Page 3351 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 19 October 2022
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fixed it yet. Therefore, you are bad.” I think most Australians, right across the board, think that the idea, in the middle of a crisis as bad as it is on housing, that two tiers of Australian governments owe debt to one another and are paying interest on that debt in an area of policy where we have all identified a crisis is a bit ludicrous.
I would hope to see national reform perhaps inclusive of other jurisdictions. But I do not represent other jurisdictions; I represent the good people of Brindabella and Canberrans in this place. So I brought a motion based on what I could do and also to secure a commitment from the Chief Minister to ensure that any debt forgiveness was dollar for dollar reinvested back into public housing. I accept that has been part of the commentary over this for some time, but I really just thought that underlining it and bold printing it and getting all 25 of us on board would count for something.
Unfortunately, on this occasion it has not. It would appear that the shared collective will of all duly elected 25 members of this Assembly and the three parties inside it do not have nearly as much sway with the new government as we had thought. That is disappointing. It is disappointing.
Fortunately, however, the ACT is represented by somebody in the Senate who does not represent either of the two old parties, and he has made it very clear that this is an issue that he will not only be active on but also will do deals and will have conversations on. It is not for me to tell Senator Pocock how to do his job, but I am very pleased that the job that he is doing relates specifically to this debt and the rising rates of people waiting for public housing here in the ACT. So I encourage him to continue to be pretty active on that.
For those playing at home, at the risk of repeating myself, I get a bit frustrated. With my two years here, I have an appreciation of the amount of important issues that come across my desk, of the amount of important public policy issues that I am asked to grapple with and of the infrequency with which I and other members of the non-executive have opportunities to bring PMBs, private member’s business, to the Assembly. I am frustrated that Mr Parton would choose to use this opportunity by recycling my work and whacking on a big slap to the federal Labor Party!
This could have been a motion with a fresh idea on public housing. This could have been a motion with a new perspective, like we will try tiny houses. Mr Parton, you could have brought a motion to the Assembly saying that we should trial that to fix our housing crisis. You could have contributed to the conversation I am trying to lead about the vacancy rate and a vacancy tax to try and create an economic situation which does not allow property speculators to withhold property from the market over a long period of time. You could have contributed to the conversation I have been trying to have around short-term rental accommodation and Airbnbs and how this new market player risks impacting our supply of long-term housing in the territory. But you did not. You brought my work to this Assembly and you slapped a big mean whack on federal Labor at the end of it. It just seems like a wasted opportunity for a political party that wants Canberrans to believe that they have now, all of a sudden, decided to take seriously this issue of wealth and income inequality, the rise in the public housing wait lists and poverty. Those are the people of course who will disproportionately be benefited from an investment in public housing.
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