Page 878 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 25 July 1989
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one that should be investigated. It is proposed that it and the Housing Trust might enter into a joint venture that supports apprenticeship training. The Master Builders ACT group apprenticeship scheme employs over 115 apprentices and covers most building trades, but with any downturn in activity individual employers tend to reduce the number of apprentices they carry. This puts pressure on the group apprenticeship scheme to take over the existing apprentices. With interest rates as high as they are, building activity in the ACT will face a downturn, thus increased pressure will be put on the group apprenticeship scheme. By entering into a joint venture with the Housing Trust, the Master Builders Association could expand its group apprenticeship scheme. This would allow it to alleviate some of that high interest rate pressure that is happening out there in the community.
MR WOOD (4.45): Mr Speaker, it is one thing to talk about a problem; it is another to make firm suggestions about how to handle that problem. I listened to Mr Stefaniak when he introduced the matter of public importance, and he proposed no positive measures at all to deal with the problem. I must compliment his colleague Mrs Nolan who, in the course of her speech, came down with a number of suggestions that seem to me worthy of consideration.
Mr Stefaniak: It was a team effort, Bill.
MR WOOD: It was a rather unbalanced team effort, in that case. It is easy to talk about the problem, but let us see what we can do about it. It is my firm contention that the Government in the ACT, within its limitations of territorial powers, is doing a great deal about the problem of housing. It is committed to improving the housing assistance available to our community. There is a limit to what the ACT or any State can do, but this Government has acted.
The Federal Government, to state the obvious, is responsible for national economic policy, and has given repeated assurances that interest rates will not remain high any longer than is essential for the economic well-being of the country. We are all conscious of the effect of high interest rates on housing and of the additional burden they place on public housing. I am sure that all members in this chamber have experienced that problem as we have coped with high mortgages ourselves.
As soon as this Government was elected to office the Chief Minister announced a comprehensive housing policy review which has been established to examine, among other things, the forms of assistance currently available and to develop new initiatives to help those in need. I would point out that that was one of the first acts of this Government.
While the housing policy review will produce better initiatives to help people in need, I must point out that in the ACT we already have a number of measures which
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