Page 2827 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 29 June 2010
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We need to take it with a grain of salt when the government says that it is releasing land because it seems to have an amazing incapacity to actually get it out. We can ask, “Why is this?” There are a number of reasons, it seems to me. Firstly, it insists on doing far too much of the development itself through the Land Development Agency. It does not encourage competition. Secondly, we see issues with our planning system. Thirdly, there is not the investment in infrastructure and infrastructure planning to actually get out in front.
We have known about the position for many years. In fact, all the time I have been in the Assembly I think we have been talking about Molonglo valley and when it will come online. For at least the last six years and well before that we have been talking about this in a serious way, not as some pipedream or something that is offered in the future.
Yet we get to the point now where we are finally selling blocks. They are trickling out. They are trickling out, Mr Assistant Speaker, a couple of hundred at a time. They are coming out at an extraordinary price. That is not surprising given how much pent-up demand there is and given how little land has been coming on the market. Of course, particularly on the south side there has been nothing. There has been virtually nothing in terms of greenfields over the last few years.
We see a situation where in some cases blocks are costing almost $1,000 a square metre; $1,000 per square metre! We asked the Chief Minister today how many were affordable. The answer was: none so far. Of course, they will say that some things are affordable. But when you look at even some of those so-called affordable blocks, you have got to look at what they are getting for the price. The cost per square metre is still exorbitant. It is an exorbitant per square metre price.
When they say “affordable”, they just mean tiny. We simply did not have blocks this small before. We did not have houses generally this small for many years. So when they say “affordable”, they mean a very, very, very small block. In some cases, they are 200 to 250 square metres and a very, very small house. But what is happening at the moment in Molonglo must call into question the ability of this government to get these blocks out when they can barely get a few out. Even when they do, not only are they very highly priced; they are also facing a significant delay before they even get access to that block to build on.
We have talked about the fact that this budget is not open. The government is not giving us the information in order to know everything that is in this budget. We see it even with LAPS. This is a new department. You would think that they would be able to give us answers to some of these basic questions. Yet we got the same answer in relation to LAPS that we got from a number of other agencies. We were told today—it was implied—that this is a process where it is about new initiatives and the like.
But this is a new department. We asked them the simple question: please provide a list of initiatives or programs that are run under each output. We got nothing. We got an answer that said:
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