Page 3601 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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inaccurate, she should be writing to have a footnote included in the report stating the alleged inaccuracy.
Housing in the territory, like so many of our services, should be relatively efficient to manage on a house-by-house basis, because of our geographic economies of scale. We do not have public housing properties located in towns thousands of kilometres from the state capital, or even thousands of kilometres from the nearest housing office. We have 100 per cent of our housing stock within a 20-odd kilometre drive from the office in Belconnen. Therefore, we should be able to get some very good economies of scale when it comes to economies from geography, as a result of being a city-state. We do not seem to be getting that. It is a great shame for the taxpayers who are not able to harness the benefits. There are many costs involved in running a small jurisdiction, but there should also be some efficiencies, and those efficiencies relate to geography. Yet we do not seem to be cashing in on that.
I think there is a long way to go to ensure that we are spending $6 million in housing better, but I hope that the estimates report, the dissenting comments and our contribution in the debate will help steer this government in the right direction.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (2.33): I will make some comments about Dr Bourke’s speech, as Mr Coe has mentioned, because we are talking about housing. I have to say that making a statement that I believe non-Indigenous people should decide who qualifies as being an Aboriginal organisation is an offensive comment to make. As Mr Coe said, it invoked an element of debate which I do not think we have seen in the Assembly before. It is particularly disappointing and basically low, I would have to say. He also said that no Greens or Liberals went to a particular event. I know that my colleague Ms Hunter, who is our spokesperson on this issue, is extremely committed to this issue and has been to a number of events. Again, it is really disappointing to be invoking that sort of reasoning in a debate. The only person who is being sanctimonious today is you, Dr Bourke, in the speech you gave earlier.
Turning to the issue of public housing, it is one that the Greens are very committed to. It is the Greens’ belief that investing in public housing provides one of the most secure forms of affordable housing for a significant proportion of our community. We have a policy goal in the parliamentary agreement that public housing should comprise 10 per cent of all housing in the ACT. The federal government’s investment in social housing through the stimulus package was significant. The ACT, through Housing ACT, has benefited from around $98 million towards new properties. The Greens acknowledge this significant investment in housing in the ACT.
At 31 December 2008 Housing ACT had 11,571 properties. At December 2011 that number had increased to 11,859. I understand—and this has been discussed previously—the government was expecting to have reached the mark of around 12,050 properties by now, but there have been some delays due to the large scale of redevelopment projects which are occurring. This is a goal that we have released and the government has accepted. The ACT Greens have made requests to the government for additional funding on top of the stimulus package. Last year we secured $9.5 million and this year $5 million. We are very proud of receiving that funding to go towards housing.
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