Page 2638 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 August 2015
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housing more expensive and it is not fair to Canberra businesses in the property sector. Property is one of the most competitive industries in the ACT, and the government should allow the market to operate free from excessive government intervention.
We have a situation whereby the Queanbeyan City Council recognises there is a shortage of affordable land within the ACT and they are picking up the slack. What is happening now is that people that I believe would prefer to be living in the territory are going over the board where New South Wales and the Queanbeyan City Council not only get the land sale but they get the stamp duty, they get the rates, they get the GST revenue et cetera, et cetera. We should be trying to harness the growth here in the ACT.
The estimates committee spent some time asking officials about the public housing developments in Nicholls, Monash and Chisholm. Members will be aware that concerns have been raised about the location of these developments and whether they have adequate access to transport and other services. In response to a question about proximity to shops and other services, Mr Collett told the committee:
There are no prescriptive controls. We need a bit of flexibility in finding those sites. But in evaluating the sites … we look, of course, at access to services, transport and other characteristics that are important to our tenants … Ideally, every site would be in close proximity to those sorts of services.
I am afraid that for Nicholls, Monash and Chisholm I am very concerned that those sorts of services are not within easy reach of the prospective tenants. Despite acknowledging the importance of access to these services, the LDA has planned developments for sites that are often a long way from services, medical facilities and transport. I am very concerned there will be a negative outcome for the residents in these developments as well as the broader community as we support them. There is potential for social isolation in these developments because residents may have difficulty accessing some services.
In this behemoth of an agency, I now turn to parking, which is part of Access Canberra. As you will be well aware, Madam Speaker, this government continues to punish motorists for driving their cars. There is no aspect of private vehicle ownership and operations this government is not trying to gouge. The government should accept that Canberrans using their cars is not an extravagance. They are not doing it for fun; they are doing so because of necessity. Providing adequate parking near the town centres and in the city is a requirement and an essential service of a local government. Instead, this government sees motorists as a target for extracting more money for itself.
I think there is an unintended outcome here whereby when you drive up the registration costs, which this government is doing, you are forcing people to pay that, but once they have paid for registration of a car, especially if it is an expensive registration, people will want to use that as much as they possibly can to amortise the registration cost over as many kilometres as possible. It would seem unusual to me that somebody would register a car for $1,100 but only use it once or twice a month. If you are going to pay $1,100 to register a car, there is a fair chance you are going to
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