Page 418 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 22 March 2022

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(a) the ACT is experiencing a housing crisis;

(b) demand for detached housing is significantly exceeding supply;

(c) recent land ballots for detached housing have had thousands of applicants vying for only a small number of blocks. For example, the most recent ballot for land in Whitlam had 12 417 applicants for 101 blocks;

(d) the ACT Government deliberately constrains the supply of land for detached housing;

(e) a report prepared for the ACT Government in 2015, known colloquially as the Winton Report, showed that Canberrans overwhelmingly have a preference for detached housing, a result that has been ignored by the Government;

(f) the ACT Government did not agree with recommendation 2(c) of the Auditor-General’s Report No 4 of June 2020 on Residential Land Supply and Release, which recommended that the Government publish future projections for housing supply and demand;

(g) the ACT Government’s land development targets are not based on projected market demand, forcing many Canberrans into apartments;

(h) according to the latest ABS data, Canberra’s residential property prices grew 28.8 percent between December 2020 and December 2021;

(i) the ACT Government only plans to release 4171 blocks of land for detached housing over the next five years to 2025-26, and based on their past performance it is unlikely to deliver that amount;

(j) the ACT Land and Property Report for July to December 2021 has not yet been released, which means the Government’s progress towards the target of 631 blocks this financial year is not publicly known;

(k) the ACT Government’s conveyance duty concessions on multi-unit dwellings do not alleviate demand for detached housing; and

(l) while there are macroeconomic settings that affect the price of housing across Australia, the ACT Government controls the release of land;

(2) calls on the ACT Government to acknowledge:

(a) there is a housing affordability crisis in Canberra;

(b) the 70 per cent infill strategy is leaving many Canberrans behind;

(d) the ACT Government has a role to play in meeting the demand for detached housing in Canberra; and

(3) also calls on the ACT Government to:

(a) use the policy levers it has available to ease the housing affordability crisis in Canberra by releasing more land for detached housing;

(b) commission a new housing choices survey similar to the Winton Report of 2015; and

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