Page 2238 - Week 06 - Thursday, 6 June 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
city? Well, they go without. Their kids are conveniently sick on the day of the school excursion to Sydney. Their kids do not have birthday parties because they are embarrassed. These are proud, humble and hardworking people. They do not complain; they remain silent but they are silently struggling.
This year the Smith Family received 2,000 requests to support kids going back to school. How many others didn’t have the confidence to ask?
The Labor Party used to be a party that represented working families, the vulnerable, migrants, the working poor. The Labor Party has abandoned all of them. In the ACT, here in the national capital, it is estimated that there are 8,000 kids living below the poverty line—8,000 kids. This is the city that Labor has presided over for 18 years. After 18 years of Labor, you get 8,000 kids living in poverty.
We have the worst rental stress in the country because the Labor Party and their coalition partners only govern for their mates. In the ACT today, right now, there is not one property, not one single property in the entire city, that is available for rent that is affordable. Anglicare states that the median rental weekly asking price is $465 for a unit and $570 for a house. Eighteen years of Labor gives you not one single property that is deemed to be affordable. This is the Canberra that Labor have manufactured. This is the Canberra that they have designed. This is the known, intended and deliberate outcome of their policies. They are all committed to it. They are all complicit. There are 27,000 people living in poverty, 8,000 kids.
For those that are able to try to get ahead, how can it be that a 400 square metre block of land in Throsby is $400,000 before you build a house? This scandal is entirely of Labor’s creation. They control the zoning, the land release, the civil works and the planning approvals. They have systematically and deliberately driven up the cost of land in the ACT. They have systematically and deliberately priced tens of thousands of Canberrans out of the housing market. If the same property, after something was built, was rented out, $150 a week would be the cost of rates and land tax.
This tax reform is wrong. This tax reform is unethical. Through their massive increases to rates, especially unit rates and land tax, the burden that has fallen on renters is high and getting even higher. Around a quarter of rent is rates and land tax that is passed on to tenants. Renters in Canberra are experiencing massive pain as a result of Labor’s tax reform. What is more, it is not as if renters are feeling pain but investors are making squillions. It is quite the opposite. Labor has successfully strangled the supply of rental properties, meaning even higher rents. Units have been hit particularly hard.
Is it any wonder that when you do not have any houses that are affordable, when you squeeze renters for all their worth, we have such a high rate of homelessness in the national capital. We have the highest rate of repeat homelessness in the country. Here in the national capital, we have a homelessness scandal. I am sure the homeless people of Canberra, thousands of people who are couch surfing and thousands of people who are unsafely, unsocially and unhygienically squeezed into group homes are really pleased that this government has cancelled out insurance duty.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video