Page 1394 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 6 April 2005
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This should not be taken, Mr Speaker, to indicate that the government is not committed to and does not support affordable housing. This government regards affordable housing and the declining levels of housing affordability as a critical issue, which is high on its list of priorities. It has developed a strategy that covers the entire spectrum of the housing system, that is, home ownership, the private rental market, public and community housing and homelessness. These measures are designed to work together to ensure a continuity of assistance across a range of housing needs in the community.
The government has injected $33.2 million in additional funding for public and community housing, the largest single amount by any government since self-government. It has also injected $13 million for the homelessness initiatives. Further, the government established the affordable housing task force, which resulted in the implementation of a wide range of affordable housing measures, including: a commitment to release 500 affordable blocks of land over the next five years, the first of which were released in a moderate-income land ballot in December last year; increased stamp duty concessions for first home buyers, with further concessions linked to price movements in the market; the introduction of rental bond loans for low-income earners; the incorporation in the City West master plan of a requirement to deliver affordable housing in 5 per cent of total residential development; and improvements to the public housing system to ensure it is more accessible to people in need and is able to sustain tenancies.
This government has a strong commitment to addressing declining levels of housing affordability. We will continue to implement the strategic approach to the provision of affordable housing, while working in partnership with the building and development industry to investigate new affordable housing products.
To support this bill would be a retrograde step and undermine all the efforts thus far to provide affordable, appropriate and secure housing for all members of the community. One of the outcomes of this legislation is that it puts the onus for the provision of affordable housing in the multiunit development onto the purchasers of units in that particular development.
Affordable housing is a social issue. It is a community issue. It is one for all of us, and I welcome the contest of ideas coming from the opposition because, at the end of the day, if we have a contest of ideas on how to solve this problem, we will end up with a better situation. But what we do share with the opposition, I think, is the understanding of a commitment that this is a community-wide problem and it has to have a community-wide solution. Requiring individuals to, in a sense, pay an increase of 4 per cent on their unit as they buy it so that somebody can have a reduced price on a unit within that multiunit development, I think, puts the burden in the wrong spot.
Initially, that provision relates to the unit when it is purchased for the first time. If somebody buys this particular unit at a reduced price because of the affordability of it, what happens when their income changes and they actually move out of it; they move on to somewhere else because their life circumstances have changed for the better? Do we have a big red X on that door saying that the only people who can buy that particular unit are people below a certain income level? I do not think so. What will happen is that that
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