Page 2683 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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MS GALLAGHER: You must have read the analysis after you tabled the report. I believe the issue relates to the way that we treat the superannuation account. It is a difference of opinion, and it is one he has held for some time.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Hanson, a supplementary question?
MR HANSON: Treasurer, what action will you take to reduce the confusion that Mr Harris has identified?
MS GALLAGHER: We are not; we are not going to. We have a difference of opinion on how we present the long-term gains of our superannuation investment. There is a difference of opinion, and we will not be responding to that.
Land—rent scheme
MS PORTER: Mr Speaker, my question, through you, is to the Chief Minister. Could the Chief Minister tell the Assembly how land rent fits into the government’s comprehensive strategy to tackle housing affordability and of the views of members of the community about land rent?
MR STANHOPE: I thank Ms Porter for her interest in extending the dream of home ownership to a broader cross-section of the Canberra population. As she observes, land rent is part of a bigger picture. Indeed, while members of the opposition, led by Mr Seselja, are obsessed by the initiative to a degree that seems at times absolutely pathological, land rent is just one of 62 actions to tackle housing affordability announced by the government and progressively implemented over the past two years. Of course, the government will shortly announce another suite of integrated measures as phase 2 of the action plan, with a focus on homelessness and housing for older Canberrans. This raft of actions constitutes by far the most comprehensive, integrated and coordinated approach to housing affordability taken by any government in Australia.
Let us, for instance, look at accelerated land release. This financial year, the government, through the Land Development Agency, has put 4,200 blocks onto the market. That comes on top of 3,400 last year. That is 7,600 blocks in the last two years. It is utterly unprecedented. Yet we remark on how the leader of the opposition characterises this. Earlier this year he described that 7,600-block unprecedented release as “a trickle”—a trickle of land at 7,600 blocks. We all need to look at the views expressed by the opposition, led by the leader of the opposition, in relation to land rent.
Mr Seselja has over the course of this year—and I will be happy to table the press releases in relation to this—described land rent as “ill-conceived”, “deeply flawed”, “pitifully inadequate” and “a dud”. We need to look at the paper trail of frenzied media releases by Mr Seselja in recent times—one a week—and we saw it again just last Friday and in a motion circulated again today. He tries desperately to talk down the initiative and to scupper it because of his ideological objection to these people in households with incomes of less than $75,000 daring to want to own their own homes. How dare they? “How dare they?” Mr Seselja says.
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