Page 1748 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 May 2010
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service residents with good public transport and other facilities. A few minutes ago we had the debate about the situation in Dunlop, which is a suburb clearly on the outskirts of the ACT. It is very close to the border of New South Wales. That is a good example of the issues with greenfield development. The public transport there is very poor; there are not facilities. We need to look at the long-term costs. We also need to look at the fact that in the long run the ACT is going to run out of land that it can develop, so the source of income is going to dry up. Financially, the ACT government needs to look at more income sources for the long run.
Let me go to another advantage of having less greenfield and more infill development. This is the International Year of Biodiversity. If we have infill development, this will not be impacting negatively on biodiversity. The greenfield development that we are having all impacts negatively on biodiversity; it is just a question of whether it is a major bad impact or a minor bad impact. We would like to see Canberra’s urban density change. We would like to see more infill development on transport corridors, which will leave the biodiversity areas intact.
Ms Porter talked about housing affordability. That is something which is very dear to the Greens. The government claims that more land release is good for housing affordability. The government has also claimed that the ACT is very good from a housing affordability point of view.
In this context, I would like to say that statistics are an interesting thing. Although the ACT housing affordability figures show that proportionately our housing is more affordable, they also show that the ACT’s median family income is around 70 per cent higher than the median for Australia. In real figures, our housing costs are close to the average for New South Wales—that is, higher than all other states except WA. So although we are termed the most affordable, to someone who is moving to Canberra, to someone who does not have one of the higher ACT incomes or to someone who simply has a lower income we are not the most affordable at all; we are one of the most expensive.
It is worth noting that, although people with higher than average incomes may find housing affordable in the ACT, people with lower incomes—such as people in service industries, pensioners, students, people who work part time, people with disabilities and a whole range of people in our society—can have severe home ownership problems due to the high cost of housing in the ACT.
The cost of mortgage repayments and the cost of rent in the ACT are very similar. The issue in the ACT, in terms of whether you are a renter or a purchaser, tends to be a division as to whether you happen to have the deposit already saved and whether you have got a permanent job, which is obviously what you have to have to get a mortgage, or whether there is a house available that suits your needs.
In this context, I would be interested to know if the ACT government has looked at the Henry tax review in terms of the comments it has made about housing affordability. One of the things that he specifically talked about was stamp duty, which is another state-level tax. He pointed out that the high levels of stamp duty in the ACT and every other jurisdiction encourage renovation rather than house
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