Page 2979 - Week 08 - Thursday, 15 August 2019
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who look at doing that. It simply will not work if it is a very short, time-limited scheme, as it is at present.
Moving on, more positively, the Greens support the development of the wellbeing indicators. We believe that balancing social, economic and environmental outcomes, including climate change impact analysis and poverty, and gender and disability impact analysis, are integral to the wellbeing indicators. Thus we really support them. For the wellbeing indicators work to truly have an effect on Canberra, they have to be there for the long term. There is no point having them for a year or two and then saying, “No, we’ll do something else.” If they are to work, there has to be community and tripartisan support.
I know the government has done some work in consulting with the community and that it is one of the engagements that is up on the your say website, which is really good. But it is important, as I said, to have tripartisan support. There is a possibility that at some stage the Liberal Party will be the government, and I would like to see engagement on the wellbeing indicators so that they can also feel, and everybody here can feel, that these are a reasonable reflection of what this community wants, so that they will be ongoing, and not something that is partisan and belongs to one particular party. That is why the estimates committee’s recommendation 22 was:
… recommends that the ACT Government include all Members of the Legislative Assembly in the development of the wellbeing indicators.
Once the indicators have been developed, the public officials will need to be trained in how to use them.
The other thing that the government either has not put its mind to or has not put its mind publicly to as yet is: what will the government do in the event that different indicators are going in different directions? There could well be a policy which works well for one indicator and has a negative impact on another indicator, or potentially has unintended consequences for certain groups or for the environment, or creates climate pressures. How will the different indicators be balanced against each other if it appears that one helps something and one hinders something else? The government clearly has competing priorities. And how are the wellbeing indicators going to compete with each other? (Second speaking period taken.)
Moving on to the lease variation charge, of course we welcome the first simplification of the lease variation charge as a result of the review which followed the 2017 Greens motion. We are disappointed that the main issue of the lease variation charge considerations, which was the impact of charges on residential redevelopment, has been pushed back. It is obviously currently still in the too-hard basket.
I am also very pleased about the introduction of the 25 per cent lease variation charge remission for registered community housing providers, which will commence on 1 October, to encourage the development of more affordable rental housing. This is budgeted to cost $200,000 a year for the first three years, but, curiously, zero in 2022-23. I do not know what it is, but I certainly hope that we will still have
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