Page 3168 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 9 November 2021
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Mr Cain: Why is the SLA buying land in New South Wales?
MR DAVIS: Answer my question with another question, Mr Cain. That reflects the situation the Canberra Liberals now find themselves in in this policy space. It is so frustrating because there is arguably no greater policy challenge facing the people of Canberra quite like the housing affordability crisis, whether you are someone looking to buy or you are currently a renter. This place cannot be expected to come up with the appropriate policy solutions to deal with that unless we are prepared to be honest to people about the housing affordability crisis in its full complexity, unless we are prepared to be honest about intergenerational wealth, unless we are prepared to be honest about a landlord class actively incentivised by federal government tax settings to buy and buy again and buy again at the expense of first home buyers and other people in the market looking for a home.
While I have gone off the handle just a touch and there is a perfectly good speech here someone has prepared for me that has barely caught my eye, I genuinely thank Mr Parton for bringing the motion. The ACT Greens have made it clear through a history in this place that we will continue to lead the policy challenge on housing affordability in this city. We have over a long time legislated and campaigned for improved renters’ rights. We negotiated substantial public and social housing outcomes as a result of our parliamentary and governing agreement with ACT Labor, and I am delighted to see hundreds of new public housing homes and social community homes built as a result.
I am incredibly proud of my colleague the Minister for Homelessness and Housing Services, who was able to secure the first real increase in homelessness funding for more than a decade as a result of the last budget. I am incredibly proud of the work our two governing parties are doing in government to support fixing this housing crisis.
But the Canberra Liberals needs to be honest. What forests are going? What trees are they taking down? I just want to do some basic arithmetic. We keep hearing about land supply, but what we also heard through estimates in the last couple of weeks just came to me, so I am going to let you have it: we heard about the national skills shortage and the skills shortage facing Canberrans. If Canberrans get one thing out of my sermon let it be this: if we took the Canberra Liberals talking points and went, “All right, every square inch of land we have got available to us in Canberra for residential development, we should just release tomorrow,” you would see a very short time where land would be cheaper, supply and demand would not be equating and you would actually see the price come down a scooch. Then you would see a bunch of people who own land actively competing for the short supply of builders and contractors, so buyers would find themselves in the exact same position, if not worse, once they have their land and cannot find anybody to build on it.
The Canberra Liberals policy is dishonest; it is ill-thought through; it is harking back to the time of Menzies in the 50s, which no longer exists. I beg and plead that the Canberra Liberals catch up and join us in 2021 where we are trying to get some things done.
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