Page 1317 - Week 04 - Thursday, 5 May 2022
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these measures provided incentives to purchase house and land packages, and we have seen the market respond to these incentives with an increase in demand for house and land packages.
Continued provision of land and having an inventory available comes at a cost to ACT ratepayers. The ACT government continues to fund due diligence and infrastructure servicing so that there is available land for the future where the market changes, which is what has happened recently. The ACT government is continuing to monitor population trends and will continue to release land ahead of population predictions. We will also continue to release land considering household formation and demography considerations, to make sure that the range of housing choices reflects a range of different households in the Canberra community.
When it comes to land supply, the role of the private sector is increasing as more and more land transfers to private hands and is no longer directly controlled by the government. Looking at what the private sector provides, as I said in the last sitting week, that housing supply is also about making more efficient use of the land and infrastructure that we have in our existing urban footprint. Adding density to our cities is housing supply. I have also said that rezoning and lease variation contribute to high- and medium-density options in our existing suburbs. As a result, this type of development will not necessarily show up in government land release statistics. This remains true.
The private sector plays a crucial role in providing land for redevelopment. This type of redevelopment is critical to meeting the government’s target of 70 per cent urban infill, and the government will continue to boost housing supply in our inner suburbs by carefully considering rezoning opportunities. The Grattan Institute submission to the Productivity Commission’s report into the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement shows that the most effective thing that a government can do to boost housing affordability is to increase density in our inner and middle suburbs, and this is what we are doing. Rezoning has allowed for a range of high- and medium-density housing options in our inner suburbs. These high-density housing options have also brought shops, restaurants, services and a thriving nightlife to previously underutilised areas right on the doorstep of our biggest employment centres.
The original motion covered in some detail the federal government’s history with West Murrumbidgee, but conveniently ignored the complementary work and considerations of the ACT government on West Murrumbidgee, as well as the more limited area in western Greenway. When the federal Liberal government directed the National Capital Authority to investigate West Murrumbidgee for development in 2014, the ACT government, of course, provided input into these decisions. We advised the federal government of the economic and environmental constraints on development in the area. Only a small proportion of the area investigated would likely be able to be developed, and that potentially developable area was even less once we considered issues such as fire safety, water quality protection and topography. The area identified for potential development contained some of the largest, best-connected patches of box gum woodland that would require substantial buffers from both the river corridor and the conservation reserve.
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