Page 204 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 26 February 2014
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
I will give some examples. A constituent affected by this change rightly noted:
To be paying double the rent rate simply because of the time the lease was entered into defies logic and is a complete disgrace.
Another affected constituent expressed the following:
I struggle to comprehend that a family with one child can earn up to $65,500 per year more than our family and qualify for the discounted rate. The bank would not give us the loan if we hadn’t put both our names on the land title as lessees. We have complied, been honest and now we have been financially disadvantaged.
A constituent who is part of a single income household with one dependant provided the following illustration of their situation:
My block UV is $246,000. The 2% discount rate is $4,920. The 4% discount rate is $9,840. On my current income of, say, $100,000 where I have to pay the 4% rate, this equates to approximately 10% of my gross income.
Contrast this with a family with one dependant on the same value block in the new scheme with a $163,330 threshold and that is only about three per cent of their gross income. As one constituent noted:
My calculations indicate that I could have saved in the order of $195,000.
Because of the government’s changes to its land rent scheme, families who qualify under the new scheme currently paying the four per cent rate are having to deal with the fact that they are now paying 100 per cent more than those who sign on after 1 October 2013. Madam Assistant Speaker, as you can imagine, this is not fair. When it comes to home affordability, fairness is a valid argument. This may be an unintended consequence of Mr Barr’s changes, as when we posed the question of how many households under the four per cent rate would qualify for the two per cent new scheme, the government's response was this:
Information about the household income is not collected from lessees paying at the standard four per cent rate, so it is not possible to provide the number of applicants who would qualify for the new scheme at the two per cent rate if they entered into a lease on 1 October or after.
That is a quotation from question 180 taken on notice on 31 October last year. The truth is that when the government made these changes they did not see this issue coming. My motion seeks to address the government’s oversight.
MR BARR (Molonglo—Deputy Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Economic Development, Minister for Sport and Recreation, Minister for Tourism and Events and Minister for Community Services) (4.26): The government will not be supporting the motion presented by Mr Smyth. We do not intend to amend the Land Rent Act to include an option for qualifying lessees to move from the old scheme to the new scheme. The land rent scheme is a practical measure to increase housing affordability in the territory. It reduces mortgage payments and entry costs to those in the housing market, thus helping families who may not otherwise have been able to buy a house to achieve the dream of living in their own home.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video