Page 1883 - Week 05 - Thursday, 6 May 2010
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the territory. Nine years that have seen our hospital waiting times go from average to the worst in the country. Nine years in which home prices have gone from average to amongst the most unaffordable for first homebuyers in the country. Nine years in which 23 schools have closed and dozens of GPs have closed shop. Nine years in which revenues and taxes have exceeded all expectations but which could still not keep pace with expenditure. That is the real result of this budget. That is the real legacy of this government.
The question that must be asked in all this is: why? Why do we have deficits during days that were, as Chris Uhlmann noted, not just good times, these were unprecedented times? Because this government cannot control spending, and they have a pathological aversion to responsibility. We have spoken before about the reluctance of this government to act responsibly for the future when times were good. Chris Uhlmann says the evidence available shows the government are largely the author of their own woes and suggests the government believe their own rhetoric when they claimed year after year to be in surplus. That is not just the opposition talking, that is respected commentators saying the same thing: you have run out of excuses.
This is a symptom of a lack of direction and discipline of this government. If you bounce from complete crisis to temporary respite as a simple spectator of events instead of a manager, if you fail to take the steps when times are good, if you put off the decisions for another day, that day will come all the sooner and you will not be prepared.
One of the hidden hits in this budget is the sleight of hand the government has tried to pull with the innocent-sounding change of use charge. This is nothing more than a massive tax on homes. And no matter how much Katy Gallagher tries to deny and distract, there is a bottom-line impact of $89 million that this government intends to collect over four years from homebuyers, home renters and home investors. The fact that this will come on top of the already decreasingly affordable housing market, even worse for first homebuyers, just sinks the boot into these very people.
The Australian Property Monitors report last week showed the median house price in Canberra was around $550,000. That is over half a million dollars to buy an average house, at a time when weekly earnings were growing much more slowly.
House prices in the ACT have more than doubled since March 2002, while total weekly earnings have risen by around 60 per cent in nominal terms. Prices grew much faster from March 2002 to November 2003, taking Canberra to new price heights through a reduction in the supply of land.
This was a deliberate policy decision, to squeeze land supply. It was a policy decision we have never recovered from and for which ordinary house owners are now paying an extraordinary price. The belated land release indicated in this budget is an acknowledgement of that failure, although we have yet to see the plan rolled out. And this government does not have a good record at delivering on land promises.
The government often quotes Real Estate Institute figures that suggest that, as a percentage of income, Canberra still has low housing costs. But contrast that with
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