Page 105 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2012
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Instead of everyone thinking, “I need to have an extra bedroom in the house because my Great Aunt Mary might come and stay sometime,” there are areas where, if your Great Aunt Mary comes to stay, you have got a reasonable chance of finding a bit of extra space for Great Aunt Mary. There are areas with communal tennis courts, and Urambi even has a communal swimming pool. They are along the co-housing model. In Denmark 10 per cent of all new housing is co-housing; this is a model which we could well look at in Australia in terms of keeping a high quality of housing but reducing the cost of housing.
Along those lines I would also point out that the ACT has the enviable title of having the largest new houses in the world. The US used to beat us, but due to the economic conditions there they unfortunately cannot do that now. This is a significant issue as far as housing affordability goes. We need to look at why we are building our houses as large as they are. There are a lot of reasons. A lot of them have to do with federal taxation and social security issues, I agree. But there are also issues that we in the ACT have direct control over. We build the houses. And if we are seriously interested in housing affordability, house size is one of the things we have to look at.
Briefly, I would like to bring everyone’s attention to a very innovative affordable housing project that is going on. Jigsaw building company has started building an eight-star house which they anticipate they will be able to build for about $200,000. By anyone’s standards, that is going to be a very affordable house. Eight-star energy efficiency, $200,000—it can be done; we need to do more of it. Housing affordability is something we can address and I look forward to the Assembly addressing it.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (5.07): I thank Mr Doszpot for bringing this matter forward today because this is a critically important issue for the people of Canberra. Whether it is, as Mr Doszpot says, young people trying to get into a home, whether it is older Canberrans who are struggling in our rental market as they do not own their own home, whether it is families who see their kids staying at home much longer than they would otherwise, because of the high costs of renting or buying a home in Canberra—this is an issue that is important to tens of thousands of Canberrans. So it is really important that we put it on the agenda often and that we have solutions to deal with it.
This is a government that just has not dealt with this issue. Let us have a look at some of the comments that we have seen from Mr Barr in recent times. One of the most extraordinary admissions that we have heard in a long time was that ACT Labor, according to Mr Barr, have created a situation where there are two classes of Canberrans. And that is true. When ACT Labor came to office in 2001, ordinary average income earners could buy a home. Ordinary, average families could save hard, buy a home, have some expectation of paying off that mortgage within a reasonable time frame, and get ahead in that way.
Under ACT Labor we have seen, in Mr Barr’s own words, the creation of two classes of Canberrans, and it is a situation that this government seem very comfortable with. ACT Labor have abandoned these people. They have abandoned families in the suburbs who are struggling with the cost of living. They have abandoned the young
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