Page 408 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 10 February 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
That this Assembly:
(1) notes:
(a) the ACT is Australia’s most expensive rental market. As a result, an increasing number of residents are experiencing housing stress;
(b) data from CoreLogic shows the median weekly rent for houses in Canberra is $657, up 3.6 percent since 2019, while median weekly unit rents are $473;
(c) over 20 years the ACT Labor/Greens Government has driven housing and thereby rental costs up through increased rates, slow land release for new stock and the failure to deliver effective policy for affordable housing; and
(d) a number of Canberrans are being driven into homelessness as they struggle with increased living costs, in major part driven by increased housing costs; and
(2) calls on the Government to:
(a) investigate the effectiveness of a range of policy levers aimed at alleviating the extremely high cost of housing in the ACT, particularly for low to moderate income earners, including working more effectively with community housing providers (CHPs) to strengthen their ability to provide more affordable housing;
(b) investigate implementing shared equity arrangements, whereby the ACT Government provides land for CHPs to provide social housing, while maintaining an ownership stake;
(c) investigate the introduction of a rent supplementation lease arrangement whereby the ACT Government would undertake bulk auctions of long-term leases to CHPs, to provide affordable rentals, with the supplement serving as an incentive for institutional investors to partner with CHPs;
(d) immediately extend lease durations for public housing currently let out by Housing ACT to CHPs, thereby allowing long-term revenue certainty to allow providers to borrow and grow;
(e) consider providing more extensive land tax exemptions and rates rebates for landholders leasing to CHPs;
(f) investigate implementing a land tax threshold, where the tax is only paid on the value of land over a certain amount, similar to jurisdictions like NSW;
(g) reassess the current land release regime to determine whether supply is meeting demand; and
(h) report back to the Legislative Assembly on the Government’s progress in considering these proposals by the final sitting day in April 2021.
Here we are, the day after the budget, a budget from a super-progressive Labor-Greens government, a government that beats its chest on a daily basis, pretty much, about its fairness—a government that reaches out to renters and struggling families with hand on heart and declares that it is fighting for the battler. Time and again, year after year, we see that in reality this Labor-Greens government does not
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video