Page 1983 - Week 07 - Thursday, 13 August 2020
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When combined with government stimulus initiatives such as the ACT government’s stamp duty concessions and the commonwealth government’s HomeBuilder grant, many incentives are available now to build a home in the ACT and government initiatives are supporting better access to affordable housing.
On the point the opposition leader was trying to make about government and public land in the ACT, it leads to an idea that I have been thinking about—perhaps it is the plan for the opposition to sell off all our public land to developers. It sounds likely that they would sell the land or give away the land to private developers and then all of the funding that goes towards building hospitals and schools in the ACT would go into the pockets of the developer.
Opposition members interjecting—
MS BERRY: That’s cool. If it is not going to happen, that is great. What a relief for us. All that public land, which is finite, needs to be managed carefully and the proceeds of sale of that are used to build new suburbs and hospitals and schools and will remain in public hands, managed by the ACT government.
I cannot understand why there is some issue with ACT government land being used to build hospital and schools for our community and new suburbs so that people can live in them. Mr Coe is laughing like that is an outrageous idea, when it sounds to me like the opposition and Mr Coe want to give away public land to private developers to make a profit out of. If that is not the case, I am happy to be corrected.
Opposition members interjecting—
MS BERRY: I listened to the opposition in silence, Mr Assistant Speaker; I did not say a peep.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Mr Pettersson): The member will be heard in silence.
Ms Stephen-Smith interjecting—
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Ms Stephen-Smith. I get that everyone is very excited, but can we please pay attention to Ms Berry.
MS BERRY: Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I just wanted to just clear that up, and it looks like we have. It is great to hear that the opposition are not going to be selling land off to developers to make profits off finite land in the ACT community that we want to make sure stays in public hands.
The ACT government acknowledges that there is always more work to do, but we cannot do it on our own. That is why we are constantly lobbying the federal government to do their bit as well to provide opportunities for community housing providers and others through their previous ANROWS funding, which supported community funding to do even more. That ANROWS funding will end soon and there is no commitment from the federal government on an extension of that or some other funding model to support community housing across the country.
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