Page 4806 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 20 October 2010
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I am unclear as to what the Liberal Party are doing on this motion. We expected some amendments from them, but I have not seen any amendments. Our amendments were unacceptable, as far as I understood it, but I am not sure what their position is. If this motion does pass tonight along the lines of what you are calling on the government to do, it will be incorporated into the review, whatever the outcome of this evening’s debate is.
The government do have a sound record in responding to the challenge of housing affordability, but we also acknowledge that we need to maintain a level of vigilance as economic and social issues continue to emerge. It needs to be recognised that housing affordability is a long-term challenge that requires long-term and comprehensive solutions. That is why, a couple of years ago, we did release a comprehensive plan to tackle the barriers to affordability through a housing continuum that caters for the needs of Canberrans at every stage of their lives.
The government’s action plan addresses all aspects of affordable housing, including planning reform, land release, public and community housing, aged persons housing and homelessness. It has been carefully calibrated to tackle issues of housing affordability and homelessness on all levels. The government continues to refine its affordable housing initiatives to ensure that the policy outcomes are well targeted.
Whilst it is a commendable contribution to the debate on housing affordability, I doubt that the Greens’ motion today to redefine affordable housing will have any practical impact on access to affordable, appropriate and safe housing in the ACT. The issues around the definition of affordable housing are legitimate, but a definitional change does not deliver one extra rental property or one more social housing property. A definitional change would not affect waiting times for public housing or change the number of people looking for housing who are homeless in the ACT.
On the issue of definitions—and Ms Bresnan did go to this—in the Wealth of home report, ACTCOSS and ACT Shelter agreed that there is no single adequate measure of housing affordability and that virtually all indicators can produce a number of methodological or classification problems. The current definition of housing affordability used by the ACT government is consistent with the 30-40 rule recommended by the Greens and used by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. The rule considers the bottom 40 per cent of income earners who are paying more than 30 per cent of income on housing. The ACT government’s definition, however, goes further and expands on the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute definition by acknowledging that for households on higher incomes a figure of 40 per cent of gross income is considered reasonable.
These clearly stated definitions are contained within the Affordable Housing Steering Group report, which is available on the government’s affordable housing website. These definitions adopted by the government have been used since 2007 to frame the objectives within the affordable housing action plan and aim to provide a mix of housing types across different income ranges.
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