ACT Opposition leader Alistair Coe says the territory government's increase of land tax for foreign home buyers is "contradictory", given Chief Minister Andrew Barr's overseas jaunts to sell the territory to investors.
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However Mr Barr said his trips were to encourage investment that created jobs, not "to spruik buying units in Canberra".
Mr Barr went on several high profile trips last year, leading a delegation of Canberra businesses to Singapore and pitching former public housing sites on Northbourne Avenue to Hong Kong hoteliers.
He even met with the new owners of Hotel Hotel, Ovolo Group, last year to espouse the benefits of the Australian capital.
Reacting to the announcement that the ACT government would increase land tax for foreign investors by 0.75 per cent, Mr Coe questioned the point of Mr Barr's jet-setting.
"I think it's very odd that you would have a situation where Andrew Barr spends hundreds of thousands of dollars visiting China, visiting Singapore and New Zealand and other destinations supposedly trying to attract investment and now comes out with a policy that is specifically there to deter foreign investment," Mr Coe said.
"I think it's absolutely crazy when you have people who want to contribute to our economy, when you have people who want to invest $500,000, $750,000, $1 million, why would you make it harder, but that's exactly what Andrew Barr is doing."
Mr Barr said the new tax would help "rebalance" the market for local buyers, allowing more first home buyers to get a foot in the market.
But Mr Coe said the government had created a housing affordability crisis by drip-releasing land and had other levers available to help fix it..
"The ACT is quite unique, we are of course a city state and not only that we also have a mix of local government and state government responsibilities so whereas other states can't control land supply in the way the ACT government can it seems really weird to me the government actually thinks we have a demand problem in the ACT rather than a supply problem. We should be making it more accessible for people to buy in the ACT, not harder," Mr Coe said.
"It is contradictory and rather than going on jaunt after jaunt he should also be trying to supply more land to the market. The solution is not making it harder for people to invest in the ACT, we should be doing the absolute opposite."
However Mr Barr said the relatively "modest" increase would only affect about 280 properties of the 160,000 in the ACT.
He said his overseas trips were to encourage investment in "job creating sectors of the economy, not passive investments like residential property".
"I don't go overseas to sell unit 4 of 120 London Circuit, I go overseas to attract investment in the ACT economy and job creating industries and if Alistair Coe doesn't realise the difference between those two then he's unfit to lead his party," Mr Barr said.
Mr Barr said the "aggressive" taxation of foreign investors in other jurisdictions like NSW would inevitably push investors into Canberra.
"If we were to not do anything here we would run the risk of seeing local buyers crowded out and that's certainly not what we're looking to do," Mr Barr said.
