Whether taking on developers hell-bent on destroying the Coast’s natural appeal or a Prime Minister indifferent to the plight of the poor, Bill Hoffman has never been one to mince his words. Bill’s been a journalist for 32 years, 29 of those on the Coast. Love him or hate him, he'll get you blogging. Government land release is flawed
| Bill Hoffman
On April 30 the leader of the Opposition in the Queensland Parliament Lawrence Springborg put Question on Notice 685 to Premier Anna Bligh.
“Will she list the number of public servants whose jobs are dedicated to media or public relations”.
Ms Bligh, when she replied, went into a long justification for the need for the 366.5 souls, paid for with our taxes, who work feverishly to craft the spin that flows into the offices of news organisations every day.
The Department of Infrastructure and Planning has 24.3 equivalent full time employees involved in that task.
Last week I engaged without success in two days of email and telephone contact with members of this battalion of foot soldiers in an attempt to determine the exact intent and detailed application of the government’s Orwellian-titled Queensland Housing Affordability Strategy.
I had hoped to share on this page the exchange of correspondence but its length would have required, even if serialised over a period weeks, more space than is available to me.
Suffice to say I received no logical justification for the government’s decision to ride roughshod over the new Sunshine Coast Counciland its mandate to bring growth back in line with the national average and to make this region a model for sustainability.
What I did receive was a whole lot of malarky about how the fast-tracking of the approval of greenfield sites for development would correct a supply imbalance and put downward pressure on price.
Apart from the fact that there are already thousands of approved ready-to-develop blocks of land on the Sunshine Coast that aren’t being developed, there seems to be no-one who believes – except perhaps the government – that this initiative will make land cheaper here.
Certainly there appears to be no mechanism that ties land approved by the process to any requirement on the part of developers to release land for sale within a specified timeframe.
The only requirement is on council to somehow issue approvals within 12 months for land that will eventually house 75,000 people.
The relevant minister, Paul Lucas, has said he would “take action” against companies that “landbank” their approvals but I have yet to receive a response to questions asked last Thursday as to exactly what that action would be nor the government’s definition of the “landbanking” that would trigger it.
Housing isn’t just unaffordable because developers of approved blocks only release them to market when they can get a maximum return for their investment.
And no-one who bought at the height of the recent boom would want a government-induced glut to bring the value of their asset below the level of their mortgage.
Coast mayor Bob Abbot wonders why the government isn’t looking at affordable housing models used in other parts of the world.
He suggests as worthy of study a scheme now in place in Britain where families can share equity with an investor so that they may have to only assume responsibility for 70 per cent of the cost and then share any capital gain in the future.
Mr Abbot has also suggested a study into state/local government/developer partnerships to build banks of homes for release to the rental market at 15 per cent under what’s now being charged.
Sensible proposals to which there has been no response.
Instead there is just one “housing affordability” initiative lacking in any detail of how it will work other than to demand the impossible of our newly-elected council.
It’s an iniative that fails to address the very real challenges of peak oil, escalating energy costs and climate change.
It ignores the will of voters at the state-enforced amalgamation local government elections and appears to have only one immediate effect, the eventual improved capitalisation in a stagnant real estate market of the assets of a small group of big companies.
It also ignores the realities of the market place.
The City Futures Research Centre at the University of NSW, which this week released a report into housing affordability in Sydney found the tax regime plays a critical role.
Professor Bill Randolph was quoted in online media reports yesterday as saying:
“My view is that there needs to be long-term changes to the taxation system to reduce over-investment in housing. That would involve a review of capital gains tax and negative gearing, amongst others … but there is no sign the Government will do that yet."
Nor is there likely to be.
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Recent Comments
The Development lobby groups on the other hand have come up with the much more "simple" alternative Housing Affordability strategy of forcing prices down by releasing lots more land for development.
Community and Council vs the Development lobby. Which does this Government choose to support?
What streets will be rezoned for infill development? What densities will be allowed? Now we are advised that the Regional Plan will be reviewed with a view to increased numbers to be accomodated. WHERE?.
All the time we are asked to comment on these proposals without decent information on how the changes will effect us. If the State Government has plans to rezone areas for high density living then tell us WHERE.
You can't tell me that if the coalition (and I use the term loosely) was in power, the same kind of thing wouldn't be happening. I think it's time for a reality check people - thousands of people are moving to Queensland and they want to live in a nice place.
Many times I have been suggesting joint housing projects where council and government provide the land by lease and purchasers build the house thereby giving each some ownership and profit for later. This is similar to housing commission but different in that the government do not build the property and thereby reducing the risk of those boring estates that have popped up in the UK and caused so much problems.
But for this debate on available land, usage, etc, I wonder if you or any of the bloggers here read the story about Noosa Civic Business precinct contained in the Community section of this site (http://www.thedaily.com.au/news/2008/jun...). There is a proposal to take some residential land and make it commercial and the applications have already been identified as outside the town plan so why is council considering it?
Around 20 years ago during my brief stint in the real estate industry the then state govt. asked agents around the coast to submit vacant land for proposed govt. housing. Maybe some of the resources used for govt. media positions could be used to build lower rent housing-(say 300 positions x say $50,000 income= $15 million) and still have plenty of media bods to go round.
I am sure the conscience of most (all) developers doesn't stretch to the lower socio-economic end of the market and something economical will need to be done or we will end up with this disenfranchised group camping in parks or cars all over the place.
Some Labor mob they've turned out to be- Beattie failed us and Bligh is looking down the same road!
Where are they living now...what's wrong with them staying there?
I know canberra was a bottomless pit into which federal money was thrown, but surely a similar plan would have been created forty years ago for our little bit of australia?? and if the planning is being done on the hop (as it seems to be) shouldn't the governments say whoa - lets set down a forty year plan of which suburbs get built where and when
If Bill wasn't able to extract any details it is probably because there aren't any.
The Government media release called the development industry's bluff on housing affordability, and the development industry did what the Government knew it would do - squealed that fast tracking their DAs won't fix it after all.
That was probably the way the spin doctors hoped the story would go in the first place. It might have if the local media weren't so intent on doing the Opposition's job for it. We might have had some mention that the Premier's much-misquoted media release said "But governments can't do it all alone and we can only bring these sites forward if the necessary infrastructure is in place... Now we need to work with the industry to deliver these sites ahead of time. They will also need to demonstrate how they plan to deliver the transport options, road upgrades, water and energy needs for these areas."
It looks like Bill has been able to get out of the Mayor everything that he has to say about the issue, but got no substantiation of the popular theory that the Council is to be sidelined from its DA processing role.
Current and future population growth here is hard enough to deal with already, but what is worrying about this new twist is that if people are convinced that we face a sudden overwhelming population surge they may start caring less about what appeals to them about this place and more about emergency employment schemes - and creating new industrial suburbs in the hinterland really would play into speculative developer's hands.
The final lines talk of an ‘over investment in housing’, so that means there’s far too many privately owned properties on the open market to rent and therefore the rental market is flooded and rents have come down? What dribble.
I keep asking Bill any other suggestions to address the issue?
No that’s right, that’s not your job. Your job is just to criticise. But wait there, what’s the opposition doing? Have they got a policy on homelessness and housing affordability? This is after all one of the major issues facing Australian families.
No I don’t think they have a solution either. Just like Bill they say what shouldn’t be done! No solutions to be offered just criticisms, that sells papers and makes the opposition and alternative government. Or does it?
Perth was this size in the mid 1980's and had train lines, an efficient bus service run by the government, 3 universities, 3 large hospitals; and high rises that were more than 12 stories in their CBD etc.
We will also be the size of the current gold coast by this time. So I look forward to travelling up/back on a 8 lane Highway or being able to catch a train into Brisbane CBD as they have. Now when did the gold coast get this infrastructure? Oh yes when the GG was about our current size! And what percent of people now travel from the GG to work in the Brisbane area every day-10,000's . Now add the tourist population in peak times!
But I have a practical solution- I won't be living here then.
the design is for brisbane to stretch from tweed in the south to tewantin in the north and toowoomba in the west. Why the fascination with the letter "T" I don't know - maybe sesame street was on and hosted by the letter "T" when the planner responsible first decided he'd become a planner???
One story said that nationally we have developed a chronic housing shortage. New home construction was trailing our record population growth by 30,000 homes per year.
The second story, immediately underneath, said that housing prices nationally have suffered a record price slump.
Here we have a chronic national shortage of housing accompanied by a record national price slump. The more that I hear about property market dynamics and its possible ramifications for housing affordability, the more I wonder if our property experts are missing something.