The Canberra Times is still pushing the housing crisis on behalf of the govt.
It is nothing more than a thinly veiled setup for selling off school sites, and possibly other high-value, unleased land, to fill govt. coffers. And the CT appears to be providing nothing more than free PR.
The discussion was started at the beginning of 2006, with an ACTPLA forum on ‘what do we do with old school sites’, before the plans to close schools even (theoretically) existed. A group to come up with ‘new ideas’ was set up in August 2006, and it makes its recommendations in March, at the same time the ACT Property Group is ‘consulting’ about what to do with old school sites.
In the meantime, the ACT has gone from having the ‘most affordable housing in Australia’ (The Chronicle, 9 January), to a full-on crisis that the HIA thinks should be addressed immediately by, say, selling off old school sites. As if 30-50 houses in all of Belconnen (1 school, 1 preschool) would make a difference, and as if they would be ‘affordable’. The land in established suburbs is far too valuable for that.
An extra few hundred or even a thousand houses in greenfields areas could make much more difference — if they genuinely wanted to make a difference. The release of Harrison, Forde, other movie stars, more new suburbs, and reducing a few taxes, will have much more impact than anything else they could do.
Just how foolish do they think we are?