Page 885 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 2 April 2008
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minister and his office have been busy running around and blaming the predecessor, Simon Corbell, for all of the problems in housing affordability in the ACT.
Industry constantly gets the message: “It’s not our fault, it was Simon’s fault. Simon is responsible.” And, to an extent, I agree. The policies, under Simon Corbell as planning minister, and when he had responsibility for land release, did hit young families hard. But in hitting them so hard, what did the Chief Minister do about it? Nothing. For years, he did nothing but sit back and watch as land release in the territory was deliberately squeezed by this government—by his government—and now he claims to care about the issue as he tinkers at the edges in dealing with this serious issue.
We know that the Chief Minister is out of touch on this issue when he constantly talks about how the ACT is an affordable place to buy a home. He constantly lauds it, yet we know that the reality for young Canberrans on the ground is very different. We know that for many Canberrans with small mortgages and high house and land values, housing affordability is simply not an issue. That plays into those figures that we hear cited. But the overarching message from the Chief Minister is that it is affordable: “So what are you complaining about, young families? Why are you complaining that you would have to borrow $330,000 or $350,000 to buy a basic first home? Why are you complaining? We’re affordable.” That is what the Chief Minister tells us: “We are an affordable jurisdiction.”
We have seen the Chief Minister today, in numerous press releases, in a speech on 6 March this year, and over and over again, talking about the ACT being an affordable jurisdiction. It demonstrates how little he cares for the young families who have been adversely affected by the policies of his government in pushing the dream of home ownership out of their reach. There is absolutely no doubt that it was the deliberate decisions taken by his administration that have caused so much pain for thousands of Canberra families.
With respect to the data, Mr Stanhope talks about the home loan affordability indicator. As I said, this does not take account of the reality on the ground for first home buyers at the moment. It is comparing the cost of mortgages across the board, and that includes those on very high incomes with low mortgages as well as the thousands of young Canberrans on average incomes who are faced with the prospect of very high mortgages or actually servicing those very high mortgages at the moment.
Mr Stanhope, in the 21 February edition of B2B in Canberra, boasted about the affordable housing action plan. He skates over the fact that the government is responding to an issue that it created through its deliberate policies—through deliberately stifling land supply, through deliberately stifling competition and through refusing to make reasonable reviews of its tax settings. All of those things have led to thousands of Canberra families facing very difficult circumstances in terms of buying a home.
We have only to look at the allhomes website, which reveals that the cheapest three-bedroom house in Banks, Canberra’s southernmost suburb, is a courtyard home priced at between $315,000 and $330,000. It is “voted most likely to sell this week”.
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