Page 1762 - Week 06 - Thursday, 30 July 2020
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remarks, it is obvious that he believes that he has already won the election, but this contest remains alive. It is close—ACT elections always are—but what I am saying today, and the clear commitment that I am giving through the amendment that I have moved, is that the government will continue to pursue its planning reforms, its building quality reforms, the affordable housing strategy, and that we will rule out development which involves bulldozing a sensitive environmental urban plan for high environmental value land west of the Murrumbidgee River in Tuggeranong. I commend my amendment to the Assembly.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (3.32): Mr Coe’s motion is very similar to the one he moved last year, and it has the same fundamental problems as that one. The Greens will not be supporting Mr Coe’s motion but, instead, we will support Mr Barr’s amendment. There are lots of useful facts in Mr Barr’s amendment but the thing that I found particularly interesting and positive was that last call, No 5, to protect Tuggeranong natural grasslands west of the Murrumbidgee from urban housing development. Those of us who were campaigning south of the lake in 2016, as Mr Parton was, will probably remember that, in relation to this development, there was a very live issue at the time and it was not at all clear what the government’s views were for most of that period. I am very pleased that it has been ruled out.
I am afraid that Mr Coe’s motion is wrong about the majority of the causes of housing affordability and, therefore, he is not actually correct in his solutions. I have to agree that housing is unaffordable for many people, particularly those who are renting, and I wish that this had improved since the motion in September last year. I cannot dispute with Mr Coe that it has not improved.
The most recent Anglicare rental affordability snapshot found, in March this year, zero market rental properties in Canberra and Queanbeyan that were affordable for people living on JobSeeker payments without placing them in housing stress. Only eight were affordable for housing four people with two parents both earning the minimum wage. The Anglicare report shows that this is not just an ACT problem, it is a national problem. It is not unique to the ACT; and that is the problem with this motion. It incorrectly draws a straight causal relationship between housing and affordability in the ACT and the ACT government’s tax planning and land supply policies.
As I said when this issue was raised last year, if this is the ACT government’s fault, then why is the situation like this in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart? How do you explain this? It is not just in the ACT. Across Australia hundreds of thousands of people are priced out of appropriate housing. The housing affordability crisis is a textbook example of market failure, made worse by over two decades of federal government policy.
Australia has had chronic house price inflation since 1999. That year, the Howard federal government introduced the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount, which, coupled with negative gearing, turned housing into a speculative investment rather than a necessity of life. The sad and frustrating thing is that in 1999 groups like the Australian Council of Social Service and the Greens said that the result of the capital gains tax discount would be rapid house price inflation which priced out lower income
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