Page 3886 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 4 December 2007
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have here at the Alexander Maconochie Centre. I do not think he can, and that is why he has not come back to us.
The fact that he keeps taking things on notice and keeps refusing to answer these questions shows that he is simply embarrassed because he has not been able to keep his commitment to manage the costs here. They have blown out considerably when you look at the scope of the project—how much that has come back—and when you look now at his severe embarrassment that, having tied himself to the fact that the headline figure was not going to increase, we have also seen the headline figure increase. This minister should be embarrassed, and I think that is why we get this constant obfuscation when we ask him questions and when we get questions that he has been asked in broad terms before that he is taking on notice because he is simply embarrassed to answer them.
There is an extra $1.45 million for ACTPLA to aid in accelerated land release. I find it extraordinary—given that the government said to us last year what a commitment it had to tackle the issue of housing affordability and given that we have known for some time, clearly with the increases in the commonwealth public service, there would be a need for accelerating the land release—that we are only now, in the second appropriation for this financial year, seeing this money for accelerated land release. This demonstrates once again what a comprehensive failure this has been. The management of land release in the territory by this government has been an absolute failure.
We have seen it. We saw no starker example than when we saw 700 Canberrans recently turn up for a land ballot for 50 lots at Franklin—700 Canberrans begging this government to give them a plot of land, and the government has 50 lots. What is the Chief Minister’s response to this? He implies that it must be just because they are fussy. He says the quality of this land release is why there are 700 people lining up and begging for these 50 lots; it has got nothing to do with this government’s complete failure to get enough land out to the market; it could not have anything to do with this government’s total and utter failure to provide sufficient land to the market.
The argument—and the planning minister now backs it up—is that it is because these people are fussy. So the message to first home buyers in the territory, given first by the Chief Minister and now backed up by his planning minister, is that these 700 Canberra first home buyers are fussy and are just looking for only the good blocks and will not take the wonderful services that are being offered to them in terms of land release in the territory by this government.
Their performance in this area has been shameful, and the fact that the Chief Minister and the planning minister now do not want to take responsibility for their failure, that they actually want to blame the buyers and the potential first home buyers, many of whom of course who cannot get into the market because of this government’s failures, is an absolute outrage. They would turn it around and essentially imply that these people are simply fussy.
Those of us here in the ACT who know young people who are trying to buy into the housing market know that many of them would buy anything if they could afford it.
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