Page 4840 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 1 November 2017

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(1) notes:

(a) the first ACT Housing and Homelessness Summit was held on 17 October 2017, bringing together 200 people representing 82 organisations covering the full spectrum of housing and homelessness services and industry expertise;

(b) the summit was informed by input from extensive expert and community consultation covering 26 workshops with 125 organisations and almost 340 individual contributions; and

(2) further notes:

(a) the outcomes of the summit will be key to the development of a new housing strategy, a commitment made by the Government at the 2016 election;

(b) the new ACT housing strategy will follow on from the ACT Government’s Affordable Housing Action Plan which since 2007 has been directing carefully planned efforts to respond to housing demand and moderate house prices and rent increases; and

(c) that the ACT community, through the Government, invests extensively in housing and homelessness services and maintains both the lowest rough sleeping rate and the highest social housing ratio of any Australian jurisdiction; and

(3) calls on the ACT Government to:

(a) collate the feedback received at the ACT Housing and Homelessness Summit and throughout the extensive community consultation process in developing a new ACT housing strategy, and provide this report to the Assembly;

(b) implement announcements made at the summit in cooperation with housing and homelessness experts and community members;

(c) identify opportunities for innovative and collaborative partnerships in the housing sector that deliver wider benefits to the community;

(d) ensure new initiatives to improve housing affordability build on existing policies around housing supply, planning and tax reform; and

(e) continue to advocate for national policy change to improve housing affordability and make homelessness funding more secure.

In starting, it is worth noting that, in the same week that this Assembly turned one, ACT Labor entered its 17th year of government. After 17 years it would be easy to look at those areas of public policy we have already made reforms in and say that we have addressed the problem. The motion I move today in my name acknowledges that,

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