Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 5 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1620 ..

MR HARGREAVES (11.36): I rise to add my voice to that of Ms Tucker, who has made a number of hugely valid points about the nature of our public housing tenants and the responsibility we have to assist in giving those people a decent quality of life. We are all entitled to have a secure roof over our head. It has been well documented that the first step in making sure that people have a decent quality of life is to make sure that they have a home, somewhere to live. I have to say that since I have been in this place, some five years now, about 35 per cent of my constituent work has been around housing issues, priority placement issues, maintenance issues and just plain getting on the list.

In this motion the Assembly calls on the minister to ensure that the rights and obligations of ACT Housing tenants are protected, upheld and enforced. I have to congratulate Mrs Burke on bringing the attention of the Assembly to the wonderful things that the minister has been doing. I express my appreciation of that from the absolute bottom of my heart. The minister has been doing some pretty decent things, firstly, in opposition as shadow housing minister and, latterly, as minister. I will run through a couple of them.

It was this minister who introduced into the system five specialist housing managers. Those specialist housing managers are all about making the system easy for those tenants. They are all about helping people out when they get into difficulty. They are not part of another layer of bureaucracy. These people are actually mobile; they are out in the field helping people out. I am getting cynical looks from across the chamber. Just hold your thoughts for a second as I am going to give you a couple of examples of how that works.

A couple of people that I became very well acquainted with after January 18 live in an area of Kambah which was thickly forested with Housing premises before the fire went through and levelled the lot. Those people were Housing tenants. The next day the minister for housing was down there to make sure that they were all right. Very soon thereafter the Housing people themselves were down there, up to their knees in ashes, making sure that the tenants were looked after and relocated as quickly as possible. The people whose houses were damaged but not destroyed were comforted and were given assurances that their houses would be fixed.

I attended a meeting of 36 of those residents. All of them had high praise for the assistance they got from Housing, all of them. If people doubt my word on that, I would be happy to convene another meeting of those 36 tenants so that they can tell those people themselves.

Another example in roughly the same area is of a gentleman and his wife who are of Asian background and for whom English is not the second language, but the third. To identify their native Asian language would be to identify them, and I am not going to do that, but French is their second language and English is their third. These people are pensioners and they had difficulty in understanding the rental rebate regimes and the rest of the bureaucracy and got behind in their rent. What did Housing do about that? They sent an officer to the home of these people and they sat down and worked it through.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .