Page 2134 - Week 06 - Thursday, 26 June 2008
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We identified housing affordability in the poverty report back in 2000. The government have had two or three reports since they have stepped on this path that they have stepped along. But at the heart of it, the question is: what has happened? All of the reports would indicate that the housing affordability crisis in the ACT is a direct result of the failed policies of the Stanhope government through their planning regime, courtesy of Mr Corbell and his “my way or the highway” view of planning and through the land release programs that the government has lauded for the last seven years. The problem for the people who cannot afford to purchase a house has been caused by the cost of land.
I go to the submission given by Ric Battellino, Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia:
… housing affordability have declined since the mid 1990s … The overwhelming factor that has led to this is the rise in house prices; mortgage interest rates in Australia are no higher than in the mid 1990s, when housing was at its most affordable.
Go through the document that he presented to the committee:
We are therefore left with the conclusion that the decline in measures of housing affordability since the mid 1990s is almost entirely due to the rise in house prices relative to incomes.
And what causes that? He goes on to say that what causes that is the cost of land. We are unique in the ACT. We actually have control of all of the land supply, unlike any other jurisdiction. The problem here is the cost of land. When you see the reasons for it and when you look at who controlled planning and when you look at who controlled land release, the only person who is to blame for this is the Chief Minister. The impacts on these factors are land supply, infrastructure costs and transaction taxes such as stamp duty on house prices. All three of those are covered by this government; all three of those are under the control of this government; all three of those could be fixed by this government.
I think the shame of it all is that, while you can have a 62 or a 68-point plan, whatever it is, at the heart of it, if you will not address your own failures and if you will not look at what is causing this crush—and the Leader of the Opposition has said so often it is through the way that the land supply has been contained by this government—if you do not genuinely address those problems, and they still have not been addressed, you are going to continue to gouge first homebuyers.
The Stanhope government seeks to gain credit for its policies of attempting to assist people to buy their own homes. We already know that the Chief Minister’s land rent scheme will be an incredibly expensive program for the ACT taxpayers with, according to the Treasury estimates, only a small number of people receiving any benefits as they attempt to move from renting land to buying the land on which they have built their home.
I think a concern for this Assembly and for the people in the broader community is that the Stanhope government is proposing to spend more than $80 million over the next four years buying land for this scheme. We should all be concerned about the
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