Victoria's version of a fast pathway is the most instructive comparison available to the NSW Housing Delivery Authority, because it makes the trade explicit rather than implicit.

Reported outcomes: 10,324 homes across 64 projects since the program opened to housing, with homes approved doubling year on year to 6,862 in the twelve months to March 2026, and an average approval time of about four months. More than 80 per cent of those homes are in Melbourne's inner and middle suburbs, which is where the case for them is strongest and the opposition to them is loudest.

Four months against the 90 to 120 days typically reported for ordinary capital city assessment is not, on its face, a dramatic gain -- and that comparison is the useful one, because it suggests the saving is less about the assessment and more about removing third party notice and the prospect of review at VCAT.

That is a genuine transfer of rights, not a process efficiency, and it should be described as one. This database's rule is that a reform must state what protection is being traded away; a pathway that removes merits review has traded away merits review, and the fact that it delivers homes does not make that untrue. Whether the trade is worth it is a political judgement, and the honest version of the argument is made by people who admit they are making it.