The New South Wales housing minister, Rose Jackson, says she gave a “garbled” answer during a “hard” live radio interview when she suggested it was possible to rent a two-bedroom apartment in Sydney for “a couple of hundred bucks a week”.
Jackson posted on Reddit, TikTok and Instagram on Thursday attempting to explain her words, after she was criticised for appearing to guess the answer to a question about rent prices during an interview with ABC Radio Sydney earlier this week.
Since July, out of the 25,000 bonds lodged for two-bedroom apartments in Greater Sydney, only 23 were rented out for $200 a week or less, according to an analysis of the rental bonds board by the Tenant’s Union of NSW.
During the ABC radio interview on Tuesday, presenter Hamish Macdonald put Jackson on the spot when he asked her: “What do you reckon is a reasonable price to pay in rent for a two-bedroom flat in Sydney?”
Jackson said: “Kind of depends where in Sydney. I mean, Sydney is a big city … A couple of hundred bucks, right?”
Macdonald interjected to ask: “Where can you get a two-bedroom flat for a couple of hundred bucks?”
Jackson replied: “Well, a week … I don’t know, there are places in Sydney you can. I mean, you know, there’s a two-bedroom flat and there’s a two-bedroom flat. Like, not all flats are the same.
“This is the thing about the housing market, there’s a lot of variety,” she continued. “Like, a luxe two-bed penthouse in the eastern suburbs is pretty different to a neat and tidy, two-bedroom flat next to a train station in western Sydney. They’re both good homes, yeah they’re going to have different price points”
In a video she shared on Instagram and TikTok, Jackson claimed she had meant $200 was the reasonable weekly rent someone should pay in Sydney for an apartment, not what people were actually paying on average.
“I know that that’s not what people are actually paying in rent in Sydney, but that wasn’t the question that was asked,” she said.
“And look, live radio is a hard format … sometimes you get a bit garbled, sometimes your words get a bit mangled.”
Jackson said “obviously” she knew Sydney rentals cost “hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of dollars” a week.
The median rental price for a unit in Sydney was $720 a week in the three months to September, according to the latest Domain data.
Searches on major rental listing websites Domain and Realestate.com on Thursday put the cheapest available two-bedroom apartment at $336 a week in Mt Druitt in Sydney’s west.
The next cheapest was a “2 in 1 Bedroom” apartment above a pub in Liverpool for $350 a week.
The only rental available for less than $200 was a garage car park with a storage cage in Sydney’s CBD, with an asking price of $150 a week.
The Tenants’ Union of NSW chief executive officer, Leo Patterson Ross, said it wasn’t easy to find a rental for less than $200 a week and there were often additional expenses associated with cheaper properties.
“Poor quality homes that cost a bundle to heat or cool or make you sick, or homes that are long distances away from where you need to be, all come with other costs,” he said.
Patterson Ross said there were about 30,000 two-bedroom public and community-housing homes in Sydney that could cost $200 a week or less, depending on tenants’ income.
“We need to grow this pool so that more people can live in Sydney, in homes they love and meet their family’s needs,” he said.
“We would love to see a broader conversation about what other tools or measures we should be considering to help address rent prices.”
