Demand affordable housing

The Queensland Government’s so-called "affordable housing strategy," signed in July with no community consultation, establishes an Urban Land Development Authority with sweeping powers, including the power to amalgamate land, to acquire land in its own right, and to on-sell their land with development rights to particular private developers.

The justification provided for such sweeping powers being given to the new authority is to speed up approvals. It has long been a complaint of industry that the approval process for development is slow and therefore costly resulting in higher prices to home buyers. The enabling legislation pushed through Parliament, again without any consultation and with unseemly haste, of course strips away some current protections.

Under the new legislation, the Minister can declare areas of land for urban development or as major development areas. In these areas, the Act removes the community’s right to appeal approvals, overrides provisions in local government planning schemes that protect steep slopes, floodplains and waterways and removes restrictions in state legislation designed to protect endangered vegetation and waterways from destruction. It also removes the requirements for assessment with regard to contaminated land, heritage places and many other values.

With these policies, "ecological sustainability" has been abandoned in favour of "growth at any cost" development. Premier Beattie, once seen as a bit of a champion of environmental protection and community participation in the planning process, has, after removing the hard-won environmental gains of his nine years as Premier with this legislation, now handed over the reins to an eager new Premier Anna Bligh.

In response to media earlier this year calling for a population cap, Ms Bligh said that we need more growth "in order to create demand to maintain the jobs of people currently employed in construction." At the same time, the state government also claims that we need more skilled migrants to build the infrastructure needed to cope with the demands caused by Queensland’s population growth (also, no doubt, more taxpayers to pay for these major infrastructure projects). In other words, we have no choice but to grow our population in order to deal with problems caused by past population growth!

Housing affordability is an issue for all of the community and there are many ways to make housing more affordable, not the least of which is to lower the demand. The declaration of land as urban without any regard for the views of existing residents, the costs of infrastructure, the provision of open space or the local constraints to development is a betrayal of everything the Beattie government said that it represented. Now it seems they believe they have no choice but to continue to grow the population. It appears the Queensland government has fallen for the growth lobby’s arguments hook, line and sinker.

By Sheila Davis a member of Sustainable Population Australia

Independent Mayoral candidate calls for root cause of housing unaffordability to be tackled

Media release 3 March 2008
by James Sinnamon : Independent Candidate for Mayor of Brisbane>
2008 Brisbane City Council Election

James Sinnamon, an independent candidate for Lord Mayor of Brisbane, called upon Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to tackle the real cause of housing inflation rather than to apply band-aid measures at the expense of taxpayers.

"When all policy is supposed to be driven by hard economics, it is astonishing that the added demand for housing caused by record high immigration is barely discussed," said Mr Sinnamon.

"Back in 2004 when profits from property investments momentarily slumped, the property sector demanded, and got, from Prime Minister John Howard, record high immigration[1]. As a result, Australia's population has risen by a further 1.2 million in just four years[2], housing costs have hit the stratosphere, and housing repossessions have reached 800 per week with a further 300,000 households at risk with the latest threatened interest rate rise[3]."

"Property investors have got their wish," said Mr Sinnamon, "and the rest of us are paying the price."

"Mr Rudd needs to decide whether he will continue to serve the interests of the property sector or whether he will provide ordinary Australians with affordable housing, but he cannot do both."

Contact phone 0412 319669

For further media releases, visit candobetter.wikispaces.com/Media

Footnotes

1. "She's one in 21 million as Australia comes of age", Sydney Morning Herald, 30 Jun 07 and Australian Bureau of Statistics population clock.

2. An economist representing the real estate industry on Radio Australia's "Australia Talks back" of Wednesday 20 May 2004 said repeatedly that increasing immigration would fix the claimed woes of property investors.

3. House Flu , The Age 24 Feb 2008

by Sheila Davis, Secretary, Sustainable Population Australia - South East Queensland Branch The Queensland Government's so-called "affordable housing strategy", signed in July with no community consultation, establishes an Urban Land Development Authority with sweeping powers, including the power to amalgamate land, to acquire land in its own right, and to on-sell their land with development rights to particular private developers. The justification provided for such sweeping powers being given to the new authority is to speed up approvals. It has long been a complaint of industry that the approval process for development is slow and therefore costly resulting in higher prices to home buyers. The enabling legislation pushed through Parliament, again without any consultation and with unseemly haste, of course strips away some current protections. Under the new legislation, the Minister can declare areas of land for urban development or as major development areas. In these areas, the Act removes the community's right to appeal approvals, overrides provisions in local government planning schemes that protect steep slopes, floodplains and waterways and removes restrictions in state legislation designed to protect endangered vegetation and waterways from destruction. It also removes the requirements for assessment with regard to contaminated land, heritage places and many other values. With these policies, "ecological sustainability" has been abandoned in favour of "growth at any cost" development. Premier Beattie, once seen as a bit of a champion of environmental protection and community participation in the planning process, has, after removing the hard-won environmental gains of his nine years as Premier with this legislation, now handed over the reins to an eager new Premier Anna Bligh. In response to media earlier this year calling for a population cap, Ms Bligh said that we need more growth "in order to create demand to maintain the jobs of people currently employed in construction." At the same time, the state government also claims that we need more skilled migrants to build the infrastructure needed to cope with the demands caused by Queensland?s population growth (also, no doubt, more taxpayers to pay for these major infrastructure projects). In other words, we have no choice but to grow our population in order to deal with problems caused by past population growth! Housing affordability is an issue for all of the community and there are many ways to make housing more affordable, not the least of which is to lower the demand. The declaration of land as urban without any regard for the views of existing residents, the costs of infrastructure, the provision of open space or the local constraints to development is a betrayal of everything the Beattie government said that it represented. Now it seems they believe they have no choice but to continue to grow the population. It appears the Queensland government has fallen for the growth lobby's arguments hook, line and sinker.

ONE in four Wyndham home owners is struggling to cover mortgage repayments every month.

Australian Bureau of Statistics census data for the federal seat of Lalor, which includes Wyndham, have revealed a staggering increase in the number of households experiencing mortgage stress:  those who are paying more than 30 per cent of their gross income in repayments.

All up, 6242 or 27.8 per cent of Lalor households with a mortgage are struggling with their monthly repayments in 2006  an increase of 147.8 per cent since 2001.

Quarterly national figures released by the Housing Industry Association have revealed housing affordability has substantially decreased across Australia within the past 12 months.

The housing affordability index dropped 2.7 per cent in the June quarter  6.5 per cent lower than the same time last year.

Monthly loan repayments on a typical first-home mortgage increased from $2387 to $2506.
Mortgage repayments now account for 30.8 per cent of an average first-homebuyer's income  a 0.8 per centrise on the previous quarter.

"The Australian economy is performing well, yet an increasing number of people are being left behind as the degree of housing stress on  both mortgage holders and renters continued to intensify," HIA managing director Dr Ron Silberg said.

He said affordability was continuing to move in the wrong direction, but there had been no meaningful response from the Federal Government to address the issue.
Federal member for Lalor Julia Gillard criticised the Federal Government's refusal to appoint a minister to tackle housing affordability.
"With so many Wyndham residents losing sight of the great Australian dream, it's shameful that housing is a policy-free zone for the Government," Ms Gillard said.
The Lalor MP said eight consecutive interest rate rises had only exacerbated the problem.
But Sustainable Population Australia Victorian branch vice-president and population and land-use planning sociologist Sheila Newman said Victoria was experiencing a land affordability crisis, rather than a crises in housing affordability.

"The planning system has been tweaked and turbo-charged by the State Government's Melbourne 2030 to drive up demand for land through government-stimulated population growth.

"Victorians were neither adequately informed nor consulted about M2030. The underlying assumption of M2030 is that growth was inevitable, rather than a political decision.

"The politics and policies of engineering growth remained outside the discussion and slow or no growth were not presented as options."

Ms Newman said that by implication of this policy, a socially marginalised class of people had been created in the outer suburbs of Melbourne where they were vulnerable to interest rate hikes and volatile petrol prices.

"Can Australia continue to pay the environmental, affordability and livability consequences for this kind of dog-eat-dog economic?"

Western Metropolitan state Liberal MP Bernie Finn said exorbitant stamp duty was an impost on home buyers and urged the State Government to cut the tax. "Stamp duty adds to the mortgage woes of people who go to the banks with their cap in hand to borrow money," he said. "It is a pure tax grab by the Brumby Government. They should  slash this tax on private ownership."