide for class 2 buildings, prepared with input from the Association of Insurance Building & Engineering Consultants, Insurance News reported [3]. Assistant building commissioner Matt Press introduced the publication at AiBEC's Sydney conference, and the guide uses scenarios and flow charts directed at participants in the claims and repair process: insurers, builders, loss adjusters, engineers, strata managers and design practitioners. The reporting noted that class 2 buildings, which take in multi-storey apartment buildings, mixed-use properties and attached dwellings sharing basements or car parking, must comply with obligations under design and building practitioner legislation [3].

Housing Supply, Planning and Modular Construction

The NSW Government announced that construction of nearly 650 homes at Rhodes and Auburn will be brought forward under the state's $1 billion Pre-sale Finance Guarantee, a program under which the state guarantees a portion of a project's presales to reduce lender risk and unlock commercial finance for projects that hold approval but remain unbuilt [9]. The Government has agreed to guarantee 34 of the more than 400 apartments at Rhodes Bay, an $834 million state significant development in the Rhodes urban-renewal precinct that includes 68 affordable homes, and 30 of the 249 homes at North Village, a $223 million development within Auburn Square [9].

The release states the program has now helped accelerate more than 1,200 homes across NSW, with up to $1 billion in presales to be committed via a revolving fund across the coming five years. Planning and Public Spaces Minister Paul Scully said: "For too long good projects have sat on the shelf because developers could not get finance over the line."Parramatta Lord Mayor Martin Zaiter criticised the Housing Delivery Authority, the pathway under which applications can be declared and assessed outside council planning processes in support of a 377,000-home state target by 2029, telling the Herald Sun that HDA-declared applications lodged in the Parramatta local government area between December 2024 and March 2026 covered 14,531 dwellings, 8,556 of them exceeding the council's planning controls [6]. "In effect, the HDA has become a substantial, ad-hoc state-enabled pipeline superseding and rewriting Parramatta's strategic planning framework," Mr Zaiter said.

The council's paper, Building a City Worth Living In: How the Housing Delivery Authority is Reshaping Parramatta, puts the potential loss of infrastructure contributions from HDA-declared applications at between $231 million and $435 million, and calculates that supporting the declared growth would require two additional high schools, three primary schools, 47 hospital beds, 2,495 square metres of additional community floor space and over 30 hectares of new open space [6]. Planning Minister Paul Scully responded that declaration does not amount to approval, describing the authority as "delivering real results for housing in NSW, creating a pipeline of more than 150,000 potential homes"; the council will write to the Premier, Mr Scully and Parramatta MP Donna Davis asking for changes to the HDA settings and stronger infrastructure commitments [6].

Modular Front

On the modular front, ABC News reported on a Bulli couple, who have spent two years seeking approval to place a second modular home on an 1,840-square-metre subdivided block shared with a family member, and have twice been refused by Wollongong City Council on the basis that two modular homes on one property meet the definition of a "manufactured housing estate" [1]. A council spokesperson said that under the Wollongong Local Environment Plan only one such development is permitted on an allotment in the current zone ("More than one MMC home presently constitutes a manufactured housing estate which is not permissible under the current zoning") and that councils cannot approve a use the zoning prohibits [1].

Legislation introduced to the NSW Parliament proposes to remove the planning divide between modular construction and conventionally built housing, with Planning Minister Paul Scully saying of the anomaly: "we've got to deal with that", and "If we pass the bill … that uncertainty gets resolved" [1]. The Fifth Estate's Spinifex column, written by Signex's Shu Guo, reported that the Building (Approvals and Practitioners) Bill 2026, which would formally recognise prefabricated buildings, impose duties spanning the manufacturing, supply, transport, delivery and installation stages, and formalise staged approvals, has cleared both houses of the NSW Parliament with amendments and now awaits concurrence in the Legislative Assembly [5].

The column also reported that expressions of interest have opened under the state's MMC Industry Expansion Program: applicants (manufacturers, builders and developers, domestic and international) will be assessed against commercial readiness, MMC experience or ambition, scalability and industry standing, with a shortlist then asked for binding proposals covering new or expanded advanced manufacturing facilities in the state [5]. At the national level, the Australian Building Codes Board began consulting in mid-July on a proposed national, voluntary certification scheme covering prefabrication manufacturers, pairing a proposed National Construction Code definition with draft rules for the scheme and an accompanying economic analysis, with consultation closing on 15 September 2026 [5].

Infrastructure and Delivery: Hunter Transmission, Ark Energy FID and Project Swift

The Minns Government granted conditional approval to the Hunter Transmission Project, ABC News reported: a 500-kilovolt line of more than 100 kilometres, running from Bayswater in the Upper Hunter down to Olney on the edge of Lake Macquarie via around 200 towers, 90 per cent of them on government or mining land, linking the Central-West Orana and New England renewable energy zones with population centres on the east coast [7]. The approved route was amended to cut the number of affected private landholders from about 70 to fewer than 20, according to a statement from Energy Minister Penny Sharpe, and to reduce impacts on breeding habitat of the Littlejohn's tree frog, listed as endangered, with EnergyCo executive project director Peter Redwin saying: "We know of 62 breeding ponds that have been there and we are not going to impact 60 of those."

Premier Chris Minns acknowledged the decision's reception ("It will probably hit us politically but we don't have a choice") while Aussie Ark lead conservation officer Hayley Shute called the approval an "absolute nightmare" for the species [7]. The Government said construction would create more than 800 jobs, 160 of them based in the Hunter; the project still requires federal approval, and EnergyCo said it aims to begin construction in late 2026 [7]. Ark Energy secured a financial investment decision for its $1.3 billion Richmond Valley Solar Farm and Battery Energy Storage System, located in the Northern Rivers region 25 kilometres south of Casino, Energy Source & Distribution News reported [2]. Parent company Korea Zinc signed off on the decision in Seoul, positioning the developer for a financing package of $586 million in equity and $716 million in debt. The priority stage pairs a 200 MW AC solar array with long-duration lithium-iron phosphate storage rated at up to 275 MW and 2,200 MWh.

The project holds NSW planning approval granted in October 2025, federal approval under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (Cth) from December 2025, grid connection secured in June 2026, and a Long-Term Energy Service Agreement under the NSW Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap; Ark signed an Early Contractor Involvement agreement with Elecnor Australia in September 2025 and a battery supply agreement with Hanwha Energy in March 2025. The reporting put financial close on schedule for September 2026, construction from October 2026 and operations from January 2029 [2]. Transport for NSW will make Project Swift standard practice across its road program after early results the Government described as promising, with the initiative aimed at taking a funded road project into procurement in under 12 months against a historical development timeframe of upwards of seven years [4].

The release lists the program's levers as early contractor involvement, fast-tracked business cases, accelerated design development including collaborative design-and-construct contracts, earlier property acquisition, bundled procurement, reform of technical standards and specifications, and modern methods of construction. Named accelerations include the Bandon Road upgrade at Vineyard, brought forward by as much as 12 months and starting this year, alongside the Avoca Drive upgrade at Kincumber (up to nine months) and the Windsor Road upgrade at Rouse Hill (up to six months), while the M1 to Raymond Terrace project is running more than 12 months ahead of schedule; on the Great Western Highway at Victoria Pass, the Government reported that the reopening project moved through geotechnical testing, a global industry roundtable and an expedited procurement to an executed contract within 109 days [4].  Roads Minister Jenny Aitchison said the framework was "going to be a gamechanger for the state" [4].

Final Thoughts

The Building Commission NSW's class 2 guide addresses the obligations of practitioners across the insurance repair and reinstatement chain [3]. The pattern of reporting was consistent with liability questions in the sector turning as much on professional decision-making (selection, specification, certification and temporary works) as on the products and structures themselves. On delivery, the acceleration programs reported this week, namely the Pre-sale Finance Guarantee, Project Swift, the Housing Delivery Authority pathway and the MMC reform stack [9, 4, 6, 5], each compress a different stage between approval and construction: finance, procurement, assessment and manufacturing.

The friction reported alongside them sat where those compressed pathways meet local frameworks: a council quantifying the infrastructure cost of declared applications [6], a zoning definition holding two modular homes on one block in limbo [1], and a transmission route redrawn around landholders and endangered habitat ahead of a federal decision still outstanding [7]. The composition of the week's reporting was consistent with delivery speed, rather than approval volume, emerging as the contested ground across housing and infrastructure.

1.  ABC News (26 July 2026). Bulli couple told two modular homes on one block makes it an 'estate'. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-26/modular-housing-dream-in-limbo/106912348  

2.  Dungog Chronicle | by Dylan Nicholson (17 July 2026). 'Toxic bombs': Hunter council votes on battery 'mega-projects'. https://dungogchronicle.com.au/story/9309436/cessnock-council-to-object-to-wine-country-battery-proposals  

3.  NSW Government (21 July 2026). Guide to insurance repairs and reinstatement works.https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies/building-commission/building-and-construction-resources/guide-to-insurance-repairs-and-reinstatement-works 

4.  NSW Government (27 July 2026). Project Swift to cut red tape for NSW road projects. https://www.nsw.gov.au/ministerial-releases/project-swift-road-project-delivery  

5.  The Fifth Estate (27 July 2026). Unpacking Australia's evolving MMC policies and regulations | Spinifex. https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/australias-evolving-mmc-a-national-perspective-on-policy-and-regulation  

6.  Herald Sun (28 July 2026). Parramatta Lord Mayor slams housing demands on Parramatta. https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/nsw/parramatta-lord-mayor-slams-housing-demands-on-parramatta/news-story/e888e0cfcba3afdcb7218994b21e812c; and
   
   https://www.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au/files/sharedassets/public/v/1/news/housing-delivery-authority-hda-advocacy-paper-building-a-city-worth-living-in.pdf 

7.  ABC News (29 July 2026). Hunter Transmission Project approved with route amended to limit land impacts. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-07-29/hunter-transmission-project-approved-route-amended/106969890

8. Intentionally left blank.

9.  NSW Government (29 July 2026). Pre-Sale Finance Guarantee unlocks 650 new homes in Rhodes and Auburn. https://www.nsw.gov.au/ministerial-releases/pre-sale-finance-guarantee-unlocks-650-new-homes-rhodes-and-auburn