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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Wednesday, 18 August 2004) . . Page.. 3820 ..

involvement in the development, it did work; and it has worked well. That is what we need to say. Yes, we do need to have a policy that says that there needs to be integration of public and affordable housing into a range of developments and a range of housing styles across Canberra, but it needs to be a carefully managed policy to ensure that it meets the needs of the people that we are looking out for.

If someone is building 25 units in Barton overlooking the lake and has to devote two or 2½ of those to government housing and he is selling half-million dollar units, many of the people who might be moved into government housing will feel out of place there; they will feel uncomfortable. It may seem wrong and patronising, but they may feel uncomfortable having to keep up with the Joneses, their neighbours, because they are living next door to $500,000 units and they may feel more comfortable living in more modest accommodation in more modest surroundings.

The sentiments are great, but it is the wrong answer to an important piece of policy and the Liberal opposition cannot support the bill.

MS DUNDAS (10.47): Mr Speaker, without a doubt we do have a chronic shortage of public and community housing, so I strongly endorse the intent of this bill proposed by Ms Tucker which is to increase the community asset of community and public housing. Of course, this asset was run down by previous governments.

However, I am concerned about the impacts this bill would actually have on the property market in the territory. I see it imposing a very large share of the cost of new public and community housing on a small section of the new housing market and I do not think that this distortion in the market would be likely to succeed in its main aim, which is increasing the supply of affordable housing.

As Ms Tucker has put forward, this bill will require all developers of large multi-unit developments to set aside 10 per cent of their development for affordable rental housing or make an equivalent payment to government. I am confident that a big additional cost imposed on large multi-unit developments would simply drive developers away from large multi-unit developments and into greenfields developments, free-standing housing and smaller unit complexes.

We could see greater subdividing happening and a plethora of smaller developments actually occurring on the same block of land. So we would see a movement away from large-unit developments. We could then possibly see as a side effect more urban sprawl, a less effective use of available inner-city land and fewer dwellings suitable for the one and two-person households that are becoming the norm in the territory.

Currently new and public community housing is paid for by all ACT residents through our taxation system. This bill would then put part of the cost of new affordable housing onto developers, which would be forced to accept lower margins if they decide to push ahead with a large multi-unit development, but most of the cost would then be borne by buyers of the new units.

We would have those people who are trying to enter the housing market themselves, with their stamp duty concessions, with their first home buyers grants, actually seeing the cost of the units that they want to buy being increased. People who are trying to move out of

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