Page 5567 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 November 2011
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There are also gardens, including a community vegie garden, which allow people living in the units to mix and interact while gardening, thus building the community spirit. Providing increased housing choice makes it easier for people to move to a home that better accommodates the changing circumstances for all stages of their life. Therefore, the range of community services will create a more resilient community. More affordable living opportunities can be created through a variety of mixed use developments, with diversity in housing choice and variety.
Madam Assistant Speaker, last week I indicated that the Northbourne Flats redevelopment will retain a proportion of public housing in keeping with our commitment with the Labor-Greens Parliamentary Agreement, which outlines an aspirational target of 10 per cent of all dwellings in the ACT being public or social housing. In addition, the ACT government commits to ensuring our public housing stock levels are maintained and we will achieve this by investing in new housing in other locations.
I turn to some of the comments by Mr Coe. He just referred to “more of the same” and he said that it was a policy-free zone. Mr Coe clearly has not been paying attention because I will remind those in this chamber of some of our initiatives. We have introduced this year through Housing ACT a 75 per cent affordable rental scheme. We have introduced through Housing ACT this year a 75 per cent lease licence. Both of those now provide accommodation opportunities and a model of accommodation that is a very new product brought to our market.
We have increased community housing. The site down at Conder, for example, is managed through Argyle Community Housing. That is a good investment, because we know social housing needs to be a mix of a strong, vibrant community housing sector as well as a public housing sector.
Mr Coe ignores the reforms through Gateway Services and the central access point that is being developed and that is providing extraordinary services from conservation house. Mr Coe also ignores the support services provided through the sustaining tenancies team, which is managed through a partnership of non-government organisations. It supports public and social tenants and also private tenants that are experiencing some rental or mortgage stress. Mr Coe has failed to read the budget paper, which clearly outlines a budget line for an antisocial behaviour team that is coming on line. He seemed to think that all social housing tenants are a blight on public housing and he ignores the fact that we recognise those tenants as needing extra help. We have responded as such.
We have nearly 12,000 properties. Information provided to me shows that we have less than 30 antisocial reports per week. That is not to say that it is something that we can overlook. I think the fact that we have put in a team to support tenancies shows that this is something we take seriously. Mr Coe also seems to forget our shared equity product and our sale to tenants scheme. Mr Coe, the shadow for housing, seems to forget a handful of initiatives that have come in the last 12 months into the public housing sector.
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