Page 878 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 2 April 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Australia has 18 cities in the top 50 severely unaffordable markets and none in the world’s 50 most affordable markets. On average, Australian families are forced to spend 6.1 times their entire household income to buy a typical home compared with 3.1 times in Canada and 3.6 times in the US, and that was calculated before the rise in interest rates since the start of this year. While Australians have been facing this growing crisis, state and local governments have been gleefully pocketing all the extra revenue and, as in the ACT, actually raising property taxes.
According to ABS data, state and territory and local government revenue on property taxes is at an all-time high. There has been a hike of $1.3 billion in stamp duties on conveyances. You may well remember that the Howard government introduced the GST which goes in full to the state and territory governments with the understanding that the states and territories would phase out taxes such as stamp duty. In fact, the states and territories have simply not kept up their end of the bargain and have abolished very few state and territory taxes. They will all, including the ACT government, share in $41.8 billion from GST next financial year, $3.3 billion more than they were guaranteed when it was set up. But still they will not abolish stamp duty.
It is no wonder that the Chief Minister puts out regular media releases telling us that the ACT is one of the most affordable places in which to live in Australia. The truth is quite different. The data being used by the Chief Minister is skewed by the statistics showing that Canberrans have higher per capita incomes than the rest of the country, and more married women work than elsewhere in Australia. This is because it is really very difficult to survive either renting or buying in the nation’s capital on one household income. This makes it especially difficult for young families and single parent households to survive in Canberra.
Five of the states and territories have recorded the highest proportion of income ever needed to meet loan repayments this quarter, while the ACT recorded its third highest proportion. That statistic is from the Real Estate Institute of Australia media release of 28 February 2008.
There is, I suggest, an increasing trend of households leaving Canberra because of the cost of housing, including renting. One young family that came here from Queensland lured by the Live in Canberra campaign tried it for almost a year and decided the cost of living was just too expensive in Canberra. I know of other cases in which households are moving to as far away as Goulburn and commuting to Canberra for work. This goes for my daughter. She had to move out of the ACT with three small children and move to rent privately in Queanbeyan.
Last August the Residential Development Council estimated that the combined taxes, fees, levies and charges on a new detached house are now typically anywhere from $80,000 per lot to around $160,000 per lot in south-west Sydney. Those home buyer taxes have risen by 300 to 400 per cent in recent years. An increase of $80,000, for example, means an extra $80,000 on a mortgage, or over $617 extra a month—that is as at August 2007 figures—and over $700 extra a month since those figures came out in the middle of last year.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .