Page 1788 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 May 2010
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in this community, it is significant. The impact of interest rates needs to be understood by this government when it is making decisions in its budget about what fees and charges it is going to put on. When it is talking about home affordability and housing affordability here in the ACT, to ignore the impact of those interest rates would be flawed.
If the Chief Minister were to read today’s Financial Review, he would note the impact of those interest rates on disposable income. He would see that total interest payments as a proportion of disposable income have increased. That not only has a real implication for people’s ability to pay their mortgages, but has an impact on other elements of our community, including the business community, and our ability to spend on retail. What happens if people have less money in their pockets because of the amount of money that they have got to put on their mortgage, because of the failure of land release by this government, through the new big tax on homes that we have seen in the ACT budget or by the interest rates going up on a regular basis because of the reckless spending by the federal government? What we see are these inflationary pressures that are causing real pain to families.
They are federal issues, but they are being ignored by this government. We have had a deafening silence from this government. When it was the Howard government, people across on the benches here would be squealing. But now we have deafening silence. Where is Mary Porter on interest rates? Where is her criticism of the Rudd government’s fiscal management of their reckless spending? Where is that criticism? What is the impact on young families out in Gungahlin who now have to pay an extra $300 a month because of those interest rate fees on houses that are already exorbitantly expensive because of a failure of land release by this government?
What we see out of the ACT budget this week is yet more pain. This time the pain is a massive tax hike on homes. It is not just the failure of this government policy on new homes—the cost of that and the slow land release. Now it is on urban infill. The ability for young families who want to get into an apartment has just become that bit harder. Retirees are moving out of the older suburbs—places like Weston Creek, where I live. Retirees want to scale down; they want to get a unit. I have heard many of them say, “This is just going to make that harder for us now. We know that it is going to slow the amount of development that occurs and the number of developers that even want to take the risk.” Let us not forget that it is these developers that take the risk. If they think that the profits will not be there or that there is a risk that if they try and pass that on to buyers they will not go for it, they simply will not develop. I have had conversations with developers to that end.
What we have seen from the government in recent times—from Labor, be it from federal Labor and the impact of interest rates or local Labor and their new tax on homes—is just going to make it harder for young families who want to get into apartments and it is going to make it harder for retirees. It is a shame. For Mary Porter to stand up in this place and try and laud what this government has done over eight years for housing affordability—if she thinks she has done anybody a favour, I suggest she go out to Gungahlin, talk to some retirees who want to try and find an apartment to live in as they scale down, and ask them what they think. Ask them what they think about the percentage of their income they are now spending on their mortgages—bigger than at any previous time in the history of the ACT.
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