Page 2568 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
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Recommendation 5 of the estimates report states:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government detail to the Assembly, by the last sitting day of October 2014, how it will address the structural drivers in the housing market causing housing to be unaffordable in the ACT.
I find it quite telling that the government did not agree with this recommendation, a recommendation that came from the community groups who work extensively in this space. The government will not agree to detail to the Assembly by the last sitting day of October the structural drivers of unaffordable housing in this territory. Instead, the government are saying that housing affordability has improved because the rental market is cooling off. They obviously have not tried to rent a house in Canberra on a low or medium income recently if they think this slight drop in the rental market now means that houses are affordable. I will put it again simply: just because prices have softened it does not mean prices are now affordable.
The estimates report, at recommendation 24, states:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government review land release in the ACT to ensure that greater housing affordability is achieved and a reasonable return to the Government from the sale of this asset, and report to the Assembly by the last sitting day of March 2015.
The government are only agreeing in part to this recommendation. They seem to believe they have nothing to report. They think they have released enough land to improve housing affordability, but do not want to report on it to show us whether that is the case. You just need to look at the market to see that there is nothing about it that is affordable. It is because of the unaffordable housing in our territory that we have such high demand on our public housing system and a shortfall in emergency housing. We see the high rate of homelessness according to ABS statistics.
Recommendation 1 of the estimates report states:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government review the shortfall in emergency housing and report by last sitting day of November 2014.
The government noted this response, but will not report back to the Assembly by the last sitting day in November. It is the same story for recommendation 2:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government detail to the Assembly by the last sitting day of 2014 how it will address the issue of Aboriginal homelessness in the ACT.
There is recommendation 3:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government investigate and detail to the Assembly by the last sitting day of October 2014 the true extent of housing stress and homelessness amongst university students in the ACT.
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