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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 5 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1619 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I strongly opposed Mr Wood's attempts at one point to evict a particular family who were, apparently, bad tenants. That was the language coming from government at that point. I rejected that language because I knew that four children were going to be homeless out of that eviction. As a society, what sense is there in creating such disadvantage for young people in Canberra who have been traumatised during their childhood by a system that has not supported them and whom we will have to deal with later as they become adults? That family needed support and I will continue to argue for that support. Support is there to a degree from this government. New initiatives have been set up by this government to assist those sorts of people, families who need assistance or individuals who need assistance, but I do not think that there is enough of that at the moment.

We do need to have a positive approach to community development being taken by this government and every other government in dealing with the social issues in public housing. As I said, the environment has become more complex, due to the reduction by past governments of public housing stock and the targeting of housing of last resort. It is obvious that there will be complications with attaching stigma to public housing tenants. That is why I am also expressing the need to be cautious about the language that is used in this sort of debate.

Mr Wood talked about debt and I want to respond to that before I forget. Housing does deal with debt in certain ways that are supposed to assist tenants to meet their obligations. However, I think we do need to have a greater preventative approach taken to assisting tenants when they get into financial difficulties. There is a good program on that at the Belconnen Remand Centre. I think that it is called the preventing eviction program. From memory, it is part time and it is really just focusing on the issue at the crisis point. While that is good, it is not enough. We need to be having that sort of support earlier in the process.

The same thing applies to families or individuals who are in difficulty with drugs or whatever. Mental health is another one. I have taken a number of calls from people who are very concerned about the behaviour of a neighbour who has a serious mental illness. Let's call it that; let's not call them unsavoury elements or problem tenants. That person may also have a drug problem and we would have dual diagnosis issues. These are the people we are usually talking about. We in this place have to recognise that and get services in to support them. That means having more outreach workers for people with mental illness, it means providing more support for the people with drug problems and it means providing them with somewhere else to inject drugs.

I acknowledge that there have been some initiatives on that in this budget, but not enough. I am sorry, there are still not enough outreach workers and there are not enough drug and alcohol support workers. Winnunga Nimmityjah is still without real funding after this budget. One of the things that I am extremely upset about this budget is that that well-recognised need has not been addressed. That is a housing issue as well. As we all know, you cannot separate the social issues from the housing issues. That is the point I want to make on this issue. I support this motion. It means that pretty well every other minister in this place has to be involved and should be responding because it requires putting those fundamental social supports in place.

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