Page 2883 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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way forward; our innovative affordable housing strategy is testament to that. The strategy includes a range of new initiatives designed to help more people into a home of their own.
Some of these initiatives include: a new OwnPlace scheme, which offers quality house and land packages to first-homebuyers for less than $300,000 on land sold by the Land Development Agency; developing a shared equity scheme so that public housing tenants can purchase their own home; support for excellence in affordable housing design and construction, which has already seen impressive examples of innovative affordable housing through design competitions and construction industry awards; stamp duty concessions and deferrals for first-homebuyers and people on age or disability pensions; and, of course, the innovative land rent scheme, which will reduce housing costs for people who otherwise would not be able to achieve their dreams of being homeowners. The affordable housing action plan demonstrates how seriously the government takes the responsibility to ensure that affordable housing is available to all Canberrans.
The significant part about this, though, is that everybody, I would think anyway, in Canberra would want to be a homeowner. I know there are some who do, but, generally speaking, people do not prefer to be tenants, whether they be public, community housing or private tenants; it does not matter. People would prefer to own their own home, to buy their own home, to have an asset to leave to their children.
What we understood we needed to do, basically from when we took the reins of government in 2008, was to see how we could have a range of options that people could pick up and run with, knowing that at that stage the price of houses was starting to go through the roof. Some years ago the average price of a house was $320,000. That house price was in fact $100,000 beyond the capability of most people.
We needed to bring the prices down, while also giving incentives to investors to get into the marketplace, but also, most importantly, to give people a range of options to enable them to buy their own home. That is where our shared equity scheme had its genesis, that is where the land rent scheme had its genesis and that is where the affordable housing strategy around land release had its genesis. It was all about the opportunity for people to pick up what suited them.
What is a bit disappointing from the opposition’s tirade around the land rent scheme is that it seems to have missed the point that we are trying to develop a number of opportunities, a number of options, for people to pick up as it suits their particular circumstance. If people are able to earn enough money to buy their own home in the open marketplace, everybody is a winner there; they are successful and that is wonderful.
Mr Hanson: Our criticism has been that it has taken you two years to get there.
MR HARGREAVES: We have been accused of taking a really long time to do this. I have to put on the record that the fact is that these things have been delivered; they are there. People can whinge and carry on about how long it takes to get somewhere—but they are actually there. He is still gnashing his teeth over the jail. It is there; people are
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