18 August 2010
In a recent media interview Federal Housing Minister, Tanya Plibersek, declared that “I don’t think you can expand [urban settlement] forever, and I also think that the type of housing that people want in the future and the type of communities they want to live in aren’t necessarily large houses on large blocks of land far away from services.”
“Some people prefer that style of housing, and there’s plenty of that style of housing available,” she said.
“We certainly don’t build enough houses overall, but the propensity to build larger homes, three, four, five bedroom homes, is disproportionate to the proportion of our population that needs those three, four, five bedroom homes.
“They’re being built because it actually doesn’t cost a builder or developer much extra to put an extra bedroom onto a house.
“That’s one of the things that we need to work with local government and state and territory governments on. Some of the ways that levies for blocks of land are levied just don’t make sense.
“It doesn’t give you the good urban design outcomes and communities that we really want in the future.”
Ms Plibersek emphasised the importance of capital city strategic plans to the Federal Government, expected at the beginning of 2012. However, Ms Plibersek has declared that the shape of housing in a city is “not something that we would ever consider imposing from Canberra.”
The full transcript from the interview with Ms Plibersek on Australian Agenda on Sky News is available here.
