Page 1495 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 17 April 1991
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MR COLLAERY (Attorney-General and Minister for Housing and Community Services) (4.23), in reply: Yes, we did have 53 applications up to last week, but we have had a sort of a rush of applications - it is up to 70 now. I guess that is because I think someone in the local Labor Party said - unwisely, of course - that they might be in government next time round. People were flocking to secure their homes before the great WA Inc. thing spreads over from the west.
The speech that was given in tabling the details of this historic reform is on the record. It answers most of what Mrs Grassby said. Basically Mrs Grassby, in the extensive criticisms she has offered, does not in any way contradict the assertions mentioned. Let me isolate one issue, for example. The fact is that we have, effectively, on the record 94 expressions of interest. And, in fact, we have 70 definite proposals to purchase from our public tenants. The break-up of those applications, I am advised, shows them coming from all over Canberra; it is not concentrated necessarily in the inner city area. That is because, probably, people might find it hard to raise the sort of finance required to buy the inner city places that they inhabit.
That initiative enables the social justice of allowing 100 or more people to get off the waiting list for public housing. And, more to the point, that waiting list, as Mrs Grassby well knows, is disproportionately weighted against some singles and some supporting parents who require a type of dwelling that we do not have sufficient stocks of at the moment. Of course, that reflects the earlier social settings of this city, whereby we built so many detached cottages. That is not what the many people in that category want these days. So the other good thing about freeing up our stock, under a thought out and well-prepared stock management strategy, which we have, is to ensure that we can attend to the changed demographic profile of our public housing waiting list; that we can more quickly respond to differing housing needs in the 1990s.
No-one can say that these programs have not been well received by the community. Whilst Mrs Grassby has a valid point, only in saying that we need to have a good stock management strategy, I think she did a disservice to the department she formerly led by suggesting that we would launch into this type of enterprise without knowing where we are going. She well knows that it has been a long time in development. It is a carefully thought out prospect for the people of the Territory.
The income limits were revised further this week - I am not sure whether Mrs Grassby knows this - to take account of the last base CPI adjustments. I believe that the Alliance Government has taken a leaf out of the social justice text book, which has largely disappeared and gone into the archives around this country.
Mr Kaine: We call it social equity.
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