All bets are off as Greens tout housing takeover of Eagle Farm racecourse

“Every suburb needs more affordable homes, but our first major project would be bringing the Eagle Farm racecourse into public hands, transforming the site over time into public green space, housing, schools, services and facilities.”

To pay for the acquisition, Sriranganathan said a Greens-led council would take on more debt.

“The Greens aren’t afraid to borrow money to invest in long-term assets like well-designed, affordable homes,” he said.

“It’s better for governments to borrow money to fund housing, rather than expecting ordinary residents to take on bigger and bigger mortgages.”

Sriranganathan said such an influx of residents – the Greens estimated about 10,000 would live in the precinct – should prompt the Queensland government to duplicate the Doomben train line, which would allow trains at nearby Ascot station every 15 minutes, seven days a week.

“The LNP and Labor housing plan is to give tax cuts to big developers and hope they start building, but that won’t work,” Sriranganathan said.

“Big developers are already sitting on prime sites across the city, but they’re deliberately not building homes in order to artificially restrict supply and keep prices and rents sky-high.”

While the Sriranganathan had floated the idea about six months ago, it had not officially formed part of the Greens’ election policy platform until Tuesday’s announcement.

The policy was provided to media on an embargoed basis, meaning comment was unable to be sought from other parties before publication.

But after the idea was first floated, Brisbane Racing Club chairman Neville Bell said converting the historic racecourse to high density housing was “100 per cent not an option”.

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“One hundred and fifty-eight years of racing tradition is here at Eagle Farm and the government heritage citation over the whole property prevents anything else happening here bar horse racing,” he told Nine News last August.

Labor council opposition leader Jared Cassidy said affordable housing needed to be spread across Brisbane.

“We don’t want to just see a concentration in one location like the Greens have proposed, or in no locations like the LNP have proposed,” he said in August.

And, in January, LNP campaign spokeswoman Fiona Cunningham said motorists would pay the price for Greens policies, including the Eagle Farm resumption, as road projects would be wound back.

“The Greens’ road funding cuts will be used to pay for their growing list of big spending promises,” she said.

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