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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 12 Hansard (20 November) . . Page.. 4443 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

process and I do congratulate Mr Corbell on his efforts to do that, to create the situation where we are actually dealing with the community.

Obviously, within any community there will be a whole raft of people who do not want to see too great a change. They have chosen their place of residence, their place of abode, and they do not want to see it disrupted. They certainly have considerable rights in that area. However, it is also the case, I have to say, that this town must continue to grow. It is an unfortunate situation we have now where our economy depends on physical growth. If we do not have continuing physical growth at this stage, we will not be generating the revenues that provide the basic services that people in Canberra expect and to which they are entitled.

Outside of the planning portfolio, the government will be working to try to ensure that we do develop an economy that has the capacity to generate revenue without being quite so dependent upon physical growth. There are delimiting parameters on the capacity of this place to continue simply to grow.

I also want to congratulate Mr Corbell on the process of public land development, creating that situation where people can actually buy their own blocks of land. There have been some complaints and, oddly and ironically, complaints from the other side of the house regarding stamp duty and the ultimate cost of taxation as part of the purchase of a home, the ready adoption of the model put out by the HIA, which includes the tax paid by the builder and then the tax paid again by the buyer, because the block of land, in development and in the process of going from bare dirt to being the home of a family, has changed hands several times.

The Liberals have happily grasped on to that and said that it is wrong, that we should do something about it. One of the things that we have done about it is to allow people to buy their own blocks of land and therefore build their homes and eliminate a great portion of the costs of land changing hands. That outcome is a most desirable one and one that this house should be applauding rather than criticising by implication.

Mr Corbell has indicated to this place-and I think it is a very valid point-that, if we are talking about catch-up, he had to go through a planning process to catch up, because there had been a lag. There had been a lag in a number of areas, but particularly in land and planning, that had to be made up. As fate has it, of course, demand goes through the roof exactly when you least want it to happen. Certainly, since this government has come to power, there has been considerable demand for land. It is difficult and it is going to remain a difficult process to manage.

We cannot just, on one hand, put it out in an avalanche, because people have invested in their homes. There has been a lot of discussion in this place about first-home buyers and the cost to them. When there are claims that we ought to increase the flow of land significantly, can we remember that there are many first-home owners who are in their homes now, and who have mortgages that are relative to the current value of their homes? An avalanche of land onto the market is highly likely, Mr Deputy Speaker, to have an impact on home values and an impact on the relationship of those mortgages to the ultimate value of the home.

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