Page 2925 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 29 June 2011
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revised as I speak. We all appreciate the need for competition but we appreciate the need for fair competition, not competition which is dominated by a monopoly or a duopoly.
I will just very briefly mention the Australia Forum. I would like to add that this should probably be a carbon neutral precinct, given the need for all Canberra to become that—but also there is its showcase status. That will be something where, given the ACT government will be involved, this would be a direction I would like to see the government push the Forum in.
So, in summary, it is a really interesting, exciting directorate but I think it is one that a lot more work needs to be done in in terms of a taking a serious look at the cost and benefit, the nuts and bolts, of having both an environmentally and an economically sustainable direction and also, of course, one that is socially sustainable.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (9.55): I would just like to speak briefly about the affordable housing action plan that sits within the Economic Development Directorate. The ACT government has appropriated 350,000 per annum through this budget to the furthering of that plan. The Greens called for an affordable housing action plan in 2005 and the government delivered that first version in 2007 with an update in 2009. The Greens are concerned that the policy lacks clear targets and indicators for monitoring. This is something we asked for before the plan was established and it has recently been found by the Auditor-General to be a problem. The Greens are also concerned that the government continues to rely on measurements of housing affordability which do not reflect the reality of what people are facing.
In the past we have seen ministers in the media refer to measures based on median house prices and median wages. A much more accurate measure would be to examine the bottom 40 per cent of income earners and see what percentage of them are paying more than 30 per cent of their income on housing. The government also needs to factor into measurements how much it costs to run a house because, to give an example, 75 per cent of people presenting to the ACAT who cannot afford to pay their energy bills come from public housing. Low-income people cannot afford the running costs of a house, and that impacts on their ability to pay for other essentials such as food, transport and health care.
The Greens do not believe saying that Canberra has the most or almost the most affordable housing in the nation is accurate as we know that people who earn below average incomes in Canberra struggle with the high average cost of living that the average wage earner can afford. The Greens also want to see some real analysis of who can afford the properties released under the OwnPlace scheme as we have received some complaints that people who are a part of the government’s target market cannot afford this product.
Another factor is that demand for public housing is likely to increase by 2021 if reports from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare are correct. We will have an increase in public housing properties and this will occur largely through investment from the federal stimulus funding but we must plan and keep pace with current demand to avoid major increases in demand in the future.
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