Page 2749 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Government Response
Noted.
The Chief Minister tabled on 18 June 2009 an updated report on the Land Rent as per an earlier Assembly recommendation.
If you read it, I do not see the timetabling and I do not see the cross-referencing. I do not see what was actually asked for and I certainly do not see the proposed funding listed here. But it is so typical of the Chief Minister to insult the committee by judging when he will do things rather than complying with the requests of the Assembly.
Let me go to recommendation 40 and the response:
The Committee recommends that the Chief Minster provide an update to the community, informing those currently waiting for this scheme, about progress on the status of financial support and the likelihood of any potential purchase being completed prior to the expiration of the first home owners’ grant.
Government Response
Noted.
The Chief Minister’s Department has recently provided an update to people with land blocks on hold, and will continue to provide updates to concerned parties as appropriate.
Far from being afraid to talk about land rent, let us get back to the issues which the committee had concerns about, which the Chief Minister has never answered and will never answer. And yes, they are a little bit cock-a-hoop today about having a funder. The Chief Minister had a couple of dorothy dixers on this today—two questions on this, 20 minutes worth of answers. Throughout that entire speech, he could not mention one single detail in the course of the afternoon about the terms and the conditions. And it will be interesting to see what the terms and the conditions are. What is the size of the loan that you can borrow? How much deposit do you have to have? What interest rate will you pay? Will you be able to get mortgage insurance? So it will go on.
We actually need those details. We need to find those couples or those households under $75,000—and what did he describe them as, “disabled” because they cannot buy into the market—and those people under $50,000 income per household that he claims to defend. We need to find out whether or not those people are burdened with what the UDIA pointed out were the two factors that stood in the way of most people owning a home.
The first is cost of land, which is regulated by this government. Remember the comment “squeeze them until they bleed but not until they die”. That is our land policy. That is our taxation policy in this jurisdiction under this Chief Minister. “Squeeze them until they bleed but not until they die.”
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .