Page 3582 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 18 September 2019
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I come here on behalf of thousands of Canberrans who are struggling with the cost of living in this city, and so much of that is because of pain that has been imposed on them by the ACT Labor government. In particular, it is the rates, taxes, fees and charges that all compound to drive up the cost of living in this city.
Where it is absolutely evident is at any open home in the territory for a rental property; you have dozens of parties turning up, dozens of applications, with everybody desperate to get a property in Canberra. It just should not be that way. It should not be that we have an acute shortage of rental properties in the ACT. It should not be that we are driving people over the border into New South Wales because we in the ACT cannot support our own population. That is what it comes down to. We have a government that cannot support its own population.
There are thousands of people that are doing it tough because of the cost of rent in Canberra. It is so bad, in fact, that the ACT has the highest median rent in the country—more than Melbourne, more than Sydney, more than Perth and more than Adelaide. It is the highest in the country.
This is meant to be a planned city. We have a government that have been in power for 18 years and have had every single opportunity to deliver the Canberra that people expect. Instead, all they are doing is driving people over the border into New South Wales. Nobody has done more for the city of Queanbeyan than Andrew Barr. Nobody has done more for property prices over the border than Andrew Barr.
The reality is that this government is very happy to drive up the cost of living and to push poor families out of the ACT. We have working poor in this city. I am sure the government will come in here and try to respond with a public housing solution. That may well be part of a solution, but it is not solving the problem that is before us today, which is all about the working poor of Canberra.
How is it that Canberrans afford $570 a week for a property? The idea of paying almost $30,000 a year in after-tax income to get an average property in the ACT is what it has come down to—almost $30,000 a year in after-tax income. This government is driving people into poverty. This government is sending families, sending kids, below the poverty line. After 18 years of Labor, this is what it has come to.
I am sure the government will have every excuse in the book as to why we are in this position, because they are masters at buck-passing, they are masters of deception and they are masters of deceit. What they are not masters of is looking after Canberra’s poor, looking after the working poor, looking after the working families of the ACT. The truth is that the rates, taxes, fees and charges that this government put on every single household are, quite frankly, unbearable for many people. They are unbearable. They cannot pay them. They are absolutely unaffordable.
I am sure this government will now try to spin about us trying to help investors and giving a free kick to someone. The reality is that investors are not winning in the ACT either. The net return on investment property in the ACT very rarely stacks up.
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