Page 1783 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 May 2010
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this government and their policies when they saw a 21 per cent drop. And that is the problem for us as a territory. Thankfully, the business community is doing well. Not all of them are. There are people who are struggling out there. I get reports that it is very patchy. Industry by industry, it is very patchy. But they have no confidence in this government. In a way it is kind of surprising to see this motion, to see the Labor Party has finally discovered a matter of economic relevance to the ACT.
Unfortunately for the Labor Party, it is not a matter in which they have performed with any credibility at all. Labor will claim that over the next four years they will deliver 17,000 new blocks but there is absolutely no mention in this motion of the problems that have existed and that were created by Labor in their failed land release policies, particularly by Mr Corbell, who was stripped of the portfolio in a stoush with the Chief Minister, and by Mr Corbell’s policies.
We only have to go back to the report of the UDIA, the Urban Design Institute of Australia, that said two things were ruining housing affordability in the ACT. They were the land release policy of the government and the high taxes that this government charges. They purport to have 17,000 blocks on the way. We will see. But the already high taxes criticised by the Urban Design Institute of Australia just got higher. They are now going to reapply the change of use charge in a different way and take a staggering 185 per cent increase.
I do not see any of that in Ms Porter’s motion. That is the shame about this motion but that is what we expect from Labor backbenchers. There is no mention by Ms Porter in her motion of the consequences of Labor’s failed land policies, a policy failure that is forcing housing more and more out of the reach of first homebuyers and more and more out of the reach of those on lower incomes.
Let us put some parameters on the housing problem in the ACT. In the Australian Financial Review report last week, on 29 April 2010, there was an analysis of growth in house and unit prices across Australia. In the ACT, in March, the following was the situation: for houses, the median price—with the emphasis on median price; that is, the price that is in the middle of all the prices paid—was $550,000, more than half a million dollars. Moreover, over the year to March 2010 prices had increased by 14 per cent. And this is directly attributable, I believe, to Labor’s policies. Let me repeat: in the ACT at the present, the median house price is $550,000 and the rate of increase in prices is 14 per cent. That is not a situation on which any government should be congratulating themselves.
Let us consider the situation for units. The median price for a unit is $412,000 and the rate of increase in prices is 13 per cent. On top of that, we are now going to change the way we apply the change of use charge and add $10,000, $20,000 $30,000, $40,000 or $50,000, depending on where the accommodation is, to a unit. And it is even higher for a dual occupancy. A dual occupancy may have accommodated mum and dad, or an older relative, or somebody else might have moved out of the existing house and leased it to the kids.
So let us pause for a moment in relation to units. The more usual entry point for people seeking to enter the housing market is to buy a unit. Now what do they face?
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