Page 1526 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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The new scheme has six rental levels relating to a tenant’s household income and capacity to pay and will allow flexibility as the circumstances of individuals change. The group of people affected by this was relatively small, but I cite the example as underlining the fact that so many things that matter for older members of our community often do not make the front page of the paper. They do not become the subject of awards or anything; they are small and practical things that can and should be done.
Certainly when I was the minister for TAMS there was a range of other practical things. Despite Mrs Dunne giving it a bit of a shellacking this morning, the launch of the flexible bus service has been well embraced by the community. Designed specifically for residents such as the aged and people with disabilities, the free bus service is a fantastic way to enhance social inclusion across Canberra. It has been a roaring success and saw over 12,000 trips clocked up in the first 12 months. It offers a basic timetable but provides the opportunity for residents to be picked up from home and taken to the places they need to go, and many people have found this very beneficial. There are regulars who have used the service every week since it started, with most of the passengers being over 80 years old. The oldest registered passenger is a 101-year-old lady who was still living independently at last advice. Opening up those opportunities is really important.
In the housing space one area in which we have not made enough progress in this city and which is a source of ongoing frustration for me is the use of adaptable housing design. Housing ACT uses it in an increasing number of properties, and that is a very positive thing. But we have not seen a significant uptake of adaptable housing design in the private sector. I had an animated discussion on this with the Master Builders Association one day at one of their president’s lunches and we debated the merits of it.
I talked to them about my inclination or, I guess, my contemplation of whether we should mandate a minimum percentage of houses to meet certain standards of adaptability. Their response was, “No, we don’t want that. It will drive up costs unnecessarily. Leave it to the market.” I have not seen any revised figures in recent times, but I am not convinced that we are reaching a point where we have enough adaptable housing in our stock, and this is a place where further work is needed.
Just yesterday in this place I tabled both a report on the retirement villages review and also a bill that amends the Retirement Villages Act. As I said yesterday, I am very pleased with the outcome of this process. It is a great example of engaging stakeholders, and there are some great stakeholders in that space. The residents of some of our retirement villages around town are very highly skilled from their professional backgrounds and from their life experience and they have brought a lot to the table in terms of sorting that out. The snippet about that in today’s paper was probably about five centimetres by five centimetres, and I do not think that matches how important this matter is to people in Canberra.
The Retirement Villages Act covers key elements of that industry to make sure that residents of those villages get a fair deal and that the operators can operate within a framework that they understand. It is about making sure our older residents are able to
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