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Politics
Phoebe Loomes

Perrottet pledges to overhaul 'terrible' stamp duty

Dominic Perrottet is promising to make changes to stamp duty if his government wins the election. (Oscar Colman/AAP PHOTOS) (AAP)

The Perrottet government will expand their signature reforms to stamp duty if they win the upcoming election, while Labor promises new transport links for western Sydney.

Under the plan, home buyers will be able to eschew paying a lump sum stamp duty on their first and second homes, instead paying an annual tax calculated from the land value of their property.

"Stamp duty is a terrible tax," NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet told reporters on Sunday.

"It prohibits and stops many people across NSW getting the keys to the great Australian dream."

First home buyers are already eligible to choose to pay either an annual land tax or a larger, one-off stamp duty when buying a house under $1.5 million, after Mr Perrottet passed key legislation last year.

Under a proposed expansion of the scheme, home owners would also be able to skip stamp duty payments on their second property.

Stamp duty would only be imposed when a buyer picked up their third property.

The cap of $1.5 million for first homebuyers wanting to opt in to land tax will also be raised by $50,000 every year from 2023-24 if the Perrottet government wins the state election on March 25.

The scheme would allow people to more easily move up the property ladder, making financial decisions that suited them, the premier said.

Meanwhile, NSW Labor has committed $195 million to new planning work for Sydney's Metro network to create a circular transport link from western Sydney city centres to the new Western Sydney Airport.

The plan will include expanding an existing business case for Metro Western Sydney Airport to Leppington and Glenfield line to include an extension through to Bradfield and Macarthur in the southwest.

NSW Labor leader Chris Minns says natural disasters are becoming more frequent and severe. (Dan Himbrechts/AAP PHOTOS) (AAP)

The expansion will take total commonwealth and state funding for the project to $155 million.

The party also plans to invest $40 million to look into extending the Western Sydney Airport line from St Mary's in the west to Tallawong in the northwest.

Expanding public transport in western Sydney is a key plank of the party's policy agenda, as it says transport services are unfairly divvied up across the city, as the areas population is set to boom.

"I've been to too many western Sydney communities with suburbs teeming with families, where new home buyers tell me story after story of promises for linked bus networks that haven't materialised, or metro train stations that are currently dotted lines on a map," NSW Labor Leader Chris Minns said.

"These communities are growing rapidly, and we need a government that is looking down the runway and actually planning for the future."

The party also said it would invest $3.3 million in world-leading natural disaster detection technology, after an independent inquiry warned current disaster systems are not up to scratch.

On Sunday, the Liberal Party announced lawyer Craig Chung would contest the south Sydney seat of Kogarah, currently held by the Labor leader.

After a redistribution, the seat is the most tightly contested in the state with Mr Minns retaining a margin of just 0.1 per cent.

While his endorsement from the Liberal Party came less than four weeks out from polling day, Mr Chung told reporters on Sunday his campaign would hit the ground running.

"We're ready to take this fight up to the opposition leader."

The seat has complex demographics and has often been a difficult and marginal win for Labor, Mr Minns previously said.

"It's solidly middle class and probably votes the way a lot of swinging communities do," he previously told AAP.

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