Page 2133 - Week 06 - Thursday, 7 May 2009
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The Property Council of the ACT has moved quite a long way when it comes to the issues of transport and parking. The Canberra Business Council has worked with the Gungahlin Community Council and the conservation council on a light rail coalition. The Canberra Taxi Industry Association has been pushing for a transport council and a demand-responsive transport trial. It would seem that the government is, on occasion, the one who is dragging the ball on this but the Greens expect to see things pick up in the next year.
The investment on housing infrastructure facilitated by this budget is welcome. We note that the Housing Industry Association is now on our side when it comes to increasing the supply of public housing in the ACT. That is because housing affordability is still a problem in Australia.
New homes are close to a historical high when it comes to their cost against average annual earnings. Private rental housing is in very short supply and our social housing is more narrowly focused, with a great proportion of high-needs tenants. More public housing will make Housing ACT more economically and socially viable and be a buffer to the market.
The Liberals have excitedly pointed to Treasury figures for a plan that does not exist and claim that the goal of 10 per cent public housing will cost Canberra ratepayers a billion dollars. For the record, while they would like you to think we expect to reach our goal of 10 per cent public housing in the next three years, we know it will take a lot longer than that. The agreement is for an increase of $3.3 million per year which, if the Liberals had read further in the document they had, is in bold at the bottom of the document.
The $300 million of federal government stimulus funding coming online this year is a big step in the right direction and will have a major impact on achieving the 10 per cent goal. Now we need to see the ACT government comply with its Assembly commitment to work collaboratively with the building design experts and social services in the ACT to make sure that the housing we get is efficient, affordable and in the right places.
Finally, there is some confusion about whether money has been pulled from the homelessness strategy. We will be looking to the estimates process so that we can learn how prepared the government is to address the growing demand from people, young and old, who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.
The Greens have a strong commitment to health and wellbeing for the Canberra community. Expenditure on health services is the largest single recurrent expenditure in the ACT budget, estimated at approximately $980.3 million in 2009-10, and we are glad to see that the importance of health services to the community was reflected in the government’s budget priorities.
The Greens are particularly glad to see increases in a number of healthcare programs, which partly fulfils some of the health requirements in the 2008 Labor-Greens parliamentary agreement. This includes the initial two-year funding for mental health
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