Page 2499 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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Why would we need to have a market adjustment? Why would we need to have a market adjustment if indeed this is not going to have an impact? Surely the market is going to be adjusting to the price levers that this government is going to be controlling. They are going to be controlling nine-fifths. This is going to be a big, centralised government that is going to be controlling exactly where things happen in the ACT when it comes to planning.
We heard Mr Barr for years talk about taking the politics out of planning. Talk about putting politics in planning! That is exactly what this bill is going to do. It is going to be whom you know whether something gets ticked off or not, whom you know whether you get the price advantage, which this government is going to empower itself with should this bill get up. The market adjustments that are going to be required, as Mr Barr admitted, are going to come at the expense of homebuyers and renters here in the territory.
When it comes down to it, nobody can do a development, put up a development, if there are not buyers. If you are going to up the cost of that development, you surely need to up the price which you charge those people who are going to buy those properties. And if you are going to up the price on the property and you need to get a return to make that investment worth while, you have to pass that on to renters.
What are the flow-on effects of having a less competitive property market and a more expensive rental market? You get pressures on all sorts of areas of the economy, especially small business, but also, when it comes to a flow-on in terms of government policy, you are going to have an increased demand on public housing.
We already know that this government are struggling to maintain their public housing stock and we also know that they are struggling to keep up with demand. If they are struggling now to keep up with demand, how are they possibly going to cope if the supply to the market is reduced even more by the introduction of a tax such as this? It really is quite unreasonable and it just shows that the two years of sham consultation they have been doing have been absolutely worthless. That was indeed demonstrated by the fact that even after two years of finetuning they have to ram through even more amendments today which will further change the bill and create further uncertainty for a market which is already struggling in Canberra.
This is all about big government, when it comes down to it. It is all about more control for Labor cabinet, more control for the public service. We on this side of the chamber want to return more power to Canberrans. We want to actually trust them to live their lives as they wish. We want to trust the businesses which take risks. We want to actually trust the people of Canberra to make decisions about their own future, as opposed to hearing from Katy Gallagher: “Trust me. Everything will be fine.”
If you look at this government’s track record, you will know that all trust is gone and any faith the community might have had in terms of the expectation of this government to actually deliver on core services is well and truly lost. The Canberra Liberals will be taking pride in voting against this tax increase.
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