Sydney's most exclusive harbourside mansions including in Malcolm Turnbull's Point Piper suburb have had rents for jetties and boathouses slashed by up to $15,000 a year, while south-western areas such as Peakhurst pay more to the state government, internal documents show.
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An overhaul of the charges waterfront property owners pay for jetties, boathouses and swimming pools on public land was approved a year after the coalition took power in NSW in 2011.
Determined by the independent pricing regulator, the change was touted as saving three-quarters of the state's waterfront landowners an average of 28 per cent at a yearly loss of $5 million to the government's bottom line.
But government documents seen by the Herald show some suburbs have done much better than that.
In some parts of Point Piper, residents' yearly bills have fallen from about $27,000 a year under the old system to $10,000 last year, the documents show.
On average residents in the "Sydney Harbour East" region, an area encompassing the Prime Minister's digs, Vaucluse and Double Bay, have benefited most from the changes with fees dropping from about $130 a square metre to $50 - or more than 60 per cent.
But documents tabled in Parliament following questions from the state opposition show that rents collected from houses in regions along Georges River and to its south, including suburbs such as Panania, Peakhurst and Oatley, have increased.
Labor says the new system reflects a disregard for fairness by the state government.
"How come Point Piper and Pittwater residents get a cut in their rents while families running about in their tinnies on the Georges and Port Hacking rivers have to pay more?" said Jodi McKay, Labor's maritime spokesperson. "I think it is beyond coincidence that the areas getting a helping hand are the Liberals' electorates of Vaucluse and Pittwater.
"Ask yourself the question - does Malcolm Turnbull really need rent relief for his jetty?"
Total yearly waterfront rents collected by the state government from the Georges River West and Port Hacking regions are about 25 and 13 per cent higher respectively than 2012, and residents have paid a total of $200,000 more in rent since 2012.
But total rents collected in the Pittwater region, which includes Palm Beach and Avalon, were 60 per cent lower last year than in 2012 and residents payments have cumulatively dropped a little less than $4 million since 2012.
But George Citer, of the Waterfront Action Group said fees remained too high in some inner-Sydney suburbs such as Balmain and changes to fees reflected fluctuations in the rate of rental returns for homeowners.
"What was happening before was dramatically unfair and incorrect," he said. "The rate of rental return for property investment in the eastern suburbs has gone down dramatically."
Mr Citer, whose group funded a 2004 court case against the state government that helped build pressure for the review, said that the new system was more accurate and fair.
The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal's new system now uses a complex formula for determining rents for jetties and pools based on house sizes, land values and estimated profits from renting out a property.
A spokesman for the Minister for Lands, Paul Toole, and Maritime Minister Melinda Pavey said: "The formula for calculating rents was devised independently by IPART and is based on land values. It was the former NSW Labor government that asked IPART to carry out the review of domestic waterfront rents."
