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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 13 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 3917 ..

Housing-maintenance

MR CORNWELL: Mr Speaker, my question is to the minister for housing, Mr Wood. On Tuesday, in response to my question on reporting and maintenance problems to ACT Housing, you stated:

Mr Speaker, if the processes the former government put in place are not adequate, I will undertake to change them, to see that they are adequate.

The maintenance practices that I was referring to were put in place while you were minister. I refer to a letter from an ACT Housing manager of 31 October 2002 this year. It states:

Please be aware that ACT Housing have now moved towards a total facility management program for maintenance. This now means that housing managers no longer raise your maintenance.

Mr Speaker, could I have leave to table this letter? It is quite straightforward. The address has been removed.

Leave granted.

MR CORNWELL: I present the following paper:

ACT Housing-Total facility management program for maintenance-Copy of letter to ACT Housing tenants from ACT Housing Manager, Woden Tenancy, dated 31 October 2002.

Minister, has ACT Housing advised you of the changed arrangements for this maintenance? If so, when did they do so?

MR WOOD: Mr Speaker, I can add some elaboration. Mr Cornwell gave a long dissertation the other day about all the problems. I will respond in detail to that as well today. In general terms, what Mr Cornwell said confused me. It is pretty simple to seek maintenance on a property. You make a phone call or you write a letter. You can write to me. If people write to you, you can send it to me and it will go through. To my knowledge, it is not hard to make an application for maintenance. That does not mean that maintenance will follow automatically. I am sure some of you opposite know the situation.

Let me give you some detail. It does not go directly to your question, Mr Cornwell, but this will save me reading this out at the end of question time. In response to a report of a smell of sewage at Kelvin Court at Phillip on 16 July, an on-site inspection was arranged and carried out on 14 August. ACT Housing, Transfield Services and the tenant who reported the smell carried out an inspection. There was no evidence of any sewerage problems, and the previously reported smell could not be detected. The situation was monitored, but subsequent visits to the site by ACT Housing staff and Transfield did not detect any smell.

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