Page 3176 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 9 November 2021
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Sydney. The same is also true for a dual income couple with children on an estimated combined income of $191,000.
In other words, despite Canberra’s higher than average incomes, working families who choose to live here will fall further behind financially than if they chose to live elsewhere in Australia. The ACT government is choosing to punish families when they deserve to be rewarded by keeping more of their hard-earned dollars in their pockets.
Labor and the Greens have monopoly control over land supply and, according to basic economics, they therefore determine land prices. They also regulate land taxes and residential rates, both of which directly impact the cost of housing. It is time—past time—to declare a housing crisis in the ACT and to allow an independent review of the impact of ACT government policies on rising house prices and rents.
If the policy settings are right then the government has nothing to fear from such an inquiry. Defeat of this motion will make it perfectly clear that those opposite know full well that their policies are completely wrong. I commend this motion to the Assembly.
MR PARTON (Brindabella) (4.44): Madam Speaker, isn’t it amazing to come into this place and be lectured about trickle-down economics by a real estate agent who is a property investor? But it is okay if he is a property investor, because he hates it! It is okay for Mr Davis to be a property investor, because he does not like it! Interestingly, Mr Davis suggested that the vast majority of homes being purchased are being purchased by investors, and that flies in the face of the advice that I get directly from the Real Estate Institute, who continue to advise me that the vast majority are being purchased by owner-occupiers.
Every housing motion that I bring to this chamber becomes a knock-down rebuild, and this one is no different—bulldozed to the ground. I love how there is always a focus on things that are way outside our control. We are back with that old chestnut of calling upon us to lobby the federal government, the federal Liberal Party, on these taxation levers federally.
I would draw members’ attention back to the Four Corners documentary on housing affordability late last month. The presenter, Stephen Long, said, “Labor took a plan to the last two elections to wind back negative gearing and capital gains taxation measures; they’ve now dropped the policy.” It is no longer federal Labor policy; both of the major parties are on the same page.
I would note that, during the recent estimates hearings, my Greens colleague Mr Braddock asked the planning minister, Mr Gentleman, “Have you lobbied your federal Labor party colleagues about this policy space?” Mr Gentleman looked at Mr Braddock as though he was speaking in some sort of foreign language. He looked at him as if to say, “What a silly question.” He said, definitively, no; why would he be doing that? He has not done that. He said, “No, I haven’t personally lobbied any of my federal Labor colleagues.”
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