Page 419 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 22 March 2022
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We have a housing crisis in Canberra. The median price for a detached house is over $1 million, and we have the highest median rent in the country. In the face of this unfolding challenge over the past few years, the Labor-Greens government has failed to act. It has failed to hit its own—already inadequate—land sales targets. It has failed to plan for and meet demand for detached housing, and it has failed thousands of Canberrans that deserve to have the right to live in their own home.
This Labor-Greens government knows that Canberrans want the option to live in houses and not be forced into high-rise towers if that is not their choice. This government’s own housing choices community survey of 2015, known as the Winton report, showed that almost 85 per cent of Canberrans would prefer to live in a detached house. There is also support for dual occupancies and townhouses, and only 1.7 per cent want to live in an apartment block of more than three storeys. This is a government that has simply chosen to ignore this inconvenient truth.
Recent land ballots have seen thousands and thousands of people applying to buy fewer than 100 blocks in some suburbs. Whitlam, only this month, had 12,417 applicants for 101 blocks. Macnamara, in February, had 8,700 applicants for 71 blocks. Taylor, in November last year, had 7,484 applicants for 115 blocks. In a previous ballot in Whitlam, which took place in March last year, we saw 7,566 applicants for 92 blocks.
As if these figures were not bad enough, to make the situation worse, despite the overwhelming demand for land to build detached housing, this Labor-Greens government only plans to release 4,171 blocks over the next five years. I repeat: 4,171 blocks over the next five years. Even taking its already inadequate land sales targets into account, we know that this Labor-Greens government does not actually deliver on these targets, and we get no adequate explanation as to why.
It is unbelievable that this Labor-Greens government is so out of touch that it actually believes its housing strategy is a success. In fact, only over the weekend we saw the ACT Greens almost breaking their arms while patting themselves on the back to congratulate themselves on social media about everything that they have apparently achieved in government on housing.
Let us look at the record under Labor and the Greens. We have median house prices of over $1 million. We have seen a whopping 28.8 per cent increase in house prices in the last year alone. We have the highest median rents in the country and we have tens of thousands of desperate Canberrans lining up to bid, sometimes for fewer than 100 blocks. This is on top of whopping increases in electricity under their watch, and shockingly high rates and land tax that are forcing many Canberra investors out of our city, taking more and more affordable rental properties off the market.
Whilst Labor and the Greens are busy high-fiving each other on a job well done, let us not forget the thousands and thousands of Canberrans for whom the dream of owning their own home is no longer a possibility. This is the result of a complacent, arrogant government that is out of touch with what the Canberra community need and want.
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