Page 2887 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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help to relieve the malaise that we see from time to time—the slowing down of development application approvals. This is something that the government needs to address.
I welcomed the Chief Minister’s removal of Simon Corbell from the planning portfolio because I thought his ideas on planning were really destructive. They were destructive particularly to housing affordability. His ideas about keeping it all centrally controlled by government failed, and they failed badly, and we still see some of that legacy. In fact, some of those settings are still there, although there have been changes.
Another aspect of housing affordability is taxation. This is a government that, for all the talk of helping first-homebuyers, continue in most cases to impose significant taxation on first-homebuyers. They do not seem to care. Their criticism of our policies was that it was about helping millionaires. What a ridiculous comment—what a ridiculous statement, the idea that an ordinary family, trying to purchase a home for around $400,000 or even $450,000 is somehow wealthy. Many of them are taking out very big mortgages. They are often people working in ordinary fields, such as teaching and nursing. They are middle income earners, working hard and saving hard, and this government goes and slaps them with a $10,000, $15,000 or even a $20,000 stamp duty bill. That kind of taxation obviously has an impact. It impacts on first-homebuyers in particular.
Those are the fundamentals. I am interested that the Chief Minister has not joined us for this debate. We know that he did not want this debate to go ahead because of the bad coverage that he got in the Canberra Times today, which we will deal with. He constantly talks about his interest in this issue. I thought this was something he was committed to. He is so committed to it that he could not be here. Of course, they did not want this debate to go ahead.
But it is worth mentioning that the Chief Minister made a very significant statement today in relation to the cost of building in the territory. He claimed in estimates, in fact, that the cheapest you could actually get a house built for in the territory was around $200,000, that what was being offered under OwnPlace with blocks going for $100,000 and buildings going for a tick under $200,000 was the cheapest you could get.
Yet today, because he had a different message to sell today, he had to talk about what the deposit would be. He was saying this to journalists and he said it again in the Assembly: “You can get them for less than 150—even less.” Apparently what he said to the estimates committee was wrong. Now he is saying, “You can get houses, and people will be getting houses, under land rent, for 150.” Will it be 140? Will it be 130? How much will it be? How low will it go?
The Chief Minister was adamant when it was put to him that this was absolutely the cheapest you could get a house built for in the ACT—around about $200,000. He has now changed his tune. There is a significant contradiction on the record between what the Chief Minister said in estimates and what he said here today and what I understand he also told journalists today—that now, apparently, you can get a house for under $150,000.
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