Page 3498 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 23 November 2021
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car parks. We have also undertaken further works, together with the local community, around Jamison.
We will continue to consider what has come out of these reports before we make decisions about implementation based on a set of road safety priorities that we have right around the ACT. There are a number of roads in the ACT that have major road safety concerns. That is why we are investing a significant amount of money in the Monaro Highway, for example, to remove at-grade dangerous signalised intersections along that route. That is why we are investing in other roads around Canberra to improve road safety. We will continue to look at what the priorities are in each region.
Planning—housing affordability
MS LAWDER: My question is to the Minister for Planning and Land Management. In last Monday’s edition of the Canberra Weekly you were quoted as saying:
Providing increased housing choice will not only help us create diverse and attractive communities but also provide affordable housing in established communities.
On the same page the CEO of ACTCOSS was highlighting a housing and rental crisis with the ACT having the highest rate of rental stress in the country and at least 1,600 people experiencing homelessness each day. Minister, why are you treating people in the ACT with contempt by saying we have increased housing choices when the present conditions clearly demonstrate this to be utterly false?
MR GENTLEMAN: It seems extremely odd that the Canberra Liberals are willing to take up the simplistic old argument about land supply. We have just witnessed the federal parliament also try to blame the states and territories for planning and land supply issues. But, of course, the Reserve Bank keeps telling them that the issues are in the tax and transfer system.
The upcoming ILRP is forecast to supply dwellings for around 41,000 Canberrans at a time when our population is only expected to grow by 17,500. So the RBA has been very clear that the overall housing supply is not an issue affecting house prices in Australia, and they mean here, too.
We have provided written and verbal evidence to a federal parliamentary inquiry on the topic of housing supply and affordability. Luci Ellis, Assistant Governor of the RBA, said just last week that in Australia additions to the housing stock have run ahead of population growth for a number of years. She also said that the combination of negative gearing and concessional capital gains means that it is very attractive to leverage into investor property.
So we are supplying an ILRP that will provide housing for the future of Canberrans. We want to make sure that that is appropriate and, where we can, affordable too into the future.
MS LAWDER: Minister, is the CEO of ACTCOSS wrong?
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