Page 1765 - Week 06 - Thursday, 30 July 2020
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It is no wonder that former Chief Minister Jon Stanhope is so persistent in calling out this government for their complete failure in this space. Madam Assistant Speaker, I think that it is almost criminal when you consider how many people are being forced out of this city, when you consider how many people are being forced into the most extreme rental stress and how many people have been forced into homelessness. When you consider all of those things, it is almost criminal that Labor and the Greens continually try to create a diversion by pretending that they care about renters in other peripheral ways. “We care about you renters, but the rents are going to continue going through the roof.”
Let us get to basic realities. When there is strong demand for housing, particularly detached dwellings, and you do not release enough land for those dwellings, when you do not even provide enough residential land of any kind to match population growth, and the land that you do release to the market is highly priced—too highly priced—you force people from the market. You take hope from, and smash the aspirations of, Canberra families.
We have all seen what happens; we have all seen the consequences of this. Demand for rental properties increases; this increased demand flows through to increased rents, which prices more people out of the rental market.
I note that in Mr Barr’s amendment he says that the Real Estate Institute housing affordability index for the 2020 March quarter, released in June, showed that the proportion of income in the ACT required to meet the median rent was 19 per cent, the second lowest in the country. ACT Labor, as per the words of Jon Stanhope, do not really care about that bottom 20 per cent. It is all well and good here if you are earning a good quid, but for the people that Labor used to look after, they say, “We don’t really care about you.” Not everyone lives in the latte land of Braddon, in trendy one-bedders. The consequences of a land release policy devoid of any semblance of empathy for Canberra families is very real.
What about the dad who I spoke to recently who is ashamed that the only rental he can get for his wife and three kids is a two-bedroom apartment? They are trying to make it work, but he was embarrassed to talk to me about it. What about the single mum with two kids, who is working two jobs to save up a bond, only to show up to a rent inspection for a three-bedroom house to find 30 other parties there? This is absolutely crushing people, and it is crushing people that used to fly the Labor flag.
The Labor-Greens government has abandoned the working families of Canberra, forgotten their working-class roots, focused on virtue signalling and could not really care less about outcomes. The land release policies under this Labor-Greens government will be a case study in masters public policy programs for generations to come. I am completely serious about this. They will roll this out as a case study of what not to do.
Also included in the amendment from Mr Barr is the continuation of the policy of a compact and sustainable city, which I think is working for people in COVID times. I note the comments from a senior health official in Victoria, I think only yesterday,
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