Page 1976 - Week 07 - Thursday, 13 August 2020
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As you well know, Mr Assistant Speaker, we will potentially have new laws here in the ACT that will outlaw receiving political donations from developers. Developers do not need to donate to the Chief Minister because he seems to have delivered in spades for them already. You can see it all across town. For a decade we have seen high-rise apartments absolutely dominate the landscape. Thank you very much, Chief Minister; thank you very much, Labor and the Greens.
For the people of Canberra who want to live in a house, they say, “No; it’s bad luck for you.” We all know, through the Winton housing report some years ago, that if you remove push polling from the equation, the vast majority of Canberrans want to live in a standalone house. In the Winton housing report there was a black-and-white question that got a black-and-white response.
I can hear some saying, “The Winton report was four years ago; it’s history. Things have probably changed since then and people have moved on.” I dare say that, based on the events of the last six months, based on the isolation experiences of many Canberrans and based on the clusters in high-rise developments in Melbourne, if you did the Winton research all over again, without trying to push respondents to a specific outcome, you would find an even greater yearning for a house with a yard, after the experience of the pandemic.
We are not like Hong Kong; we are not catering for millions on an island the size of a postage stamp. We just are not. How does the Chief Minister actually prioritise things? How does he decide what is important? What guides his principles? Who does he empathise with? What does he truly understand? Does the Chief Minister actually care about everyday Canberrans?
I have known Mr Barr for a long time. He is a good man; he probably does care. But does he understand everyday Canberrans enough to get it? I do not think that he does, Mr Assistant Speaker. If you live in a two-bedder in Braddon and you love craft beer, he probably understands you. But if you like a punt, if you drink VB, if you go to church or if you spend your weekend freezing on the sidelines at kids’ sport, I am not sure that he does understand you. I do not know that he does. There must be a better way, and I think more and more Canberrans are figuring that out as we get closer to October.
MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (3.39): I sense that we on this side of the chamber acknowledge that we have a housing affordability issue here in the ACT that needs to be rectified. Those on the other side seem to feel that there is nothing to see here, that there is not a housing affordability crisis. But reviewing the supply of affordable housing, as well as reviewing what factors are causing our homes to be so unaffordable, shows the problem.
You can also point to the level of homelessness in the ACT to realise that something needs to be done. You have only to walk outside the ACT Legislative Assembly to understand that homelessness is an issue here in Canberra. For many Canberrans homelessness seems to be invisible. But what we have is a two-tiered society. Many people, including probably everyone in this room, get a pretty good wage or salary, live in their own home or are paying off a mortgage and think that the ACT is—and
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