Page 890 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 21 March 2018
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Our population continues to grow and therefore we must ensure that we are building an adequate supply of housing to accommodate this. While our population grows, we must also acknowledge that a house, neighbourhood or suburb does not just materialise out of thin air and that it takes time to build a dwelling. Taxes and subsidies can be used in the short term to manage demand. However, these are only two parts to the toolkit available to policymakers, and both of these approaches must be viewed in light of the fact that, in Australia, 32 per cent of those living in separate houses and 29 per cent of people living in apartments are in a dwelling with one spare bedroom. In all, 48 per cent of people living in an apartment and some 79 per cent of those living in separate houses have one or more spare rooms. The 2016 census estimates that the ACT has an average of 0.8 persons per bedroom. The Winton Sustainable Research Strategies report on the 2014 housing choices community survey found that 16.3 per cent of residents would like to move to a more suitable dwelling.
There are clearly a number of Canberrans who are living in dwellings that may not be well suited to their immediate needs. In many circumstances, this does not present a problem. For a young family expecting to have a child in the coming year it would be practical to have a spare bedroom available. So too for empty-nesters with children living away from home who visit regularly. However, when families feel obstructed from living in properties that better suit their needs, this indicates that there are systemic issues that prevent the efficient allocation of property. This inefficiency impacts on housing affordability and can create dead weight losses if it is the result of an obstacle. That obstacle is usually taxes like stamp duty. This is in no small part why the ACT government is undertaking the tax reform every economist is telling us we need to take.
What is interesting too is that despite the Canberra Liberals’ opposition to this policy, the opposition spokesperson for planning and for housing, Mr Parton, has seemingly been speaking in support of this policy since taking on his new role. Across the media, Mr Parton has been quite vocal on the need to make more single dwellings available. How do we make more single dwellings available? The most immediate way is to increase the supply of the existing stock of single dwellings in the ACT. And how do we do that? By removing the handbrake on that stock coming to market, namely, stamp duty. I thank Mr Parton for agreeing with me, I guess, and I too agree that the ACT government needs to continue to pursue this tax reform.
I also agree with the need to consider how we can better diversify the housing stock in the ACT to allow people to remain in the communities they live in. I look forward to making a worthwhile contribution to the how rather than the what through the ACT government’s housing choices consultation currently underway.
With Canberra and its population undergoing significant transformation, there is a real need to answer how we offer a diverse range of housing options to an increasingly diverse Canberra community. For example, the Winton report found that while more than half of those aged over 60 surveyed would consider moving to a higher density development in the future, half also said they would not as there were none available where they wanted to live. Single dwelling properties are of course part of the strategy,
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