Page 2351 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 29 August 2007
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There is a role in public sector land development. Part of that role is to properly capture the value transfer, capture the improved value of the land and return it to the community so that it can be spent on schools, hospitals, roads, infrastructure and services—on all the things that are important to our community. These two issues are not incompatible with each other. Delivering affordable land and delivering a return to the community are not incompatible objectives and should not be viewed as such. (Second speaking period taken.) Nor should the issue of public sector land development and housing affordability or improving land supply be confused with each other. You can have a public sector land development agency and still increase land supply, because at the end of the day the territory is the land owner.
As a consequence of the government’s housing affordability strategy, that is exactly what we have done. We have retained a public sector land developer to achieve the dual outcomes that I believe very strongly the community seeks: quality estates—estates that you can live in, that have good open space, good design and so on and are also affordable to the community. You can also achieve the outcome of a good return to the territory to meet the needs of the broader community in terms of funding, services, infrastructure and facilities. These are the issues that should be in our minds when we discuss the role of the public sector in land development.
Those opposite treat the issue with quite a level of disdain, ignorance and superficiality if they simply assert that the problem is the LDA and that to get rid of the LDA would fix the problem. It is simply not logical. It does not stand up to any significant level of scrutiny and fails to recognise the significant factors that are at play when it comes to delivering land in the territory. Always remember that this land is a public asset and there should be a public interest in it—that should be on sustainability and design grounds as much as on affordability grounds. The level of supply of land is a factor of government policy, not of the government’s arrangements about how the land is delivered.
Those are the facts. Those are the arguments that cannot be addressed by those opposite. Those opposite do not really have the capacity to make the arguments around some of the complexities in this debate and the issues that should be in their minds as they formulate alternative policy. The territory would be the poorer for it if they ever were in a position to put in place their policies.
I am confident that the government’s policies, as outlined in the affordable housing strategy, will deliver significant results. I think the government’s policies achieve the appropriate balance. They achieve a balance on improved supply, a balance on focusing on affordability and designs of smaller block sizes, for example. The very significant injection of money into community housing in Canberra and what that will achieve is, I think, one of the great unsung elements of our housing affordability strategy—a massive injection of capital into community housing in Canberra to improve the stock of social housing in our community, as well as the other measures that the LDA will undertake directly in continuing to develop a percentage of estates. I think the housing affordability strategy goes a long way.
We have the mechanisms in place and the policy settings fixed in a way which I think will deliver better outcomes for our community. Hopefully it will mean that those
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