Page 2915 - Week 09 - Thursday, 18 August 2005
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roads, schools and facilities of a high standard. So we have a lot to offer to people looking to move from the bigger cities and I think we need to start taking advantage of that. I would expect that, with some forward thinking, the ACT would encounter much more significant growth rates in the future and I think that would be a good thing.
Two of the issues that are of particular concern and are particular reasons for people either leaving Canberra or choosing not to settle here are the cost of land and homes and the diversity of opportunity in employment. Housing costs in the ACT have risen significantly over the past few years and Canberra has lost one of the advantages that it had in terms of value compared with larger cities. Earlier in the year the combined AMP and real estate institute report found that the median cost of housing in the ACT had increased to a level higher than that of Melbourne and second only to Sydney, and this is a significant concern.
It used to be the case, and a KPMG report recently showed this, that people would leave Canberra in their 20s seeking employment opportunities. They would go to places like Sydney and Melbourne. They would go overseas and come back in their 30s and 40s to raise children. One of the things that drew them back was not only the lifestyle in Canberra, but also the cost of living and the cost of buying a home. As we see from those figures, that is changing. Canberra now has the second highest median price, and that is in the context of a city that does not have the same natural barriers to development that a place like Sydney does.
We do not have a coastline or mountain range or areas of national park that Sydney has that limit its growth. Canberra has much more scope for development. That is something that we need to manage better. Looking at it objectively, given Canberra’s natural advantages, it does not seem right that the median house price in Canberra is the second highest in the country. So there needs to be better management in areas like that.
I have spoken about educational opportunities. Canberra has a very high literacy and numeracy rates and high levels of education, and this is a big advantage. Places like the ANU are a great building block for industry in Canberra and provide a lot of potential. But one of the keys, having brought all these people into the ANU to study from internationally and from around Australia, is the idea of keeping them here and giving them job opportunities so that they can stay here and prosper. That brings me to the second major reason why young people are not coming back to Canberra as much as they could, and that is diversity of opportunity.
Canberra is not as much of a government town as it once was and the private sector is growing, but that is something we need to continue to work on. For professionals, people in IT and people in all sorts of other industries outside government there still are not the same kinds of opportunities that are available in the big cities. That is something that we are competing with. It is something that governments need to be working on. During the last election the Canberra Liberals had some policies around diversifying that, and that is something that I will be contributing to refining. It is an area that we need to improve. It is an area of crucial importance. We cannot rely on being a government town. We are no longer primarily a government town. It is always going to be a significant employer, but it is not the only show in town and I think we need to recognise that and diversify opportunities for the private sector.
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