Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull appears to be ducking responsibility on the issue of housing affordability, Local Government New South Wales (LGNSW) said today.
LGNSW President Keith Rhoades was speaking after the Prime Minister gave an exclusive interview to the Daily Telegraph in which he said councils were to blame for skyrocketing property prices in Sydney.
“You have to feel sorry for the Prime Minister because he is between a rock and a hard place: more affordable housing really means lower property values, and existing home owners don’t want that,” Councillor Rhoades said.
“He knows DAs (development applications) have nothing to do with housing affordability, but at least it diverts attention from calls to scrap the things he is responsible for: negative gearing, tightening rules and enforcement around foreign ownership, the supply of cheap credit.
“The reality is – to quote one of the experts, UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre Director, Bill Randolph – ‘you can’t apply year 10 economic theory to a metropolitan housing market.’
“Ask the economists: nobody has ever shown you can supply enough housing onto a market to make prices fall.
“You can’t build your way to affordability when negative gearing actively encourages investors to drive up prices at the expense of first homebuyers.
“At least the Prime Minister points out that a key culprit of unaffordable housing is the crippling impact of NSW Government’s stamp duty.”
Cr Rhoades also rejected criticism surrounding legal challenges to development applications, which the newspaper claimed had almost doubled the number of cases before the Land and Environment Court in 2016.
“DAs are not taking a long time because councils are trying to slow down the process – delays occur because residents and ratepayers are increasingly unhappy with developers throwing up apartment buildings right next door.
“Families expect to have a say in what goes on in their neighbourhoods and the number of Land and Environment Court challenges is increasing exactly because development is more and more contentious.
“The real question is why the Prime Minister is prepared to sell out ordinary voters and give wealthy property developers free rein to do whatever they like, wherever they like.”
