The Greens can often be pigeonholed into being known as a political party that only cares about the environment but their candidate for Gilmore believes perceptions are starting to catch up with reality.

Debbie Killian is putting forward policies on a wide range of issues in the lead-up to the May 3 election and housing is a topic which is not just a nationwide issue but one that is hotly debated on the South Coast.

“Housing is a complex dilemma for us. It is a massive issue in this electorate,” Killian told The Bugle.

“Up and down our great long stretch of coast that Gilmore covers and in the inland areas, we've got a bit of a wicked combination - we've got working-class communities who don't necessarily have high income although we have pockets of high-income communities.

“We have people who are battlers, large amounts of tourism industry but that has a big impact on availability of accommodation for people.

“We have that kind of uncomfortable mixture that so much of Australia has where developers want to develop on land that is beautiful, fragile bushland by the beach in the places with the views.

“And that's the place they want to develop and we need to protect that so we have to always have the balance between yes we need more housing stock but we need to protect those environments.

“Not only our untouched bushland but also our farming land. We're farming communities and we need to hang onto that and we need to not lose the space that grows our food and keep our farmers going.”

Killian said the capacity and the taste for high density housing is pretty limited with only the central parts of Kiama, Nowra and Batemans Bay capable of coping with that kind of development.

“Our focus is on increasing density in places in urban environments rather than spreading out,” she added.

“We definitely strongly oppose any kind of rampant development onto our natural sites, our bushland, particularly by the coast where it's so fragile and also limiting the spread on farmland.”

The Greens’ policy is for the introduction of a government-owned developer who would construct more than 600,000 homes across the country in a decade with 30% to be sold below market value at just above construction cost.

The remainder would be rented at 25% of household income or 70% of market value whichever is lower.

Killian said another major housing-related issue was the amount of accommodation which is being lost to Airbnb-style short-term rentals.

She believes it would be beneficial if that could be restricted so that tourists would be pushed back into traditional forms of accommodation with housing stock released for locals to rent, which would be particularly beneficial to people at the lower end of the market.