Page 2685 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
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MS PORTER: Yes. Chief Minister, are there any further details or information that you are able to share with the Assembly?
Mr Hargreaves: Or information.
MR SPEAKER: Chief Minister, could you focus on perhaps the details?
MS PORTER: And information.
MR STANHOPE: The question requires information. The supplementary relates to the question and the question was about commentary by others, and there is much commentary by others.
Mrs Dunne: No, it wasn’t.
MR STANHOPE: Yes, it was.
MR SPEAKER: Mr Stanhope, can we just finish this point of order. Mrs Dunne, the first question was about the views of other commentators. Ms Porter’s supplementary question is of sufficient breadth that I think the Chief Minister is going to be able to continue to make those comments.
MR STANHOPE: Absolutely. Thank you for your wisdom, Mr Speaker—fair, balanced and objective, as always, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker, it is relevant to provide some context to this vehement, pathological opposition by the Leader of the Opposition to land rent and to those young Canberra families who would seek to access land rent. For instance, the ACT Council of Social Service, in their commentary on land rent, welcomed the scheme that would allow low income earners the option of renting land on which they would build their homes. The council’s then director said that the proposal had enormous scope, and ACTCOSS went on in that same vein, actually referring to just how important and significant it was.
We have had similar commentary from the Master Builders Association of Australia, from the Property Council, from the Housing Industry Association, from the broader construction industry. We have, of course, had further comment from others that I regret that Mr Seselja has taken his advice from, most particularly mortgage brokers that the Canberra Times has from time to time quoted with some approval. We note in the Canberra Times starting on 21 February mortgage brokers quoted Mr McGetrick as saying that this was a scheme that would never work, the commentary being, “I don’t know what the government think they are doing—a scheme that would never work; no lender would ever be prepared to lend against this scheme.”
I would hope, in fact, that the Canberra Times, in reporting on the CPS initiative today, will actually go back to those of their sources within the mortgage-broking industry and ask them for their response now to the categoric comments and statements that that industry made that this scheme would fail, that not a single
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