Page 2603 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 25 September 2007
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Mrs Dunne has opposed significant reforms in education, yet she has the hide to say that the government needs to deliver services more efficiently. That is just incredible.
The purpose of today’s debate is around putting forward an overall package to address housing affordability, around supply side solutions. It is not seeking to fuel demand through measures such as the first home owners grant, particularly the period at the beginning of this century. It is politically very attractive to be able to hand $14,000 in cash over to individuals—that is terrific—but what was the economic reality of that? It fuelled house prices. In the end, the policy made it harder for first owners to get into the market. A small number benefited at the very initial stages when they were able to move quickly to take the grant and get into the market.
But as you would expect, as it is an interaction of supply and demand—we were not able to address the supply side across the country and most particularly in Sydney; we are certainly experiencing it in Western Australia at the moment—the market was not able to adjust on the supply side as quickly as the demand side was being fuelled by these significant subsidies. On face value the policy seems quite attractive: to help first owners into the market. In the end, it made it harder. That is why you need supply side solutions and that is why this government is moving ahead with a whole range of them across a range of portfolios.
I pay tribute to the leadership of the Chief Minister on these issues in putting forward the range of packages across the portfolios. I am very pleased to be involved as planning minister, particularly the delivery of five years supply of planning ready land for residential purposes, to have in place a new compact housing lot and to have a variety of initiatives in place in my portfolio that complement the work that is occurring across the Chief Minister’s Department. With Minister Hargreaves and the housing portfolio, the massive expansion of community housing is again terrific to see. All of these measures are coming together to provide a supply side solution to this issue.
I commend this piece of legislation. Again, I find it unbelievable that those opposite would seek to run the lines they have, given everything that the other shadow ministers have had to say in relation to expenditure reform. For Mr Mulcahy to get up and suggest that the government has been tardy in looking at those areas is just incredible—unbelievable. It is fundamentally flawed argument, given the lines and the consistently diametrically opposed position that the shadow ministers are taking.
I come back to my original point: this government is making the policy and undertaking the hard yards in policy development to address the supply side solution to this problem. This government has in place a range of measures. I am pleased that the opposition and the Greens are supporting this particular piece of legislation and other housing affordability initiatives. We look forward to an end to the pointless political point scoring that comes from those opposite when we have a good initiative that everyone agrees on. Let us move forward with this. Let us continue our whole-of-government approach to addressing housing affordability. I commend this legislation to the Assembly.
MR STANHOPE (Ginninderra—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Business and Economic Development, Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Minister for the
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