Page 2107 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 August 2014
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Since the release of the affordable housing action plan in 2007, the government has made a series of policy interventions to improve housing affordability. Now in its third phase, the affordable housing action plan includes a total of 98 separate actions which aim to address a wide range of issues impacting affordability.
But the most fundamental issue driving housing affordability is supply. To this end, the government has invested significant resources to improve and accelerate its land release program. This approach, of addressing supply constraints, coupled with a suite of other policies and taxation concessions, including a requirement for 20 per cent of housing in greenfield estates to meet our affordability criteria, has contributed to, and will continue to contribute to, the increase in the supply of affordable housing in Canberra. We have also invested strongly in the national rental affordability scheme, which is driving investment in the construction of new dwellings and also seeing these dwellings rented to low and moderate income tenants at below market rates.
Unfortunately, the federal government has decided to discontinue this highly successful means of providing an additional stock of affordable rental properties. A series of amendments that I will move to Ms Lawder’s motion shortly will address some of these points. Not only has the federal government made the task of addressing homelessness more difficult by scrapping the NRAS; it has failed to commit to ongoing funding of homelessness services beyond this current fiscal year. The national partnership was extended for only one year, and that was disappointing. However, we—along with other states and territories on both sides of the political fence, I am sure—will continue to put the case to the federal government that it needs to play a role in combating homelessness in this country.
Despite these poor decisions by the federal government, we will continue locally to provide a range of measures to strengthen housing in the territory. This includes a commitment to ongoing growth of community housing stock, accelerating the renewal of our ageing public housing stock and maintaining and extending our social housing salt and pepper approach of locating public housing throughout all suburbs in the territory.
In conclusion, through the range of policies and programs I have outlined, the territory government continues to provide targeted support to people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. I would like to take this opportunity in this week to thank everyone within the ACT government and the community sector for their sustained commitment to helping some of the most vulnerable and needy citizens in the territory.
I seek leave to move the five amendments that I have circulated together and ensure that we can cover off all of the issues that are pertinent in relation to homelessness. That particularly requires us to take a position—I think a firm position—in support of the national rental affordability scheme and the continuation of the national partnership beyond 2014-15. I seek leave to move the amendments together.
Leave granted.
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