Page 815 - Week 03 - Thursday, 25 March 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
Householder Survey
MR HUMPHRIES: My question to the Chief Minister concerns the current householder survey being conducted in the Territory. I note that the last time a householder survey was conducted in the ACT, in June of 1991, the results were not published until February of 1992, about eight months after the survey was actually conducted.
Mr Kaine: And after the election.
MR HUMPHRIES: And also, incidentally, just after the ACT election of February 1992. That survey showed that people were unwilling to pay higher taxes and charges to support health and education but were willing to do so for better policing. Can the Minister assure the Assembly that the current survey has not been designed to avoid any nasty surprises for the Government and, as a result, will be available for public perusal reasonably quickly after the survey is finished?
MS FOLLETT: Madam Speaker, I can certainly assure the Assembly that the Government will be making use of the contents of the survey and that people's returns are treated very seriously. I think that Mr Humphries has probably taken a bit too much of a broad brush to his interpretation of the previous householder survey. Nevertheless, it is a fact that the results of the survey will be published, although it takes quite some time to put together the information from over 20,000 individual returns. It will be done as quickly as is possible, Madam Speaker. However, even before the entire document can be produced, the Government will be using the information that we get from that survey, because it does take quite some time to actually prepare the report into a publishable format and, of course, to get it printed and out into shopfronts and so on. We will do it as quickly as we possibly can.
Far from the survey being designed to avoid any nasty surprises for the Government, the survey has been designed in order for the Government and our agencies to know what the community thinks of the services that are being offered; how we might target those services better; and how we might make better use of what resources we do have in a whole range of service delivery areas. So, it is a genuine consultation effort. It is one which we will be taking very seriously.
Housing Trust Tenants
MR MOORE: Madam Speaker, my question, which is in accordance with standing order 116, is directed to Mr Greg Cornwell as the member in charge of a motion on the notice paper dealing with the Housing Trust. Mr Cornwell, I refer to your press release of 22 February in which you refer to some Housing Trust tenants as an "uncivilised minority of social miscreants". I put that statement in context. Mr Cornwell said that "decent Housing Trust people - who form the great majority of Trust tenants - have had enough of the social justice experiments with a basically uncivilised minority of social miscreants". I ask Mr Cornwell: What is your definition of "social miscreants"? Does it include people who are well off themselves and who are prepared to make a scapegoat of those who are economically and culturally disadvantaged by pointing the finger and marginalising them, Nazi-style, from a position of privilege and power? Where do you think they should live if the Housing Trust follows your advice and turfs them out?
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .