If you are waiting on new house blocks or industrial land on the edge of Bingara or Warialda, the council's own report says its push for growth has become more difficult to progress since a new state rule began on 1 July. The report to Gwydir Shire Council's 24 September meeting says the state's new planning direction creates a significant constraint for Gwydir because the Shire is overwhelmingly zoned RU1 Primary Production and most land adjoining existing towns is rural zoned. Its bluntest line: Essentially, the Shire's main towns are largely landlocked by RU1 land.

What the rule says

The Minister for Planning and Public Spaces gave the Section 9.1 Ministerial Direction, Local Plan Making, on 1 July 2026. It applies to any planning proposal lodged on the NSW Planning Portal on or after that date. A planning proposal is how a council changes its local environmental plan, which is where zoning lives.

Its rural priority, P3.2, covers proposals affecting rural or conservation zones, and lists RU1 Primary Production as a rural zone. Its first principle says a planning proposal must Not rezone land from a rural or conservation zone to a residential, employment, mixed use, SP4 Enterprise, SP5 Metropolitan Centre, W4 Working Waterfront, RU5 Village, or SP3 Tourist Zone. That first principle names no region, so on our reading it reaches every council on our patch, not only Gwydir.

It is not an absolute bar. P3.2 does not apply to land identified as an urban growth area within the relevant Regional Strategy, Regional Plan or District Plan prepared by the Planning Secretary. And a proposal may depart from the direction if the council can satisfy the Planning Secretary (or a nominee) that the departure is in line with an approved strategic plan, is justified by a study or strategy prepared in support of the proposal, or is of minor significance, among other grounds.

Why Gwydir says it bites harder there

The report, from the council's Director of Business and Strategy, puts the scale plainly. About 95 per cent of the shire is zoned RU1. The land the council wants to investigate for housing and jobs comprises only small parcels on the fringe of existing towns, potentially 100 hectares across an LGA exceeding 9,000 square kilometres. Nine thousand square kilometres is 900,000 hectares, so 100 hectares is at most about one hundredth of one per cent of the shire.

The report says these are not areas Council would be removing from highly productive agriculture, and that the council supports protecting productive farmland. Its complaint is that the current prohibition does not sufficiently distinguish between genuinely important agricultural land and small areas of fringe RU1 land.

Two things make the squeeze tighter, on the report's account. Land already zoned for housing is not always land anyone can build on: it may be flood-affected, unserviced, or held by an owner with no plans to subdivide. And much of the land in and around the towns is Crown or other government land, some of it affected by Aboriginal land claims, Native Title or other tenure matters, which the report says can make otherwise zoned land costly and slow to bring forward. The council has bought RU1 land it considered suitable for future development to get around that. The report says the new direction now means stronger strategic justification will be required before those opportunities can be progressed.

The council concedes its own plans are part of the problem

The report does not only blame the state. It says the council's current Local Strategic Planning Statement holds that Gwydir has an adequate supply of zoned residential land, a position that requires reconsideration in light of subsequent evidence, and that its Housing Needs Assessment counted theoretical capacity rather than land that can actually be delivered. Those are the very documents the direction's exits run through: an approved strategic plan, or a supporting study.

That is the bind for a small council. The report says the work will take time and resources that are limited in a small rural council, that some of it is likely to need specialist help, and that it may necessitate future budget allocations. It also says proposals like these could have progressed under the previous policy framework without the additional strategic documentation now required.

The regional plan is the other way out. The New England North West Regional Plan 2041 says major growth planning is expected to be concentrated in the regional cities and strategic centres. Its section on Gwydir lists, among the council's priorities, to deliver a variety of housing options in Bingara and Warialda, to attract young families and support the ageing population. Among its next steps, the council report lists pursuing recognition of appropriate future growth areas through State and regional planning processes.

What the council decided, and what it left out

Councillors carried resolution OCM-R15-2026 with six votes for and none against, according to the unconfirmed minutes. It notes the implications of P3.2 for growth in the shire; confirms the council's intent to pursue growth including growth beyond baseline population projections; endorses the land in the report's attachment as preferred investigation areas for residential, employment and industrial growth, and supports including them in the council's strategic planning documents; and supports reviewing and strengthening its strategic planning framework.

The report recommended a fifth clause: that the council supports advocacy to the NSW Government seeking a more proportionate pathway under P3.2 for predominantly rural LGAs where residential and employment expansion requires consideration of RU1 land. The resolution as minuted does not contain it, and the minutes record no reason. The report says council officers have raised the broader implications of P3.2 with the local State Member. Endorsing investigation areas does not rezone anything: the report says it does not determine the final zoning, development yield or suitability of any individual parcel.

Our view

Gwydir has a fair point, and it has made it with unusual candour. A rule written to stop farmland being carved up for housing makes sense on the coast and the city fringe, where that pressure is real. Applied without distinction to a shire where 100 hectares beside two small towns would be a rounding error, it mostly adds paperwork between a council and the houses it wants. But the direction already has a door marked of minor significance, and the report is right that the council's own strategy documents are what will get it through that door or any other. The quickest route to new blocks in Bingara and Warialda is probably not a change of state policy, and the minuted resolution does not ask for one. It is a rewritten local strategy that names the land and shows why it is not the farmland the rule exists to protect. That is worth funding properly.

What to watch

The confirmation of these minutes at the council's next ordinary meeting; the review of the Local Strategic Planning Statement and any budget set aside for it; and the council's talks with the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure on the pathways under P3.2. Other New England councils with growth plans on rural land will meet the same rule.

Sources

  1. Gwydir Shire Council, Future Residential and Employment Growth Areas and Section 9.1 Ministerial Direction, Ordinary Council Meeting agenda, 24 September 2026 (item 9.10, item ID 2026-491, 7 pages, read 7 October 2026): the constraint (page 1), the recommendation (page 2), the 95 per cent and 100 hectares figures and the commencement date (page 3), the strategic framework (page 4), land tenure and the landlocked towns (page 5), the advocacy and the State Member (page 6), and the next steps and budget (page 7).
  2. NSW Minister for Planning and Public Spaces, Section 9.1 Ministerial Direction, Local Plan Making, given 1 July 2026 (30 pages, published as attachment 1 to item 9.10 of the same agenda, read 7 October 2026): commencement and application (page 1), consistency and justified inconsistency (pages 4 and 5), and P3.2 Rural (pages 9 to 11).
  3. Gwydir Shire Council, Unconfirmed minutes, Ordinary Council Meeting, 24 September 2026 (PDF in the meeting portal's Files tab, 23 pages, read 7 October 2026): resolution OCM-R15-2026, its mover and seconder, and the vote (pages 12 and 13).
  4. NSW Department of Planning and Environment (publisher), New England North West Regional Plan 2041 (116 pages, read 7 October 2026): where major growth planning is expected to concentrate (PDF page 18), and the priorities for Gwydir (PDF page 96).

How we did this

The report, its attachment and the minutes sit in Gwydir's meeting portal, a JavaScript application that serves its PDFs through short-lived links, so the links above go to the meeting page; open item 9.10 there for the report and its attachments. We read all three in a browser on 7 October 2026 and kept copies. We compared the resolution as minuted with the report's recommendation word by word: the minuted resolution adds support for including the investigation areas in the council's strategic planning documents and does not include the advocacy clause. The minutes are unconfirmed until the council's next meeting adopts them. The share of the shire (about one hundredth of one per cent) is our arithmetic from the report's own two figures, and because the report gives the shire as exceeding 9,000 square kilometres, it is an upper bound. We have not seen the map of preferred investigation areas in detail and do not identify any parcel or owner. That the first P3.2 principle applies across our region is our reading of the direction, which lists no places for that principle. We did not contact the council or the department for this piece. The “our view” paragraph is opinion based on the documents described.