Page 952 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 25 February 2009
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MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Smyth!
MR HARGREAVES: You are so boring. You are a professional bore.
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr Smyth! Mr Hargreaves! Mr Hargreaves, ignore the interjection by Mr Smyth.
MR HARGREAVES: Just go back into your burrow, will you; talk to your rodent friends somewhere else.
Mr Smyth: It is a very telling debating point.
MR HARGREAVES: Just go away for a while, will you, and let me make the point. The issue is that people cannot afford $400,000 but they have sufficient disposable income to afford a couple of hundred thousand dollars and pay rent on the land underneath it; when the capital value of that building is realised and they have paid it off, they can then buy the land. In other words, they can purchase the premises in two hits.
These people here are trying to make a huge issue out of a particular option. They are treating this as the panacea for all evil. “You’ve got it wrong; you’ve got it wrong.” We have had a go at providing a number of options—a number of options. What we did not do was sell 1,000 units of our public housing stock. We did not do that. We did not sell 1,000 units of our stock so that we ended up—when we came to government, to administer the housing portfolio, we were 1,000 units short. No.
It was this government that increased and accelerated the land release program which enabled that englobo experience out at west Macgregor to happen. It was this government that explored and started to introduce the shared equity scheme. This government has got a very clear idea of the housing continuum, whether it be private or public, from homelessness or imminent homelessness through to homeownership, and it is doing something about it.
All these folks are doing collectively is carping—carping and trying to find a little something. It is opposition for its own sake, notwithstanding the rhetoric that we heard at the beginning of this particular Assembly. This is something that Mrs Burke used to say all the time to me: “I would like to work with you.” Then she would go out there and expose some poor person’s drastic circumstance.
We are hearing that again: “We would love to work with you.” There is a distinct difference between the offer to work with us from the Greens and these people. Their offer is hollow. They are just doing this for the spectacular. You are just doing it for the spectacular, for the one-line grab, to make yourselves look good. All you do is expose yourselves and the ignorance that you have. All you have to do to avoid the imagery of absolute ignorance and stupidity is to ask the question. All you have got to do—
Mr Hanson: How embarrassed the Greens must be to be tangled up with this mess.
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