Page 1730 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 15 May 2019
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private rentals to be used as affordable rental, with a land tax exemption for participating properties. Again I make the call: if anyone here has a spare property to contribute, they can get in contact with HomeGround and make the social and ethical investment in people in our community that can least afford affordable rentals.
Other projects to be funded under the $1 million innovation fund include co-housing, community rental housing, disability accommodation and affordable housing for women escaping family violence. A streamlined rental bonds scheme has also been introduced that provides interest-free loans for up to two years, removing the bond as an up-front cost for housing. We have already seen a significant increase in the uptake of this program since it was updated, and I encourage anyone who needs help with getting together a bond to check it out and access that online.
I would happily compare our record on affordable housing with that of those opposite or the current federal government, and I think you will agree that we are doing a whole lot more. With what I have been seeing across the country, and particularly with our actions in reducing homelessness numbers here in the ACT, it is clear, as I said, that we are on the right track.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (3.47): I thank everybody for their contributions. Some of them were entertaining, if not factual. But it is interesting how those opposite try to skirt around the issues. Which is it of the challenges that I have listed—rates, land taxes, revenue office valuations, bank valuations, bank lending criteria, cost of land and the planning system—that Ms Le Couteur thinks is just fine? Is there a single one of those that she thinks is okay? She pretty much did not address any of them in her remarks. I can only assume that her wiping that all out is pretty much giving the tick of approval to how the ACT Labor government, the ACT Labor-Greens government, manages the property sector in the ACT.
Then we had the Chief Minister talking about how the changes to negative gearing are actually going to promote the construction of new dwellings. This is in the same month as the Chief Minister said there is going to be no more greenfield in Canberra. If we are not going to have any new houses and negative gearing is only for new properties, it means that in time we are not going to have any houses in the rental market. We are only going to have apartments. That has a massive impact for this territory. The social impact of that is going to be huge. What do the Greens think about that? What do the Labor backbenchers think about that?
Mr Barr: It is not true. There are thousands of detached dwellings.
MR COE: Mr Barr is now saying there are thousands of detached dwellings in the ACT that are privately rented out. He is now saying there are going to be lots of detached homes built in the ACT. That seems to be in stark contrast to what he goes around saying with regard to his more compact, dense city. Of course, this is a government that says the property sector are all evil but at the same time schmoozes up to them, some in particular, and does some very sweet deals with them.
We all know that one of the key property developers in the ACT is the CFMEU and we all know the hold that the CFMEU has on each of those opposite, including the
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