Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness Mark Parton is calling on the ACT Labor-Greens government to stop driving rental prices up through market-distorting legislation, taxation and regulation.

In a motion to be put forward in the Legislative Assembly today, Mr Parton will also call on the government to release more land for detached housing and to rule out a two-year rent freeze.

“Canberra consistently has the highest rents in Australia along with a very low vacancy rate,” Mr Parton said.

“The most recent CoreLogic figures show Canberra was the second most expensive capital city to rent in at $674 per week for all properties, well above the national average of $570 per week.

“This situation is a direct result of long-term ACT government policies which includes high property rates and land tax regimes along with the tangled web of difficult and costly legislative change in the residential tenancies space.

“It is absolutely astounding that the ACT Greens recently proposed, through a number of cabinet ministers to freeze rents in the territory for two years.

“This proposal is dangerous and would disincentivise the supply of rental accommodation and exacerbate the Territory’s homelessness crisis.”

Mr Parton said recent land ballots that have seen thousands of Canberrans vying for just a couple hundred blocks of land shows the ACT Labor-Greens government is choking supply.

“The Canberra Liberals have continually called on the Barr-Rattenbury government to release more land as recent ballots have confirmed there is a dramatic undersupply of land for detached housing in the ACT.

“The Labor-Greens government criticises the Liberals as the party hellbent on increasing the cities footprint and yet they’re the ones who are pushing to extend the border to accommodate the Ginninderry development.

“they’re the ones sitting on many thousands of hectares of land on the west edge of Molonglo while refusing to tell Canberrans what they intend to do with it,” Mr Parton concluded.