Page 3059 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 16 September 2015
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As my motion says, we note that the lease variation charge is distorting market effect on the Canberra housing sector and, at a time when housing affordability is a big issue, to place a tax in this way, in this manner, on housing is unfortunate and has the downside effect of forcing, as the submission says, greater emphasis on greenfield development.
Of course, greenfield development requires additional infrastructure and increases the sprawl of the city. One only needs to look at Charles Landry’s book The creative city and the picture he uses for urban sprawl is a picture of Canberra. There is one of the world’s foremost exponents on how to make city’s work better and the example he cites for urban sprawl is Canberra—not a glowing endorsement, not a ringing endorsement, of what we should be.
The Canberra Liberals have announced a policy. We will have, if elected next year, a four-year moratorium on LVC in the city—the CBD, Civic—and in the town centres because we know it is not just Civic that is suffering. You only need to look at Woden to see how town centres are suffering. Tuggeranong needs to be assisted. We are seeing some activity in Belconnen, we are seeing some activity in Gungahlin, but this is not a government that understands that hierarchy and this is not a government that has the plans in place to make the hierarchy work.
What we have said is that we believe, based on what the government has earned from their failed tax, Andrew Barr’s equivalent of a mining tax, it would be better if this charge went, we got the infill that we need and we got the activity and the jobs that that infill would create. You only need to look at Civic at the moment. The only crane on the horizon is on a development that was approved before the changes and the only development in the last four or five years is the Manhattan apartments which were also approved before the changes and, indeed, I am reliably informed, would not have gone ahead under the new regime because it would be unviable.
It is time for the government and the Greens to wake up to the fact that they have in place a regime that works against everything they say. Go to the results. This is a failed tax. Have no doubt about it. In the 2011-12 budget the expectation was $22 million. The original expectation was $22 million. They got $8.7 million. It was meant to be $23 million in 2012-13; they got over $15 million. It was meant to be $24 million in 2013-14; they got $14 million. It was meant to be in 2014-15 $26 million; they only got $11 million. Remember, inside those numbers are approvals under the old system. So the figures are in fact inflated for what the lease variation charge has achieved.
It is even starker when you go to the question on notice that Mr Coe asked. It is a fascinating question: “How much has LVC brought you from Civic and the town centres?” Let us run through the answer. In Belconnen in its first year, 2011-12, zero, nothing; in 2012-13, $55,000; in 2013-14, $3,000; in the year to date—and this question was answered on, I think, 3 June—$740,000. So in four years in Belconnen the lease variation charge raised $0.798 million, $798,000.
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