Page 1761 - Week 06 - Thursday, 30 July 2020
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large house at $330,000 worth of housing construction—to fit in under the commonwealth’s HomeBuilder program, which has a nationwide threshold of $750,000. I note that New South Wales is having extraordinary difficulty providing land at a price that will enable people in that state—particularly those seeking land anywhere near Sydney—to be able to access that scheme. So a hot tip might be that the federal government might need to adjust that nationwide threshold.
My amendment calls on the government to continue its policy of issuing a compact and sustainable city with a land supply program that provides a range of accommodation types to cater for individuals, couples, groups and families of all shapes and sizes as Canberra grows; to continue to help more people transition to home ownership through a continued focus on stamp duty cuts; to commit to regular review and improvements to the planning system, which Minister Gentleman has underway; and to continue to implement its affordable housing agenda and work towards further diversifying housing choice, consistent with the ACT housing strategy that the Deputy Chief Minister has been leading.
Importantly, today is an opportunity for the Legislative Assembly to commit to protecting Tuggeranong’s natural grasslands west of the Murrumbidgee from urban housing development. So the pledge that I can give today is that a Labor government will not allow environmentally sensitive and community-use land—particularly the native grasslands in Tuggeranong west of the Murrumbidgee, but also the Kowen Forest—to be bulldozed for urban development. So the challenge for the Leader of the Opposition is to match this commitment.
As our city grows, more living options will become available for residents, from single detached residences in new suburbs to townhouses and apartments in town centres. Canberrans deserve to have confidence in where new housing will be built, confidence that sensitive environmental areas will not be bulldozed for housing, and confidence in the quality of the residences that they purchase. That is why we have announced that we will be creating a developer licencing scheme and establishing an expert certifier team within the public service to break the sometimes too cosy connection between developers and certifiers, which can lead to significant and distressing rectification costs for owners.
These are important commitments that the government has made. I note that, at least on some of them, there is a degree of bipartisan or even tripartisan support, but today is an opportunity for the opposition to be very clear about which land, including environmentally sensitive land, it proposes to bulldoze for housing developments under the proposals that the Leader of the Opposition continues to float. He says that there is an abundance of land but does not identify which land should be protected and which land should be developed. The government has been very clear in this regard, in terms of the forward land release program and the areas for residential development. We have been equally clear about the areas that we will not pursue for urban development. That is an important statement of principle, and I know that it is something that many Canberrans want to know before they vote in October.
In conclusion, the opposition leader in his remarks might be stating that the election is a foregone conclusion. From the statements that he made at the conclusion of his
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