Editor’s view: Health emergency is real

The Palaszczuk government might be doing well when it comes to its response to the housing crisis, but things are getting seriously bad in our state’s hospitals – and alarmingly quickly, according to the latest data.

The Palaszczuk government might be doing well when it comes to its response to the housing crisis, but things are getting seriously bad in our state’s hospitals – and alarmingly quickly, according to the latest data.

That data shows that in the last six months of last year, there were 10,195 Queenslanders who needed to be admitted to hospital but had to wait more than 24 hours inside the emergency department.

That equates to an average of about 50 people every day – up from an average of 34 in the previous year, and 10 in the 2015-16 financial year. Yep, you read that right: through the term of this Labor government, the number of people who turned up to an emergency department but then had to wait what is a totally unacceptably long time to be admitted has somehow increased almost six-fold.

Something is wrong, and there is no evidence that Health Minister Yvette D’Ath is doing anything nearly enough about it. The crisis in housing demanded a whole of government response. On health, they just shrug their shoulders.

Queensland Health Minister Yvette D'Ath. Picture: Kevin Farmer

Right call finally made on land tax

The state government’s plan to give a range of exemptions from taxes and charges to investors in new build-to-rent developments is a good thing. Promising developers a 50 per cent cut to their land tax bill for any new build where at least one in every 10 units is set aside for “affordable housing” is an even better thing.

These are examples of ways the government can assist the private sector to do the heavy lifting, rather than trying to fix every problem directly itself through the spending of taxpayer funds. They are also both examples of ideas that have been proven in other markets to work.

The move to exempt investors from foreign investor land tax and duty surcharges is important when you consider the global interest there will be in our city and state as the host of the Olympics and Paralympics in 2032. Now is the time to sending a very clear message that we welcome investment.

There is a small challenge that has been raised with the half-price land tax for developments with affordable housing built in, and that is that some investors – such as pension funds and the like – have rules that make it hard for them to invest in buildings with apartments rented at under-market value. This is a reality that we urge Treasurer Cameron Dick to work through with the property sector to ensure that this excellent idea is not wasted.

But overall we welcome these moves, and acknowledge that the government’s response to the housing crisis has been solid – if a little slow. It has certainly at least earned a solid pass mark since The Courier-Mail spurned it into action last September with our Hitting Home series. And that is important. Because the series itself was sparked by a seriously damning auditor-general’s report a few months previously that had exposed massive issues with the way the Palaszczuk government has been overseeing its core responsibility of public housing.

Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick. Picture: Dan Peled / NCA NewsWire

The report not only revealed no modelling or forecasting was being done to determine future social housing needs, but that there was absolutely no consistency over how tenancies were being awarded. It found 8430 homes overseen by the department had two or more bedrooms that were actually spare, and that there was no process in place to identify tenants who could be moved to the private market. The report also worryingly revealed that the government’s plan to construct 6365 new homes by 2025 would not even keep up with demand.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s response was to boast on social media that her government’s spend on social housing was the highest ever in Queensland – conveniently ignoring both the reality of inflation and also those serious warnings made by the auditor-general.

But social housing is only one piece of the puzzle. The government housing stock is only 3 per cent of the state’s total, meaning that the direct levers it can pull will only ever do so much. This crisis is instead being fuelled by a combination of higher property prices and interest rates making purchasing harder for more people at the same time as we have an influx of new arrivals – fuelling record low vacancy rates and massive spikes in rental prices.

That the government has finally realised that among the necessary responses is a cut to land tax charges on developments rather than to hit landlords who also own properties interstate is something that deserves recognition. And so, well done.