Page 2885 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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market and as a result we saw prices go through the roof. That is a matter of fact that has not been disputed and cannot be disputed, and anyone who ever talks about housing affordability in this place needs to remember always that the reason it is still hard for young families in Canberra to buy a home is because this government squeezed land release deliberately.
We can only speculate as to what some of the motives were. One of them, of course, was for the Land Development Agency to get more per block. We can go back and forth, but the end result of their deliberate actions was far higher prices for first-homebuyers. It was a disgraceful way of handling land release.
The other part of the land release equation, of course, is who you release the land to—competition in the market. This government sought to set up a monopoly land developer in this town and for some time we had the Land Development Agency having a hand in all the developments in Canberra. What did that serve to do? It served to slow things down. It served to reduce competition in the market. What does that do? It pushes prices up. There is no doubt about it. The flawed policies of this mob have made it so much harder for young families in this town to get access to their own home.
It is quite laughable when Jon Stanhope tries to take credit when private builders and developers are actually getting the job done from time to time now through englobo release. This is something that this government banned. They got rid of it. They got rid of it in order to keep it all to themselves. They socialised it under Simon Corbell and now, when they trickle it back to the private sector and the private sector, lo and behold, it actually delivers a product that people are interested in buying and delivers a diversity of product, they try and claim credit. They try and claim credit for something they were opposed to.
Simon Corbell was militantly opposed to this idea, and Mr Hargreaves knows it. It is unfortunate that Mr Hargreaves is the only one here to defend the government. It would be great if the former planning minister could come and defend his legacy on this. He deliberately slowed things down and he deliberately made it harder for the private sector.
I was chatting recently to a representative of the building and construction industry in the ACT. He said, “The problem with this mob is their attitude to development is that you can be a developer in this town, but just don’t make any money.” It actually nicely encapsulates what the government put in place. It might seem like a great socialist utopia where developers are not able to make money—and who wants to support developers anyway?—but this is about first-homebuyers. It is about ordinary low and middle income Canberrans who are looking to buy a home.
Because of an ideological attack on private industry and private enterprise, we do not see the kind of product offered. We do not see the kind of opportunities offered to these potential first-homebuyers as a result. Simon Corbell’s left-wing colleagues in the Labor Party have applauded him for getting at those greedy developers, but the end result was that there was less product on the market, there was less diversity and a flood of young Canberra families continually had to look over the border in order to have opportunities to purchase a home.
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