Page 2493 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 9 August 2016
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We are actively seeing other private entities compete in this space quite directly. There are radio ads that if you cannot afford in Moncrieff or you cannot afford in Throsby or you cannot afford in Molonglo, move out to Googong or move out to Tralee. We are also hearing the same ads for Murrumbateman where in effect they are advertising that you can get a house and land in Murrumbateman for the same price as you get just the house here. And not only that, there is a fair chance you are going to have significantly cheaper rates as well.
That has huge flow-on effects for our economy as well. It means that for all time we are going to be losing these people as contributors to the ACT economy as residents. I think that is a real shame.
Government members interjecting—
MR COE: It is all very well for Mr Barr and Mr Gentleman to interject that you are not getting curbs or gutters or you are not getting town water but those capital costs are a very short-sighted way to look at the situation. To look at those capital costs as being in any way a long-term problem I think is a bit of a worry. Those capital costs can be spread over many decades but what cannot be spread over many decades is the lost revenue that we are not receiving on a yearly basis as a result of these people choosing to live over the border simply because of the price.
We also have serious concerns with this government’s lease variation charge. Just this week the government, it appears, approved the Labor Club not having a change of use charge back in 2011. The Labor Club rushed it through before the government introduced the new lease variation charge arrangement. When the government said that they were going to bring in a fairer system, when they said that bringing in codification was going to be great, obviously the other arm of this government, the Labor clubs, were not quite singing from the same song sheet. In actual fact, at the same time as the government was saying, “We need to bring in a lease variation charge,” the Labor clubs were going at top speed to make sure they got their leases varied under the old system.
This is a government that then criticises us for saying that we want to have a level playing field for people in the town centres and in the city. It is a bit rich when this is a party that in government seems to have benefited to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars by going under the old arrangement that did not require codification. And what is more, it was based on a second valuation of 30 apartments at 100 square metres each apartment. You are going to be very hard pressed to find a 100-square apartment in Canberra at the moment and you are certainly not going to find it on that site because they are not doing 100-square metre apartments. They are doing much smaller apartments and they are doing more of them.
Rather than generating $90,000 profit on 30 apartments we are actually going to see a significant profit on many more apartments. That was not built into the second valuation which is so important when determining the change of use charge under the old system. The government is very sneaky. It is a party in government that has rorted this system, I think, in order to get a benefit.
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