Page 3330 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 19 October 2022
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much comfort to those looking to get into the market or renters who face high rents and limited supply of rentals.
Supply and demand is a pretty simple concept, really. The ACT government is completely in control of land release, to ensure that supply is meeting demand. Unfortunately for Canberrans, this Labor-Greens government has no interest in releasing enough land to meet our very high demand, which pushes up prices and results in super profits from land sales for the government.
The reality on the ground for Canberrans, especially those on lower incomes, is that they are locked out of home ownership and locked into increasingly higher rental costs. This is enough of a problem in Canberra that the Auditor-General undertook an inquiry into land supply and release in 2020. Unsurprisingly, since the Auditor-General’s report was published, not much has changed.
The Suburban Land Agency’s recently published annual report for 2021-22 showed that it released 517 blocks in 2021-22, a shortfall of 114 against a target of 631 in the ILRP. In the scheme of things, a shortfall of 114 is actually pretty significant. In the previous year, 2020-21, the Suburban Land Agency released 950 blocks, a shortfall of 244 against a target of 1,194 blocks.
The Auditor-General’s report and the subsequent public accounts committee inquiry and report of 2022 have made a number of recommendations on ways to improve the delivery of residential land in Canberra. I am hoping that there will be some improvements as a result. We would all hope that when reports of that nature are made, from committees and from the Auditor General—you would hope, wouldn’t you, Mr Assistant Speaker?—improvements would be made. But I suspect that it may be false hope.
Echoing the recommendations of the Auditor-General and the public accounts committee, I am calling on the Labor-Greens government to be far more up-front with Canberrans about how they classify land, how they come up with the Indicative Land Release Program, how they are tracking against their targets, how they set their affordable housing targets, and to publish their results much faster.
For example, the Auditor-General recommended that ACT land and property reports, which are six-monthly updates on activity in the ACT property market, be produced as soon as possible after the end of the relevant reporting period, which the government agreed to in its response to the audit report. However, the latest report for July 2021 to December 2021 was published more than seven months after the end of the reporting period. It is not good enough.
I have included in this motion today the public accounts committee’s recommendation that ACT land and property reports be published no later than three months after the relevant reporting period. We certainly cannot see why that is not possible. The ACT land and property report should also include data on land released but not sold. That was a recommendation of the Auditor-General’s report that the government did not agree to. Not only have the public accounts committee recommended that this information be included in ACT land and property reports from July 2022 onward; they have also asked the government to explain why they did not agree to this
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