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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 8 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 2536 ..
The subject matter of the question is why Mr Humphries did not provide the documents to-
MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order, and I do not uphold your reference in terms of being concise.
MR HUMPHRIES: I will take on notice from Mr Corbell the question of why my department did not release the information he sought under his FOI request.
MS TUCKER: My question to the Minister for Urban Services, Mr Smyth, relates to maintenance work conducted by Totalcare for ACT Housing at Northbourne flats from March to November last year. As a result of the process of communication with tenants regarding the manner in which that work was conducted, a tenant sought redress through the Residential Tenancies Tribunal. In its decision handed down on 31 July, the Residential Tenancies Tribunal found:
... the manner in which ACT Housing/Totalcare gave notice to the residents in Northbourne Flats was very far from adequate. The conduct of ACT Housing is evidence of a high degree of disregard for the needs and feelings of the ACT Housing tenants, or, evidence of an incompetent administration. Perhaps it is of both.
Minister, my office has received other complaints from tenants who feel they are regarded as an irrelevance or nuisance to ACT Housing and its contractors. In light of the damming analysis from the Residential Tenancies Tribunal of ACT Housing's regard for tenants in this case, can you advise the Assembly of the procedures presently in place, or that you will put into place, to assure that tenants are treated with consideration and respect when work on or around their homes is found necessary?
MR SMYTH: We deal with an enormous number of tenants every year and, of course, there may be cases where we do not do as best we can. I always insist that we look after our tenants and all our customers, and the government insists on the highest level of quality across all the things that we do.
Ms Tucker clearly refers to section 55 of the Retail Tenancies Act. We are working to make sure that we maintain our properties as best we can. What we do know is that we have a large number of properties that are now old or out of date. To make sure that the $30 million a year that we spend on maintenance is best spent and goes as far as we can make it go, we are moving towards total facilities management, which will be a totally integrated program instead of an ad hoc approach to facilities management. We believe we will get better value for our money out of the $30 million, that it will go further and that it will achieve better results. But at the same time we will also insist on better service from those that provide that service.
MS TUCKER: Mr Speaker, I ask a supplementary question. Minister, have you written, or will you now undertake to write, to the tenants of Northbourne flats and apologise for the uncaring and disrespectful manner in which the work was undertaken?
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