Page 1587 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 March 2012
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It is not just the Property Council that says that. Recent reports from the Urban Development Institute of Australia said that the two factors that determine housing affordability in the ACT that most needed attention were planning policies—the slowness and the cost of the planning regime—and land release. Who controlled both of those? The government did. Who is responsible for planning? Mr Corbell was. That is why he got sacked. How he got reappointed to this portfolio when he performed so badly last time I think is beyond most people.
The problem for the people of the ACT is that they are now stuck with the problem. Under this crowd it may take a very long time for it to get better because they do not seem to have learned the lessons from last time. Clearly, the Chief Minister did not pay any attention to why Mr Corbell was sacked as the planning minister on the last occasion.
It is very important that we get the city right. What Peter Verwer said yesterday was that we need to look at population, we need to look at productivity and we need to look at participation. He did not quote a lot. He spoke a lot about some of the theories put forward by Edward Glaeser in his book Triumph of the city. Glaeser says that cities make us richer, smarter, greener, healthier and happier. He says that the city is one of the great achievements of civilisation. In fact, he claims that the ability of so many people to come together and live together may well be the peak achievement of cities.
But when you have got a Labor government that talks about inclusion and equity and when you have got their policies, particularly the policies of the failed planning minister now resurrected to the job, that drove people out of the market, that kept people out of the market and keep people out of the market, the very notion of sustainable planning in the ACT when this man is at the helm is a joke. His policies are a joke and the outcomes are not a joke. They are very sad outcomes for a lot of young people in particular starting out in this city.
What Mr Verwer said yesterday was that we need plans, we need targets—long-term targets, not airy-fairy documents. We need solid plans to increase population, productivity and participation in a sustainable way. We need to create the jobs so that people will have somewhere to work and can afford to pay the bills that they have.
For instance, in terms of participation and productivity, one of the things he pointed out was access to childcare. We all know what a disaster access to childcare has been in this city under the Labor Party, particularly under the current minister. She just fails to take on board simple suggestions to improve access to childcare.
People like Verwer were saying yesterday that issues like childcare are incredibly important if you are going to have participation and, therefore, you are going to have greater productivity. If you are spending your time in traffic moving from one location to the other, shuffling the kids around, you will get there late. You get caught in the traffic. You do not get parking. You have got to leave early and families carry this burden. If you do not plan properly then what we are doing is making a disaster for the future.
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