Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

I share the views of the Greens on this issue very strongly, actually. But it is a long ball for the property developers. Some of them are really excellent people, but I would agree that the vast bulk of them fall into an entirely different category. For those that watch late-night television, the story of Juanita Nielsen, need I say more? They just said, 'Oh well, she is holding things up, so get rid of her.' The most prominent people in Australia were involved as property developers. I tread with great caution and I share the views of the Greens on this issue but don't exclude all of them when some of them are really excellent people. If you want to bring down the price of housing then you want a massive flow of housing blocks onto the market. Both in Cairns and in Townsville, I could weep blood. Part of my electorate, Bushland Beach—bushland!—now has five kilometres where you can walk from roof to roof. You will never be able to put in a pot plant. There is not enough room at the edge of the house to put a pot plant or a tree or anything, on either side or at the front or back of the house. Clearly, what they are creating is slum dwellings to make developers rich. You have to say: why did those councils agree to that? I've been around a long time. Where you see clearly a huge amount of smoke, you will find fire, and I just want to cry when I see out there the creation of slums.

But there are good guys who will go out there and give you a thousand blocks of land onto the market at a fairly reasonable, competitive price, and that is where the government is failing completely. They don't understand supply and demand. You are not increasing the supply. No less a person than the Treasurer himself put it perfectly. Affordability is about housing. Housing is about the regulatory impositions upon land. I quote the Treasurer of Australia in his budget speech. Well, I don't see any solutions here. Please, Minister: if you give us a tiny bit of money, we will give you 200,000 blocks in North Queensland for under $40,000, and you can live adjacent to Mission Beach, which for two years in a row has been voted one of the four most beautiful places on earth. We can give you land in that area.

It is a matter of supply and demand, and you are addressing the demand but you're not addressing supply. There is nothing—not a single iota of initiative here—that addresses the issue of supply. I, like my honourable colleague in the Greens over here, would be extremely cynical. I have to say I don't come here to make political points as such, but the Labor Party has an absolutely dreadful history, and I belonged to a party where we weren't exactly great heroes either, so I'll say that in conclusion. We strongly endorse the sentiments expressed.

See this speech in context