Page 2111 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
to the Watson Arts Centre. The written response came back from officials that that was a mistake. So there is $90,000 in the budget which is a simple mistake. I would ask the Treasurer to clarify the following: how many other such mistakes have been identified since the publication of the budget on 6 May; why did the responsible ministers not question or identify the mistakes during budget and cabinet meetings; has the Appropriation Bill been adjusted accordingly since 6 May; and how will the Treasurer make budget adjustments to absorb the effect of such mistakes? We have posed a lot of questions in recent days to the Treasurer. I posed questions to him in my speech in relation to land rent, and those questions were not answered. Hopefully, the Treasurer and Chief Minister will be able to answer some of these questions about what is being done with the mistakes that have been identified.
The government has admitted twice that its land release program is inadequate. It admitted it when it belatedly agreed on an increased program, and it promises that it will attempt to meet levels of demand by Christmas this year—six months time. We have also seen the Chief Minister effectively admit that his land release program is inadequate when he claimed that my stamp duty concessions will cause inflation. Of course, if stamp duty concessions are inflationary, this could only be so if supply is not meeting demand.
We know that there are issues in relation to land release, and we have seen this government get it very wrong over the past few years. We know that the Chief Minister and others, including the current planning minister, would like to simply blame the former planning minister. We know around the industry circles that Simon Corbell is the one they blame for getting us into this mess. It is clear that that was done on the watch of this Chief Minister. Even though he did not have specific ministerial responsibility for that lack of land release, that squeeze on land which has caused so many issues for first homebuyers and which has caused so many of them to move away from Canberra happened on his watch. We have seen a scrambling now to catch up over the last little bit, but we do have concerns about the government’s ability to actually release the right amount of land for the market.
We have seen big announcements in relation to 15,000 blocks over the next five years and 4,200 in the next financial year. Of course, we do not know what the market will be doing in two years time, three years time or four years time. What I say to the government again is that we need to have the land ready to come online quickly. We do not know whether land supply in five years time will have to be greatly increased from what it is now or slowed down, depending on whether the market is slowing. We do not want to see a situation where we artificially flood the market and see significant downward pressure on prices, which will put many recent homebuyers in trouble as they see the potential of negative equity and they see the potential of repossessions as we have seen in parts of Sydney.
In relation to the industrial land release program, supply has been inadequate in recent times. We have seen a discussion in terms of the Tuggeranong power station. We have seen the issue of industrial land supply coming to a head. We know that some work is being done on that, but we will need to see the government’s outcomes in terms of getting enough industrial supply so that we do not see industrial land continuing to be too expensive.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .