Page 1563 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 8 May 2018
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the minimum wage plus family tax benefit A. And there was only one affordable rental property for a single parent family where the parent works and earns the minimum wage. For single people earning the minimum wage, Anglicare found a wonderful 51 affordable rental properties; the vast majority of these were shared accommodation.
Since then Anglicare has put out its 2018 report. Things have only got worse. This April there were 28 rental properties affordable for a couple who were both adults working on the minimum wage. There were zero, none, for single-parent families where the parent works and earns the minimum wage. That is less than the one available last year. However, there is one small plus, with 55 available for single people earning the minimum wage, which is an increase of four. I have not even bothered to list the numbers for people on other forms of social security, because they are all zero.
The reality is that our housing market is failing many in the community. It is not just people on government support. It is also failing low wage workers. It is failing the people that Mr Pettersson talked about in his committee’s inquiries. It is failing the people in insecure work. There is no way they can get into Canberra’s rental market.
There are many things that could be done about this to solve the problem. There are many things that will need to be done. A big one is federal government taxation reform. Many of our problems with housing affordability started with the Howard government’s changes to capital gains tax about 20 years ago. When Peter Costello halved the rate of the capital gains tax, it meant that there was a financial incentive to say, “We don’t really care what it costs to own the house, because when we sell it we will make a motza and we will not have to pay much or any tax on it.” The federal Greens have been pushing for a very long time for negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount to be reformed. I am very pleased that federal Labor finally came on board with some of this at the last federal election. I anticipate that this will be a significant issue in the forthcoming federal election.
Of course, housing affordability is not just a federal government problem. The ACT government needs to do as much as it can. In the last sitting period I talked about public housing, which has been eroding for years as a percentage of the housing stock. We will be able to stabilise that now. I thank the Liberal Party for their support on that motion.
In terms of the federal government, I also mention that an increase to Newstart and other social security payments is well overdue. That is something else that we are going to need to solve housing affordability issues for Australians and Canberrans who are dependent on federal government Centrelink policies.
Looking at what we are debating today, we are now in the situation, as I said, where investors are buying properties purely to benefit from capital gains tax benefits, with no intention of renting them out. You can get the tax benefits without all the hassles of tenants. Of course, to do this, you can easily get a loan from one of Australia’s fine and upstanding major banks.
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