Page 4383 - Week 10 - Thursday, 22 September 2011
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the topic we are talking about is very worthy. Unfortunately, I do not think the party that is bringing forward this topic for discussion has any credibility on the issue, and nor does the government. This government in particular has created a situation where, in the time that it has been in government, housing has gone from being affordable for Canberra families to being very unaffordable. And the figures on that do not lie.
It was interesting this week to look at that over the period of the ACT Labor government, because often the government says, “It’s been getting unaffordable all over the country.” The reality is that Sydney used to be far less affordable than us, and we have basically caught up to them. We have caught up to Sydney as an unaffordable city during the course of this ACT Labor government.
Again, we have a situation where the Greens come forward with a matter of public importance without having any regard to the fact that the policies that they are pursuing and continue to pursue are actually making this situation worse. They are taking a bad situation and making it worse. And after three years of this Labor-Greens alliance, what has happened to housing affordability and housing stress? They have got worse. Housing affordability has got tougher. It has become more out of reach for young families than it has ever been.
We saw, unfortunately, the attitude from the Minister for Economic Development yesterday when he was asked about issues around housing stress. Of course, he did not bother himself with any facts. He did not bother to find out how many families were in housing stress. He could not answer even the most basic questions about the issue.
But there are consequences to policy decisions. It is all well and good to come in here and say you are concerned about housing stress in the ACT. It is another thing to actually support policies that do something about it. The Greens and the Labor Party both support policies which make the situation much worse.
Let us look at a couple of examples. Let us look at what the Greens, being egged on by the Labor Party, are seeking to do with greenfields development in the ACT. Ms Hunter denies that this is the case. She denies what has been put on the record by her spokesman on this issue. But Mr Rattenbury said this in the Assembly:
Throsby is the perfect case in point of the kind of area for which we should perhaps just put aside all notion of development. … the Greens’ view is that Throsby may well be a complete no-go zone.
We have a situation where the Greens are pushing policies which they know will make it harder for a family to afford a home in the ACT. They come here with matters of public importance, pretending that they care, and then pursue policies which make it harder for families to buy. Of course, when those families do buy, they are more likely to be in housing stress because of the increased prices that they have to pay for land and the increased prices that they have to pay for housing.
You cannot pretend that the policies you pursue do not make a difference. And the policies that the Greens and the Labor Party are pursuing on land release do make a
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