Page 1471 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 June 2007
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MR HARGREAVES: I have told this—
Mrs Burke: You have changed the criteria and now they are homeless.
MR HARGREAVES: For God’s sake, Mr Speaker—protection, please!
MR SPEAKER: Order, Mrs Burke! You asked the minister a question. Please listen to his answer in silence.
MR HARGREAVES: Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Mrs Burke says that there are thousands languishing on the waiting list. Let me say that the priority housing people—these are the people who are in absolute dire need—numbered 21 as at 4 June and the average waiting time for people in priority housing is 40 days. This is not thousands of people languishing on the waiting list. What a picture Mrs Burke paints! I am happy to table these two documents if she so desires. She may not have them in her scrapbook of confused utterings. I will quote again what she said. She said:
We now have an estimated 500 taxpayer-funded public houses sitting there empty …
There are not 500 and she knows it. I have answered that question here before. She does not know the difference between spare bedroom capacity and bricks and mortar. She shows her ignorance and frightens the horses yet again. She says there are thousands of people on the waiting list. But what does she say in her press release? She said that there were 1,050. When I went to school, 1,050 was not many thousands of people languishing anywhere.
Mrs Burke has got it wrong again. She has been sprung and she has not got the good grace to stand up in this place and admit that she has got it wrong. She has made a complete and absolute goose of herself. All she has to do now is put out a press release saying, “Sorry, people of Canberra, yet again I get the goose of the week award. I got it wrong.” This is either blatant confusion on the part of a shadow minister who should be ashamed of herself, or it is mischievous, in which case she should be ashamed of herself. In either case, Mrs Burke ought to be thoroughly and completely ashamed of herself.
MRS BURKE: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. Minister, how many properties are actually standing vacant at this time?
MR HARGREAVES: The information on the number of vacant properties as at 4 June 2007 is that there were routine vacancies, which are just vacancies, of 94—this is not thousands; properties awaiting demolition, seven; of properties awaiting and undergoing redevelopments for allocation there are 186; of properties awaiting or undergoing upgrading and refurbishment there are 33; and there are nine properties waiting to be sold. We have recently purchased three that have not got people in them just yet, and one is being reviewed, and there are 11 new vacant properties—a total, including that, of 344. If you take the redevelopments out of that, there are 158. We have a gross vacancy rate of 2.97.
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