Page 1617 - Week 05 - Thursday, 8 May 2008
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dislocation. In this environment, teachers need more support than ever before. This is the message we heard in Calwell, where Labor have ignored a worsening problem of disruptive behaviour and violence. We are pleased that Labor have copied our policy in this budget, with some new money for teacher professional support, but we are not so pleased that Labor’s funding cuts out partway through the forward estimates.
Young home buyers are another group that this government takes for granted. I do not believe it is acceptable that young people are forced out of the Canberra market because the ACT government is squeezing them between constricted land supply and excessive taxes. This is a government that pretends to care about housing affordability but continues to defend outrageous levels of taxation on first home buyers.
The government’s track record on taxation is as woeful as its record on management of services and investment in infrastructure. Since Labor has been in office, the ACT economy, as measured by gross state product, has increased by 13 per cent but, over the same period, the government’s revenue has risen by 28 per cent. Over the past six years, its financial bottom line has, on average, been $120 million different from what the government expected in its budgets.
Since 2002-03, the government’s tax on property purchases alone has extracted $277 million more than it said it would. We can afford to give some of this back. I have challenged Mr Stanhope to match my plan to cut stamp duty for first home buyers, but he tells young buyers this would be “irresponsible”. Just whose money does he think this is? Much of Mr Stanhope’s surplus was gouged from first home buyers in the first place.
The Canberra Liberals recognise that a whole new generation of would-be buyers are struggling to enter the Canberra market and many are giving up on the dream of a long-term future in Canberra. We are losing skilled young workers to other states. Housing prices in the Canberra market are prohibitive enough for first home buyers, without government providing an extra barrier to entry.
My policy to exempt the vast majority of first home buyers from stamp duty will be the biggest positive change in the Canberra property market since self-government. Labor even acknowledges this through a land rent scheme which is perversely predicated on an assumption that low-income earners can no longer afford to own a home in this town. Mr Stanhope has driven prices up by choking land supply. He has monopoly control over land in this town. And he has been seven years too late in agreeing to ease up land supply.
Even now his belated plan to release more land is not expected to have any influence on the market until the end of this year, seven months away. Mr Stanhope thinks that $15,000 is fair and reasonable as his share from a $400,000 home sale. This is the famous mean streak. He arrogantly has his head in the sand, thinking that most Canberrans are wealthy and they do not struggle to juggle the bills. This is no doubt one of the reasons that even Labor insiders see the government as mean spirited and out of touch.
Yesterday morning in our budget debate at the National Press Club, Mr Stanhope said that to provide tax relief you have to shut services in health or education. This is a
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