Labor Greens Government shuns Canberra Liberals policy action to address rental affordability crisis

It’s crystal clear that Labor and the Greens are all talk and no walk on making sure Canberra renters can live affordably, with the Government voting down Canberra Liberals’ moves to examine serious policy initiatives and address the ACT’s rental crisis, in the Legislative Assembly today.

Last week, the Canberra Liberals floated a range of serious policy initiatives aimed at addressing rental affordability, several of which included working with community housing providers (CHPs).

“We asked the Government to look into these initiatives, believing they could go a significant way to addressing rental stress for many Canberra families, and moved a motion in the Assembly accordingly," Shadow Minister for Housing Mark Parton said today.

"In a blatant political move, the Government threw our motion out the window.

“It’s like they’ve thought, ‘we can’t have these sorts of policies being suggested by the Canberra Liberals, we can’t let them have the credit for this’.

“It’s not about that, it’s not about politics, it’s about the Government investigating policy to help those Canberrans who are struggling the most.”

The initiatives included, calling on the Labor Greens Government to:

• Investigate shared equity arrangements – where the Government provides land for CHPs to provide housing, while maintaining an ownership stake.
• Investigate rent supplementation lease arrangements – where the Government would undertake bulk auctions of long-terms leases to CHPs. The supplement would provide an incentive for institutional investment partnerships with CHPs.
• Immediately extend lease durations currently let out to CHPs by Housing ACT. This would allow long-term certainty for CHPs to borrow and grow.
• Consider more extensive land tax exemptions and rates rebates for landholders leasing to CHPs.
• Investigate a NSW style land tax threshold where the tax is only paid on the value of the land over a certain amount.
• Reassess the current land release regime to determine whether supply is meeting demand.

“Labor and the Greens obviously don’t care. For all the talk they go on with about helping the little guy, helping the vulnerable family, today demonstrated they just don’t care about solving rental and housing affordability in Canberra,” Mr Parton concluded.