Page 1606 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 June 2007
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business and “a tax that will increase costs and have an inevitable and unknown effect on consumption”. Things change quickly, don’t they?
Despite the Chief Minister’s ridiculous statements about the doom and gloom that would be brought on by the GST, the nation seems to be doing okay. A $10 billion federal surplus and the lowest unemployment rate in over 20 years suggest that the Chief Minister got it wrong. Rivers of GST are flowing to the ACT government. In the vicinity of $800 million in GST revenue—
Mrs Dunne: Rivers of gold.
MR SESELJA: Rivers of gold. Presumably the Chief Minister will not be giving back the proceeds of this apparently unfair tax. Chief Minister, we accept your apology.
One welcome item in the budget is the release of an extra $209,000 over four years for a residential detoxification and withdrawal program for women and women with children. This is an important initiative, but I would make the point that that was all that was announced in the budget in regard to illicit drugs policy. We would like to see some new thinking from this government. We would like to see some fresh thinking on the scourge of drug abuse in our society.
The Land Development Agency is an abject failure. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent in advertising and marketing, and what has it achieved? We were promised by Stanhope Labor that the LDA would make housing more affordable. They have failed, and failed dismally, as acknowledged by this Chief Minister. Recently the commonwealth bank and the housing industry association reported that a typical first home in the ACT is now costing just under $404,000. Just one year ago it cost $370,000. That is a rise of over 26 per cent at a time when salaries and wages have increased by around six per cent.
Canberra’s first home buyers are paying up to 36 per cent of their weekly income to mortgage repayments and are considered to be in housing stress. A year ago they were paying 32 per cent. Whilst housing affordability nationally has dropped by 10 per cent, in the ACT it has dropped by 22 per cent. A typical mortgage in the ACT now costs $2,790 per month and we are closing in on Sydney, which averages around $3,000 per month.
The Chief Minister has announced his housing affordability strategy, but it appears to be a case of too little, too late. It is the first home buyers, along with the GST, that are propping this government up. In 2000, just seven years ago, land sales were worth $23 million to the government of the day. This year the LDA has delivered a $66 million surplus to the government.
To deny that land is an integral part of this surplus is an insult to the community and the young families that have suffered under the Stanhope regime. The Chief Minister recently acknowledged that the LDA’s profits have been at the expense of first home buyers. They have gouged first home buyers to prop up their bottom line. Much of this budget is on the back of property owners and first home buyers and others who are bearing a disproportionate amount of the tax burden in this territory.
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