Page 2893 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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themselves of the opportunity of land rent. He is not even willing to give it a go. He is not willing to wait and see. Indeed, the man with no plans promised efficiencies. He promised to the people of Canberra in the lead-up to last October’s ACT election the abolition of land rent. He was going to rip away from low income earners the opportunity to save $700 a month on their mortgage repayments—$700 a month more under Mr Seselja’s plan on your mortgage payment. That was his position.
The ACT Labor government’s housing affordability action plan is designed to increase the supply of affordable housing in Canberra and to help more people into homeownership. It is carefully calibrated to stabilise prices over time. I am sure that Mr Seselja would be the first to squeal if the government suddenly flooded the market with land and the value of his lovely home plummeted. It also allows the government to react and respond more quickly and sensitively than ever before to fluctuations in demand.
I know it is hard for the Liberal Party to get their head around a policy that has more than one part to it. But, please, Mr Seselja, please try to get your head around this. This policy has 62 parts, going to every aspect of affordability. It is a strategy that targets those who need the most help, and in our society that means helping those on modest or low incomes.
Land release is also central to affordability. The government has released a record 7,600 dwelling blocks over the past two years and we propose another 3,000 or thereabouts in the coming two years.
I would like to take the opportunity to respond to the claims that are made by those opposite about previous policies around land release. It is a myth, propagated by those opposite, that there were policies in place that sought to deliberately constrain the release of land. There is no evidence whatsoever to support that claim. There was no deliberate policy to restrain the release of land—and they know it. They know they have no evidence to support the proposition that there was a deliberate policy; they have no evidence whatsoever. They have no evidence whatsoever to back up that claim.
The bottom line is that this government, throughout its term, released more land to the market than the previous Liberal government, in each and every year, and I reject categorically the claim that there were policies in place that deliberately restrained the release of land. Every land release program was predicated on market advice from the Land Development Agency and the Department of Treasury. Every year the land release program was predicated on that advice—and there is no evidence to the contrary. If the Liberal Party are saying that I should not have taken the advice of the Land Development Agency and the Department of Treasury in formulating land release policy, I would be very interested in their views to the contrary.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (5.03): Mr Speaker, I was quite stunned when this debate started and, after about five minutes, Ms Burch’s speech petered out. All Ms Burch could do was gather up a rag-tag collection of random thoughts, spit them out over five minutes and disappear from the chamber. That is the sum total of her commitment to housing affordability in the ACT.
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