Page 1586 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 2012
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MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (4.22): The issue of sustainability in the city is, of course, a very important one. I was lucky enough to attend a National Press Club luncheon yesterday where Peter Verwer, the national CEO of the Property Council of Australia, spoke about what the Property Council has been doing to make cities more liveable—not just Canberra but all around the country. For those that are not aware of it, the Property Council has just launched a campaign called “make my city work”. What it is about is getting in touch with the population so that the population know what it costs to run a city and when a city grows, what is required. It allows them to have their say.
Indeed, they also launched a paper called “My city: the people’s verdict”. It is interesting because “My city: the people’s verdict” does not particularly come out with a good verdict for the government of the ACT. Overall, the most liveable city in the country was Adelaide. Canberra was rated second, which is exactly where it was the last time this survey was done. It would be very unexpected that we were not there at the top of the list given the youthfulness of the city and the lack of the problems that cities designed 100, 200 or 220-odd years ago truly do have.
In talking about some of Canberra’s attributes, some of what was said was good for the government. People believed it had a good environment. It was a nice place to live in that regard. But it certainly has other problems. In looking at some of those other attributes that a city might have, the summary in the section called “The liveability of Canberra—Canberra’s performance according to its residents”, said:
Canberra’s residents were least likely to agree that Canberra has a good range of quality affordable housing, is an affordable place to have a good standard of living, or has good public transport services.
What are they saying? They are saying that it is expensive—“We can’t buy a house and we can’t get a bus.” That is an indictment of this government. When you look at state government performance, again, the summary states:
Overall, Canberra residents rated the performance of their State Government quite poorly on a number of aspects. For example, most believed the Government was doing a poor job in terms of making housing more affordable (61% poor or very poor); and setting a fair level of taxation to when buying or selling (51% poor or very poor).
These are the factors that really do affect where people live and how they live. We all know through the social determinants of health that a roof over your head is one of those things that really does guarantee you a good life. When you get this report where it says that 61 per cent rated poor or very poor making housing more affordable, it is a damning indictment of this government.
In particular, it is a damning indictment of the former planning minister, now resurrected as the planning minister, Mr Corbell. He is the one that presided over the land release policies in this jurisdiction that crucified young homebuyers, that put homeownership out of their reach. What is it now? We do not have a suburb now with a median house price of $300,000 or less in the ACT. What sort of society has Mr Corbell and his policies created? It is the society of exclusion.
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