If Australia is to have a population of 40 million in a few decades, as the intergenerational report predicts, adequate housing will be crucial.

Already the system is failing, housing insecurity is rife in one of the richest countries on the planet. The number of public and community houses in New South Wales alone fell by 4,530 over the past three years.

The platitudes of the National Urban Policy, promising sustainable, inclusive growth, affordability and environmental protection, are a poor placeholder for what is needed now, and more so as the economy is restructured by artificial intelligence.

The housing crisis has dominated public discussion for years – affordability is the buzzword and 1.2m new dwellings by 2030 the target.

In response the NSW government last year developed a proposal to allow six- and eight-storey apartment buildings to be constructed around a new railway station at Woollahra in Sydney’s east. As its other mega housing projects collapsed, it put Woollahra on steroids: the suburb’s population should grow by a more than a third.

It could lead to private developers acquiring and demolishing up to 151 heritage buildings and countless trees, in one of Australia’s original garden suburbs, and build 9,400 new apartments in 142 towers, some up to 30-stories high, despite the longstanding NSW Department of Planning mandate for the “retention and integration of local........

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