Page 1420 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 9 May 2017
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Minister for Sport and Recreation) (11.14): Madam Speaker, on 29 March this year the Assembly called on the government to provide an update on the progress of the public housing renewal program during the May 2017 sittings. I am happy to respond to that motion now.
I have spoken before in this place about the vital importance of the government’s public housing renewal program. This is a program that, at its core, reflects the government’s commitment to being Australia’s most inclusive city. We have a shared responsibility to ensure that everyone, regardless of age, culture or socioeconomic background, can access housing that meets their needs and can take part in community life.
This is why this government is delivering on a commitment to replace and provide new homes for 1,288 households across this city, a commitment that is reflected in the current parliamentary agreement. This government, through Housing ACT and the Public Housing Renewal Taskforce, is working to deliver replacement housing that is spread more evenly across Canberra.
For many years the government has worked towards ensuring that public housing exists in every suburb across Canberra. This has been the case for a long time, even before our renewal program began. In some places it is highly visible, like the Owen flats along Northbourne and the ABC flats in Reid, but in most cases public housing is indistinguishable from any other property.
Here in Canberra we do not have anything like the concentrations of public housing seen in cities like Melbourne and Sydney, because as a community we made a deliberate decision not to have big concentrations of disadvantage. It is in everyone’s interests to avoid concentrations of disadvantage. I know most Canberrans value communities where people from different social, cultural and economic situations live side by side, being educated in the same schools, shopping at the same shops and mixing together. The reality is that more than seven in 10 Canberrans, 72.5 per cent, are in favour of the continued inclusion of public housing in their suburb, with a further 11.4 per cent unsure.
So far, 388 homes have been delivered to Housing ACT through this program. These have been located in suburbs such as Chisholm, Monash, Coombs, Moncrieff, Denman Prospect and Amaroo, and include a mix of detached houses, townhouses and small apartment complexes. The Public Housing Renewal Taskforce is continuing to construct a further 141 dwellings in suburbs including Holt, Denman Prospect, Nicholls and Throsby.
To support the construction of replacement homes, the taskforce is also purchasing suitable properties from the private market. More than 350 homes have been purchased this way. It should be noted that of those dwellings procured so far, nearly 180 replacement homes are in suburbs close to Northbourne Avenue, including Dickson, Lyneham, Turner, O’Connor and Braddon.
Proposals for public housing developments on six community facility zoned land sites in Chapman, Holder, Mawson, Monash and Wright were announced in March this
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