Page 1496 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 17 April 1991
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MR COLLAERY: "Social equity", my colleague Mr Kaine calls it. We all have our different terms. What it means is a fair go and equitable treatment. That is what we are doing while Labor retreats from that concept all over this country. All they can hang their hats on, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker - and you cannot answer, I regret to say, Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker - is the schools and hospital issues. They never leave off on that, because they cannot find anything in our administration that gives them any other form of a public sally at us.
Additionally, this HomeBuyer program has been welcomed by working groups and tradesmen who, as we well know, are so sorely affected by the business and construction downturn. Mrs Grassby said that if our trust was engaged in a big construction program inevitably there would be a delay while we match the disposed-of homes. Mrs Grassby knows that the nature of things at the moment is, given the market, that spot purchasing is the preferred style, wherever we can find the configurations that suit the demographic profile of our housing list. We are not doing a lot of construction at the moment, but we are looking to spot purchasing, and we are, of course, purchasing newly constructed properties.
We are also prepared to enter statements and expressions of interest and notices of intent, so that constructors may have some assurance that we will purchase from them after construction. So that is all going on. It is another effective, properly balanced program that broadly benefits the community at large - not just those public housing tenants and not just those people waiting on the public housing list, who now have a glimmer of hope, but those 3,000 or more units waiting to be housed in the community.
The community well knows that that housing list has been an aspect of public housing in this Territory for longer than our term of government and for longer than that of the Follett-Whalan Government. It reflects the growing nature of Canberra as the centre of the region, and it also reflects the fact that people with qualifying periods of residence in the ACT are securing public housing.
We are, in fact, providing a very significant social support mechanism for this region of Australia. That is not widely perceived, and that is a comment that I have often made in New South Wales fora and to New South Wales Ministers. We are providing for needs, particularly in respect of supporting parent and single accommodation, that are not being met in some of the New South Wales rural areas. That is known, and that requires a qualifying period. It also requires some deep thought on our part, and eventually by our Treasury, as to whether we are going to get any response, in overall Federal funding schemes, to the indirect support we are giving interstate in those areas. That is a matter, of course, for the Treasurer.
Debate interrupted.
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