Page 439 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 4 March 2008
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after all of this wonderful planning, after all of this money has been spent, all they have got to show for it is a one-lane road extension, which will be fine for many hours of the day I am sure. But, come peak hour, as time goes by, as Gungahlin grows, I predict that the one-lane Gungahlin Drive extension will be a very slow road indeed, and I think the people of Gungahlin, in particular, are right to be concerned at the quality of the ACT government’s planning and the execution of their planning when it comes to the GDE.
It is worth looking at some of the other plans that this government have had. They had a plan to close 23 schools but did not tell us about it. In fact, they told us prior to the election that they did not have a plan to close any schools; they ruled it out. They had a plan to restrict land release to a monopoly government service provider. Mr Gentleman touched on what is happening with the affordable housing strategy, but what are the results of this government’s efforts over the last seven years in government to make housing affordable for young Canberrans? We see prices at the bottom end continue to rise so that, unfortunately, the situation now—and these interest rate rises, of course, will not help—is that for many young families the dream of home ownership is simply slipping way.
We have a government that does have the ability to plan to manage these issues. It should be able to plan to manage these issues and its plan in the last few years, prior to the last 18 months or so, was to squeeze land supply. It helped create the very problem that it is now apparently seeking to address. It deliberately squeezed supply. We had the famous comment from Ted Quinlan of “squeeze until they bleed, not until they die”. It was around that time that the government significantly dropped the amount of land that it released in that year. And we have seen, since that time, prices for land spiral out of control so that young families are finding it increasingly difficult to get into the housing market—and now many of those who have gotten in are suffering the double whammy with interest rates on the way up.
But, of course, families have had to pay much more than they should have; they have bankrolled this government’s budget by paying much more than they should have for land—because this government simply have not responded. We have talked for a long time about having land ready to come on line, and yet whenever we hear from this government about what they plan to do to respond to the housing affordability crisis there is always an 18-month lag or a two-year lag. We await with bated breath the release in Molonglo; we really do. All Canberrans would hope that the government finally get going on that and get the planning done. It has been long planned for. I hope—I really, honestly, do hope—that we will see them meet their time frame on that, which is around the middle of this year, I believe. Maybe the minister when he gets up to respond can give us a bit of an update as to whether or not that is still on track.
There has been a complete debacle in planning in this town over the past few years, particularly evidenced by the failures in housing affordability and in managing land release and by stifling competition. We have seen a deliberate stifling of competition—we have only seen some relaxing of that stifling in recent times—and that has led to genuine heartache. This lack of planning, this lack of foresight and this deliberate decision, unfortunately, to stifle the amount of land, is causing serious pain in the community.
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