Page 105 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 December 2008
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the massive cutbacks to ACTION services—the short-sighted cutbacks. And now we have a promise from the government not only that it will suddenly get serious about light rail, with its $170,000 study, but also that we will see bus services every half an hour. We look forward to the government delivering on that promise and we look forward to seeing the price tag on that.
But if we are serious about developing a sustainable public transport system, if we are serious about that as a community, we do need to change the way we develop this city. It is not about A10 or core areas. It is not about core areas, because they will not solve the problem. We do need to see greater density in our town centres. We want to see more people living there, to sustain a transport system both economically and socially. We believe that is achievable but it does take some vision and it does have to take place over a period of time. Simply retrofitting it on a city that is as vastly populated in relative terms as Canberra is very expensive and very difficult.
The Chief Minister also talked about economic uncertainty and that the construction industry is saying that the government’s land release targets for residential, commercial and industrial should not be changed. We would sound a note of caution on that. I think the residential targets need to be constantly reviewed and constantly upgraded. We have been saying this for a long time: when the slowdown comes, we need to be sure that you do not have too much out there. We had too little; we hope it is about right now. We certainly hope so, but that analysis needs to occur constantly.
We saw statements from the Chief Minister before the election in which he committed to a certain number—I think it was 15,000—with no regard to changing circumstances in the future. A responsible government will look very carefully at that. If we look at our public statements on this matter, we have always sounded a note of caution, but what we did have, particularly from Mr Barr’s predecessor, Mr Corbell, was a deliberate policy, a destructive policy, of squeezing supply far too much, which led to significant pain for first homebuyers. Of course, first homebuyers, on the one hand, are now getting some benefit from the Rudd government’s initiatives, while on the other hand they are still having money taken by the ACT government.
We have the policies working against each other. We have, on the one hand, Kevin Rudd saying, “We’re going to stimulate things and we’re going to give more money to first homebuyers to assist them to purchase their first home.” I do not recall that that one is means tested. I think it is not. So they are actually working to get people into their first home. On the other hand we have this government actually working against it, with a significant taxation burden. Much of the $14,000 or $21,000 that first homebuyers get from the federal government—in some cases most of it—is taken by the ACT government in stamp duty. They are two policies that are not working well together.
Mr Barr: If you’re buying half-million-dollar houses; not your average first homebuyers. I don’t know what world you live in.
MR SESELJA: I think the position of this government is that $310,000 is about the cut-off for assistance and if you can find something under that—
Mr Barr: I think you’ll find it’s closer to $400,000.
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