Page 549 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 17 February 2016
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I am pleased to lay out the approach and values of our government and our actions to give people who are doing it tougher than we are a decent go. I think all members agree on the importance of safe and secure housing. It is critical to being part of our community: holding down a job, providing for the needs of kids and feeling part of our city.
For some, keeping up with the rent or mortgage payments is a daily challenge. I recognise this goes for people right here in Canberra, particularly casual workers in hospitality and retail. I spent 15 years working to help them get better wages and conditions and ease some of the pressure that they face when renting in an affluent city like ours. We have talked about wages and penalty rates here in the Assembly recently and, while I understand that it is not in the jurisdiction of this government, wages policy is just one area where the position of the commonwealth flows directly to the lives of people in our own community. I know the housing and homelessness policy consortium, which has been funded by the ACT government, has also been collecting new data on those who struggle with housing costs, and I look forward to feeding that into our policy considerations.
Turning to the report on government services—and remember this is data collected from a point in time in June last year—if you look at the report in total, it paints a very positive picture of the way our housing and homelessness services are performing. In a number of areas we are outperforming other jurisdictions. The report shows positive results for the ACT government’s continued focus of targeting social housing assistance to the people who need it most—that is, people who are homeless, escaping domestic violence, in unhealthy living situations, or experiencing housing stress in the private market.
Ninety-seven per cent of new allocations in public housing and 98 per cent of allocations in community housing were made to households in greatest need. These are the most targeted allocations in the country. On waiting lists, the motion reflects a fairly stable picture and a moderate improvement in recent months. We all want to see the waiting list reduced, and this is a constant goal of the work of government. But I would like to put into perspective how the ACT performs relative to other jurisdictions.
Our public housing list represents about 20 per cent of our public housing portfolio. In New South Wales, to clear their waiting list would require a 50 per cent increase in their stock. In Western Australia, that would require a 70 per cent increase. In proportion to the size of our city, the ACT government maintains the highest proportion of public and community housing stock in Australia, with about 30 dwellings per 1,000 people against a national average of just 17. In relation to stock numbers under the asset recycling initiative, I can assure the Assembly the government is maintaining stock to meet the requirements of the agreement.
The temporary reduction in housing stock numbers reported in ROGS was a point-in-time variation resulting from the timing of property sales required to fund the development of new properties. Property numbers will rise and fall for short periods depending on the timing of property sales and new purchases and construction works.
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