Page 207 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 15 February 2012
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So this simplistic analysis of what is going to happen to the rental market belies the fact that nobody actually knows.
Mr Coe raised an interesting issue about us discriminating against owner-occupiers because we are only doing this to rental properties. I am more than happy to enter into a discussion with the Liberal Party about bringing in similar legislation for every property in the ACT if that is where they would like to go. I am an even-handed kind of guy; I do my best to be. If we wanted to do it for every house in the ACT, I think that would be beneficial for this entire city. We would certainly be willing to have that conversation with the Liberal Party if that is their policy direction.
There has been a whole lot of speculation about what would happen in the rental market if this sort of thing came in. Mr Corbell suggested that some owners would get out of the market. That may be the case, but then what assumption do we draw about what would happen next? That would mean that there would be more houses on the market. This may increase supply. This may even drop the price a little bit. This may enable some people who are currently renting to get into the buying market.
I have no doubt that there would be a level of churn, but whether that churn is a negative consequence or a positive consequence is one that, frankly, nobody knows the answer to. What I do know is that if we go ahead and pass this legislation we will improve the quality of housing in the ACT, and that would be a positive thing.
When it comes to the comments of Ms Burch, probably the less I say about them the better—other than simply to observe that, as I noted at the time, Ms Burch really sought to scaremonger on this. She said, “The ACT government has 10,000 properties that may not meet the standards, and the legislation has a requirement, where there is a dispute, where it might have to fix up 10,000 properties.” And that is once there is a dispute, because the parties could negotiate openly and collaboratively. But if there is a dispute, there is a 90-day time line to resolve it. She said, “We might have to fix up 10,000 properties in 90 days.” She ignored the fact that this legislation has a three-year lead-in period—up to 3½ years, depending on if and when it was debated.
We are always open to discussion. If the government had said, “Actually we need another year; we reckon we can get it done in four years, but not three years,” we would have been open to having that discussion. It would never have been 10,000 houses in 90 days. It was simply a preposterous suggestion, and it is an insult to this chamber and a poor reflection on the minister that she has sought to distort it in that way.
That highlights another flaw here in the unfortunate process around this bill. We put this bill out in good faith. We released it last April as an exposure draft. We put it to community consultation. We actually listened to that community consultation and we adjusted the bill in a number of places regarding feedback that we received. We welcomed that feedback. We accept that there were some good suggestions put forward to us.
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