Page 1723 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 15 May 2019
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The calls in Mr Coe’s motion are particularly concerning, mainly because they do not in fact make much in the way of actual sense. The first item calls upon the Assembly to:
… publish all modelling undertaken about the future of the property sector in Canberra
To quote Kevin Rudd, this lacks detailed programmatic specificity. All programs going back how far? By who? Would this include the Liberal Party’s own modelling, if it exists? Does it include academic studies? Should we in fact have just a whole back-copy collection of the Canberra Times? Is it going to include all the work by developers? Is this only government modelling? Modelling for what purpose? This is just ridiculous.
The next call is almost as bad:
… detail the known impact of Labor’s proposed housing policies.
It is cryptic. The known impact as distinct from the unknown impact, the known unknowns, the unknown unknowns? This is pretty out there. Mr Coe’s motion notes some issues that come under the territory government and others under the federal. Which actual policies are we talking about? There is currently in the ACT a principally Labor government. There may in the future be a federal Labor government. We will know that in a few days time.
What policies are we actually talking about? Maybe it is the ACT housing strategy or the land release program. Could it be federal Labor’s new version of the national rental affordability scheme, which will offer a $15,000 per year subsidy for newly constructed affordable rental properties that are rented to low to moderate income tenants over a 15-year period? Who knows? What else should be included in details of the known impacts of Labor’s policies? Where should this data and modelling come from—the Parliamentary Budget Office, the federal Treasury, the ACT treasury, a special commission from NATSEM, AHURI, RMIT ABC Fact Check, a fortune teller? I have always been in favour of tea leaf reading myself.
Were it not a pre-election stunt, presumably the calls in this motion would be a bit more sensible and, at the very least, a bit more specific. If Mr Coe actually had any interest in having this motion passed, I suspect that one of his staff might have approached the Greens to discuss whether we would support it and might have done likewise with Mr Barr’s office.
This brings me to Mr Barr’s amendment, which itself does not go beyond statements of the obvious. It does, however, have one positive in its favour over Mr Coe’s: it does at least make sense. On that basis the Greens are happy to support it. We are very hopeful that the outcome of the federal election will bring about some positive changes in the housing sector in the ACT. We look forward to hearing an update from the Treasurer or the housing minister on these issues in coming months.
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