Page 1762 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 May 2005
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We have been talking about a quota of affordable housing in that City West area. What is one of the big motivations for us going down there? It is student housing. These people usually cannot afford the sort of accommodation those of us in this chamber enjoy. Most of us here in this chamber, I understand, are home purchasers; some of us are renters. But we get to choose that; these people do not, often. We have to understand those people who are sleeping rough and who are picked up—single men usually, so I am told. What do we do for them? We could go through all of these options. Dr Foskey says there is a chronic lack of housing options. At its very worst, we actually put them up in the backpackers hotel across the road. We also put them in caravan parks around town, as a stopgap to stop them from freezing and dying in the night under the shrubbery at the rear of the Legislative Assembly building. So I do not accept this argument that there is a chronic lack of housing options. I accept the argument that there are people out there who are in genuine need and that perhaps we can do some more to help them. I accept that, but I do not accept that there is a chronic lack of housing options.
Dr Foskey says that we need a body to investigate the various schemes. We have one already; it is called Housing ACT. It is populated by people who are experts in housing matters. I would single out for mention, for example, David Collett, who is a member of the staff of Housing ACT. It is he who has provided a vision for our multiunit complex situation with regard to some of the older pieces of infrastructure that we have that Mrs Burke delights in standing outside and screaming blue murder about. The record of Housing ACT in turning over the properties, in predicting how much will be returned on those properties at auction, is second to none in this town. As it happens, even the illustrious Peter Blackshaw does not have as good a record as Housing ACT does.
The affordable housing task force concluded its work in December of 2002 and the government maintains a strong commitment to the ongoing implementation of agreed recommendations. As will be detailed later, the ACT is also involved in interjurisdictional forums to collaboratively address housing affordability issues at a national level. On that issue, I do not need another little committee created to advise the government on where we should go. What we need is an engagement with the people out there who are dealing with services on the ground.
Mrs Burke: Action.
MR HARGREAVES: “Action” says Mrs Burke—and action, Mrs Burke, you have seen and you have had. The only problem is that the last two you did not get invited to. I am sorry about that, but I was not doing the inviting. The first one was the tenant summit, talking about the affordability of rental accommodation in this town. I noted some of the views that came out of that. I convened another summit of people talking about rental issues, tenant issues, just the other day. I would prefer to talk to tenants, to low-income earners and to those groups that advocate on their behalf, such as ACTCOSS, Shelter and a range of other NGOs and organisations. I would rather talk with them about issues and how to solve them by bringing them together in an issues-based forum. When you do that, you do not end up creating yet another strategic plan that gets thought about; you come up with a clear identification of the issue and, hopefully, some clear solutions that can be brought into action pretty well straightaway. That is where we are heading, and I reject the idea of having yet another committee to advise yet another minister on this.
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