Page 934 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 25 February 2009
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(b) explain to the Assembly and the broader community why those participating in a rental scheme are required to pay stamp duty;
(c) provide these contracted to the scheme, but who have been unable to secure finance, the capacity to opt out of the program; and
(d) explore reasonable reimbursement expenses for those who choose to opt out of the program as a result of a lack of finance.
I am pleased to bring forward this very important motion today. The first thing it is worth doing is to reflect on the context of how we got to a position where the land rent scheme became such a centrepiece of this government’s housing affordability strategy. What we have and what we have had over the last few years, particularly under the watch of the former minister—he is here with us and hopefully he can contribute to the debate—was a deliberate squeezing of land supply. That was very clear. We saw that for a period of time.
Mr Corbell: Not true. It’s a myth.
MR SESELJA: Well, it is true. We saw the numbers drop significantly. The minister interjects and says he did not deliberately reduce the numbers of blocks being released to the market and that it happened accidentally, apparently. It is a ridiculous argument that he is putting to us. We saw a significant drop in the number of blocks released to the market. That is a fact. They simply got the market wrong. At a time when the commonwealth public service was expanding, we saw this government squeezing land supply. As a result, we saw the price of land go up significantly. This is, in fact, acknowledged by the Chief Minister, because much of the focus has been about correcting the wrongs that happened under his government previously in squeezing the land supply too much and pushing the price up too much. As we all know, once that happens and you artificially inflate that price, you are faced with very difficult challenges in bringing the price of land down. We have always said that once you allow that to happen it is very difficult to quickly moderate prices. We do not want to see a situation where people who have bought see the value of their land drop significantly. So there are tricky challenges when you make these mistakes, and that is what this government did.
Other things they have done are that they have offered no real genuine relief in terms of taxes. Their inadequate concession scheme really does not benefit many people. It has often been playing catch-up with house prices, and we have seen that, in many cases, people with very moderate levels of income who buy very moderately priced houses either do not get any concessions or only get very small concessions on their stamp duty. This government has lived off the taxes of first homebuyers in particular. It has balanced its budgets on the backs of first homebuyers.
The third part of the equation which has led to this situation has been the flaws in the planning system, particularly around the administration of development applications and the like. We see it even now with the planning minister saying to us that the only way we can get things built in schools is to bypass ACTPLA. That is what he is saying to us today. We will certainly consider that very closely, but with this
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