Page 3249 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 19 August 2008
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We need to expand housing. It is great if people can own their own houses, but remember that people who come to Canberra first come as renters; unless they have various complex needs, they are not likely to get government housing. The community housing sector is not expanding, and affordable housing from CHC is in its early years and just catches one segment of the market.
We need more public housing and we need to make sure it is viable. That means we need to have a mix of market renters and people of high needs. Otherwise we are going to end up with ghetto-ised public housing that is only cause for complaint. We are already seeing it in this place—complaints, complaints, complaints about public housing tenants. It is a populist issue and we are hearing it here.
We need to have inclusionary zoning so that in every new development that is built there is a percentage of affordable and social housing. That means community housing and public housing. The government refused that a few years ago when I put it up. I am waiting to see it in their own policy. We need more mobile and long-stay parks; we need security for people who live in them. We need houses which are affordable to live in; it is not enough just to buy them. We need to build boarding houses for out-of-town secondary students. They do come here. We need to facilitate empty nesters who rent rooms in their houses. We know that that could help solve the social problem of loneliness and isolation and also the lack of affordable housing.
Another concern I have is whether the people who end up with the blocks of land from the moderate-income land ballot are the people that the program is directed at. I have had anecdotal evidence that there are people who already own homes benefiting from the moderate-income land ballot. There are people who build homes on the land who do not ever live in them and who rent them and sell them out. There are concerns. It is not enough to just say, “We are doing it.” You have to show that you are doing it well and that you are benefiting the people who most need benefiting.
For this reason, I was very pleased—(Time expired.)
MR SPEAKER: The time for discussion of this matter has concluded.
Duties Amendment Bill 2008 (No 2)
Debate resumed from 7 August 2008, on motion by Mr Stanhope:
That this bill be agreed to in principle.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (4.48): This is a deceptively short bill. It inserts one clause into the Duties Act, but its objective is quite profound. The intention of this bill is to provide a market signal, a pricing mechanism to encourage people to buy new motor vehicles—essentially passenger vehicles and smaller commercial vehicles—that are less damaging to the environment.
I thank the Treasurer for arranging a briefing on this bill, although I am concerned that a number of questions that I had asked about this scheme that were taken on
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