Page 3166 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 9 November 2021
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Heaven forbid we hear mention about negative gearing, capital gains tax concessions and the historically low rates to borrow money, which are making it easier and easier for investors to trade in the market. Heaven forbid we have an honest conversation about all of the competing policy factors, federal and state, about housing affordability. No, no, no—it is the Canberra Liberals’ MO to come in here and try and misguide the Canberra electorate into believing that the housing affordability crisis we are living through is singlehandedly the fault of legislators and policy decisions being made in this place. It is so dishonest. It is so frustrating. It is so absent from the experience of real people in the community.
We have heard Mr Parton regularly—in fact as early as this morning on ABC radio—insinuating without necessarily nailing the point that it has been the reforms that have been promoted by the ACT Greens in this place over the history of the last decade—to try and improve renters’ rights in this city, to make it easier for renters to broker between them and their landlord, to live in safe, clean, affordable homes that are not covered with mould, from which they cannot be kicked out in short notice, where they can hang a picture of family or paint a wall a personalised colour and not find themselves homeless—that have led to this challenging housing affordability crisis.
I have heard it put that that is flushing investors out of the market. Well, I tell you what, Mr Parton obviously is not hanging out with the same people I am hanging out with—those would be the friends I made over the last 12 years working in real estate—who tell me that every single Saturday in this city a first home buyer is outbid by an investor at an auction. It is investors flooding the market. It is real estate speculators flooding the market. They are flooding the market because they are aided and abetted and actively encouraged by the policy settings of your federal coalition government.
I am not going to let the Labor Party miss out here, because negative gearing and capital tax gains concessions remain policy positions of the federal Labor Party. This tax is a pox on all our houses, because the situation that we see unfolding in the ACT’s housing affordability crisis can be directly drawn to those federal taxation policy settings.
It is easier in this city, in this country and in the entire OECD, where these policy settings are in place, to buy your tenth home than it is your first home. That is criminal. That is akin to intergenerational theft.
I received a phone call during lockdown from a gentleman who was very upset with me and other progressive members of this place for the impoverishing rate at which land tax is increasing. I found that a bit galling. I said, “I am sure you mean rates, sir.” “No, no, no. Land tax on my seven investment properties”. You can imagine as a raving socialist that my initial reaction to that was to be a little perplexed and challenged until I took some time to talk to my constituent to understand the situation he found himself in. The entire situation was so telling when he said to me, “They’re for my kids. These houses are for my kids. I can’t sell them, Mr Davis. They’re for my kids. Because if I don’t hang on to them, they won’t have a home”.
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