Page 2686 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 23 June 2009

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financial institution would ever lend against it. The Canberra Times might want to ask those mortgage brokers why they held that view and the extent to which they perhaps advised clients, if they had the time, not to involve themselves with this scheme, and the implications of that.

There is significant other commentary, and I do not think I am going to have time today. I will have to take another question tomorrow on this issue to get through all the issues that have been raised, and perhaps another question the day after that.

But I will provide some information in honour of the question asked by Ms Porter, who truly cares about the attitude of the Canberra Times to this particular issue. This is a Canberra Times editorial on land rent and it is a pity that when it was issued the Leader of the Opposition and those pathologically opposed to young Canberra families and this scheme did not pay some attention. I must say that I blushed when I read it. It states:

The Stanhope Government’s land rent scheme—which could give hundreds of lower income Canberra households real help to buy their homes—has an air of inspiration about it—

dear editor, it is too much—

and not only because it borrows from some of the leasehold precepts on which the city was founded. That’s good by itself, but the two further attractions are even better.

This is from the Canberra Times:

First, it gives entree to an increasingly difficult housing market without … the risks inevitable when people essentially cannot afford to be there in the first place. That’s the more important now in a world in which financial institutions are reeling from their misjudgements in lending more and more money to people who really could not afford to pay. Even better—

says the Canberra Times; I will have to pay more attention to the Canberra Times in future—

is the way in which it allows a two-stage entry into the market for families whose needs for housing are often greatest at the time their household bills are greatest: when they are younger and with young families. A family can concentrate …

I cannot do this justice today, Mr Speaker. I will actually take this question again tomorrow.

I ask that all further questions be placed on the notice paper.

Notice not conforming with standing orders

Statement by Speaker

MR COE (Ginninderra): Mr Speaker, I seek to ask a question under standing order 115.

MR SPEAKER: Yes, Mr Coe.


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