Michael Hopkins
speaker
45 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2022
last heard Jul 2022
Michael Hopkins’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
We're looking for everything from new apprentices through to experienced supervisors, project managers, construction managers.
And the most common thing we hear when talking to people about moving to Canberra
is how do I find a house or how do I find an apartment?
Our rental vacancy is very low, so it's very difficult to rent a house or a unit or apartment.
It's probably the number one reason or number one barrier
to prevent people to move to Canberra for work.
Even though we've got lots of jobs on offer, we offer very permanent, safe, secure and well-paid positions here in Canberra, accessing housing is a major challenge for us to overcome.
And that ultimately is going to affect the ACT economy.
If we can't get the workers here that we need to do the work and they're more attracted to work in other parts of Australia, that will ultimately impact the ACT's economy, which is very disappointing.
And that's precisely what we've seen.
So we've seen new developments, particularly new land developments, spring up in the region around the ACT in New South Wales.
And you can quite easily access land within less than an hour's drive from the centre of Canberra, but in New South Wales, where land tends to be more affordable, more available, but it still has all the benefits of being close to Canberra City and the jobs and everything that Canberra has to offer for people.
wanting to move here.
It's really a missed opportunity for the ACT because we would much rather be able to house those people within the ACT and have all of the economic benefits, the taxes and rates that they would pay benefit ACT residents rather than having to force them to move across the border into New South Wales.
Certainly.
And look, we were quite excited this week to hear the announcement from the ACT government that they're going to be investigating the western edge of Canberra for new growth areas, because we do need to be planning these areas many years in advance so that we've got that land supply for two, three, five and even 10 years into the future.
But you're right, these projects and these investigations take a long time.
So given that the ACT government is
both the landowner, the developer, the planning authority, and actually take the land to market.
We see no reason why they couldn't move through this process quite quickly.
Showing 21–40 of 45 · page 2 of 3
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