Page 1986 - Week 07 - Thursday, 13 August 2020
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territory governments to build more public housing; and, fourthly, our current high rates of immigration. While those high rates of immigration are very good at raising GDP, as Australia is not getting any more land—and, in particular, the ACT is not getting any more land—there comes a time when, if you want to build on quarter-acre blocks, something has to give.
I am not quite sure what value the 78 per cent increase relates to but that presumably would be it. As I said, Mr Coe is quite right to highlight the rapid growth in house prices; however, the data in his motion should have started in 1999, because Australia has had chronic house price inflation since then. That was the year that the Howard federal Liberal government introduced the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount, which, coupled with our wonderful friend negative gearing, has turned housing into a speculative investment rather than a necessity of life. As I have said repeatedly in this chamber, 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 would price out lower income people. I am very sad to say that this is exactly what has happened over the 21 years.
I move, now, to the calls in Mr Coe’s motion. He makes a number of calls for updates on government activities. Of course, the Greens support transparency wherever possible, and we have supported Mr Coe in previous motions which call for information to be produced. However, the Assembly needs to be cognisant of the fact that there is an election coming fairly soon and that the last sitting day of this Assembly is not long off. Mr Coe has included a one-fortnight deadline in his motion, so we have to be somewhat realistic about what the public service can produce. How much detail can they reasonably be expected to include in Mr Coe’s detailed update?
In terms of Mr Coe’s 2(a) and 2(b), Minister Berry presented a ministerial statement to the Assembly in November last year which called for an annual update on the housing strategy. At seven pages of large-font text suitable to read out to the Assembly, this is the kind of update we think will not be too hard for the government to produce in a fortnight. And that would cover both 2(a) and 2(b), because the housing strategy is the strategy to address the lack of affordable accommodation both for rental and purchase. I note that ACTCOSS has tweeted its desire to get an update of the affordable housing strategy, and I think everybody would like to see that before the election comes. Hopefully, it will be a key piece of information that people will pore over when deciding how they should vote in this coming election. I really hope that housing strategy will be one of the election issues.
Call (c) is asking for a land release program for the next five years to be put out. As we all know, in normal circumstances the four-year land release program would have come out by now. It would have come out with the budget in June, but we have all noted the lack of a budget in June because of the COVID-19 emergency. Given that, I agree with Mr Coe that the government should provide an update on land release on the last sitting day before this election. However, I do not know that the government can do as much as Mr Coe is asking for. Unfortunately, I think that Ms Berry’s amendment may be slightly more possible.
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