Page 4403 - Week 12 - Thursday, 24 October 2019
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continue its great work in growing and renewing public housing and providing housing for people who need it. This new growth and renewal program will deliver 1,200 new homes over the next five years, including growth in the public housing portfolio by at least 200 additional homes.
Public housing is critical to ensuring that people on low incomes can have a safe, secure, affordable place to call home. Our housing strategy represents the biggest per capita investment in public housing anywhere in the country. The ACT government is delivering more support and services for people experiencing homelessness and increasing support for people in need of public housing to provide long-term, affordable accommodation. I acknowledge Mr Rattenbury’s call for additional modelling and analysis of these types of homelessness and housing services, and the government is happy to support those.
MR BARR (Kurrajong—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Social Inclusion and Equality, Minister for Tertiary Education, Minister for Tourism and Special Events and Minister for Trade, Industry and Investment) (5.12): As I foreshadowed, I have an amendment to Mr Parton’s amendment and I therefore move:
Omit “removing the expiration of”, substitute “extending”.
That means the action item from this motion would read:
… to give certainty to the community housing sector by extending the land tax exemption for land provided for affordable community housing as soon as it is practically possible and clearly signalling this to the sector.
I note in the commentary that Mr Parton read the call from one of the stakeholder groups for this exemption to be extended. It is a pilot and there are nine users of the scheme at the moment. Whilst this is nine more than would have been the case otherwise—they are nine important and personal stories about differences that have been made in the lives of individuals—I hope today’s debate and the level of community interest that may be generated from it might see that number increase.
The government, as we indicated in our response to the Assembly motion in September, are looking at extending the land tax exemption. I will not pre-empt decisions of the budget cabinet, but I indicate to members that I have such an extension proposal on the agenda of a forthcoming budget cabinet meeting. I am confident that there will be support for such a proposal. I will make some further announcements when the cabinet has concluded its deliberations on budget matters. Clearly, our support of the motion in September and the amendment I have moved today send a pretty clear signal of our intent to extend the program.
We will need to undertake an evaluation of the effectiveness. We put in place an initial cap of 100 properties. Obviously, at the number of nine we are not at that cap and we will certainly seek to work with those partners who are actively promoting this opportunity to grow that number into the future. I look forward to that happening. We will then evaluate this, and if changes could be made to make the program more effective into the future we will definitely look at those with an open mind.
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