Page 2124 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 21 June 2011
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who stuffed it up the last time. She is going to put Simon Corbell in charge, after his policies and his structures were responsible for housing getting out of the reach of young Canberra families.
We have just seen the Hawke review, which was all about dismantling what Simon Corbell had done when he was planning minister. And now he is back. What is that going to do for housing affordability? On top of that, if that was not enough, what indeed this government will do is add another $50,000 to the cost of a unit. We have got unaffordable housing and their plan to fix it is to levy the largest tax increase on property in the history of self-government—a $50,000 per unit tax. What is that going to do for housing affordability? It will make it less affordable.
I will give you the tip. It will make renting a unit more expensive. It will make buying a unit more expensive. There will be fewer units. It will undermine the government’s planning policies, which is to see at least some infill happening. It will work against that.
We see, finally, the reluctant reference of this government to cost of living. This is a government, this is a minister, who has criticised us for bringing forward debates in this place about the serious cost-of-living pressures that Canberra families are under. The focus groups have clearly come in and have said to the Labor Party: “Actually, yes, cost of living is a problem in Canberra. We thought it was not, because Canberrans have good incomes. But it turns out, when rents are higher than ever in the country—it costs more to buy than in most places in the country—when you raise rates by 75 per cent, when you see the price of water go up by 200 per cent, when you see the price of electricity go up by 75 per cent and parking by 57 per cent, there will be cost-of-living implications for Canberra families.”
What are they doing about it? They are putting a large new tax on units, $50,000 per unit. They have got a feed-in tariff that is going to add another $200 per year to the cost of everyone’s electricity bill, over and above the rises we have already seen. They consistently blow their budget in water projects, which then gets passed on in higher water costs for Canberrans.
All of their policies seem to be aimed at actually making things more expensive rather than less expensive. If you are serious about cost of living, you have to restrain your expenditure. You have to stop the blow-outs. You have to occasionally deliver infrastructure on time and on budget. You have to have tax policy that encourages investment, encourages growth, and does not just seek to squeeze properties, squeeze the industry until it bleeds, which is now what they have got because they have put in to do their tax review the fellow who wanted to squeeze until they bleed but not until they die.
This government will be judged on what it does, not what it says. And putting out a bunch of vague measures, and now pretending that the last 10 years have not happened, will not cut it. The people of the ACT will look at whether or not this government has improved their cost of living, whether they have delivered services, whether they have delivered infrastructure and whether they have delivered the basic services of government rather than what Katy Gallagher says in her statements in this place. (Time expired.)
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