Page 1768 - Week 06 - Thursday, 30 July 2020
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I would like to echo the Chief Minister’s comments about his government’s commitment to protecting Kowen and the area of Tuggeranong west of the Murrumbidgee. The government is committed to reducing urban sprawl and protecting our surrounding landscape from development. Our planning policies and strategies are achieving that fine balance between accommodating the projected growth of our city and protecting those elements and characteristics that Canberra residents value so highly.
MR COE (Yerrabi—Leader of the Opposition) (3.54): In closing, what we have heard from the government today is that, in actual fact, everything that has happened in the ACT has been by design—that the prices that have been set, the shortage of supply, the profits that have been raked in and the hardship that has been caused is all by design; that this is the culmination of 19 years of strategy, and they are standing by it.
As Mr Parton said, how is it that they can look at themselves and say that they are happy with this situation? What we have heard today from the Labor Party and the Greens is that they are very satisfied with the housing situation in the ACT. They are very satisfied with median rents of $575. They are very satisfied with median house prices of $819,000. They are very satisfied with the mix of houses, townhouses and units.
We on this side are not satisfied, and we will keep doing everything that we can to stick up for the Canberra families that are doing it tough because of Labor’s policy. Labor’s policy is about gouging Canberrans. It is about having LDA or SLA profit margins at 78 per cent. It is about squeezing Canberra families as much as possible—in fact, so much that they are forced to go over the border. This government is happy. It is happy to lose those people over the border. It is happy to lose aspirational families over the border. It is happy to drive them out of this jurisdiction.
What this Labor-Greens government have created, what they have created by design, is absolutely wrong. We know that the ACT government’s own survey by Winton housing demonstrated that 84 per cent of people expressed a preference to live in a stand-alone dwelling. Fourteen per cent wanted a medium density alternative—townhouses, dual occupancy or a small unit block. Only two per cent of people wanted a unit in a block higher than two storeys.
We want to have genuine choice in the ACT. There is a role for apartments, but there is also a very strong and growing role for townhouses and stand-alone houses. We will keep sticking up for the people that are doing it tough. We will keep sticking up for the family that is crammed into a two-bedroom apartment in Tuggeranong. We will keep sticking up for the single mum who is trying to find an affordable townhouse but cannot because every time she turns up to an open home there are three dozen other people desperately trying to get that same property.
This is the Canberra that they have created. This is the Canberra that they are responsible for, and this is what we will change.
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