Page 4384 - Week 10 - Thursday, 22 September 2011
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difference. Unfortunately, they are making a difference in the wrong direction. They are making it more difficult for Canberra families to afford to buy a home.
It is likewise for renters. Many of the people in housing stress, many of the low income individuals, in fact are renting. Often they are renting a unit in the ACT. The Labor Party and the Greens have got together and said: “What are we going to do about rents? What are we going to do about encouraging more units to be developed?” They have whacked a massive tax on the cost of a unit. A massive tax on units has been imposed by this Labor-Greens alliance. It is a tax in Braddon of around $50,000 per unit. In some cases, this tax will be even more than that per unit.
Mr Assistant Speaker, when you add a tax of over $50,000 for every unit, you will add to the cost of a unit in the ACT, by either making unit complexes not viable and therefore stifling supply, or simply through the pass-on costs that inevitably will come through to the buyer and to the renter, by taking a tight rental market and making it even tighter through policies which impose a completely unreasonable level of tax on units in the ACT.
Mr Assistant Speaker, when the Greens and the Labor Party stand up and talk about the fact that they care about people in housing stress, do not listen to what they say; look at what they do. Look at what kind of policies they support. Look at how they vote in the Assembly. Look at what they advocate. At the moment the Greens are advocating for whole suburbs to be written off, making it more expensive to buy in greenfields. They have already supported the passage of a massive new tax on units which will make units more expensive.
Whether you are a renter or whether you are looking to buy, and hoping to buy one day down the track, the Greens will have to look those people in the eye and they will have to be honest. They will have to say that they put class warfare or they put the golden sun moth above the needs and the aspirations of Canberra families who simply want to buy a home.
The record of the Labor Party on housing affordability is a disgrace. It is one of their signal failures in government. We talk about the failure to deliver infrastructure. Housing affordability on their watch has got far worse. We see more and more families under housing stress, and many of these families do not even fall within the low income bracket. We know that certainly many families in the low income bracket are in housing stress. But there are also many who are not classified as low income earners and who are facing increasing levels of housing stress. Go and talk to St Vincent de Paul about how many families who are in middle income brackets are facing serious financial pressures.
That is why we focus on the cost of living. That is why we say that you should have a cost of living statement in your budget. Did the Greens and the Labor Party back that? No, they did not. That is why we say you should actually have policies that make housing more affordable. That is why we are advocating things like infrastructure Canberra, to make sure that we can get the infrastructure out quicker, so that we can get the land out quicker.
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