Page 1189 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 24 June 1992
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Of those other commencements, a significant number of them were redevelopments. I will table, Madam Speaker, a chart setting out redevelopment sites committed in the 1991-92 financial year - projects commenced, pursuant to the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement, to redevelop some of the inner city areas of Canberra. This is urban renewal at its best, Madam Speaker. It involved, in total, about 45 additional housing units on land that was previously owned by the ACT Government. What it has allowed us to do in Ainslie is, I think, one of the best examples. We owned six fairly run-down small houses. Under the Liberal strategy and an automatic sell off right, they could have been sold off; they could have been lost; bought by the private sector, redeveloped, and gone from the public housing asset. We were able to redevelop those into some 20 townhouses and garden flats. Similarly, in other suburbs, we have done it for aged persons units or other desirable social usage. By continuing public ownership of inner city Housing Trust assets, even if they are run down, we have been able to redevelop them to significantly increase the number of units in the inner city, and retain and build upon our social mix stock management policy.
This, Madam Speaker, is the goals and dreams of the Chifley Government's Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement translated into real social justice nearly 50 years later. It is building on a policy of social integration. It is building on a policy of public housing, not as some sort of welfare housing of last resort, which seems to be the philosophy that is currently pervading the local branch of the Liberal Party, with some of their recent rhetoric, but public housing as a vital part of the social development of a city.
In the ACT, as Mr Moore mentioned, something like 12 to 13 per cent of our total housing stock is public housing. Both Mr Westende and Mr De Domenico have been heard to mutter in this place that that should go down to national averages of something like 5 per cent; that we should be involved in a massive flog-off of public housing. The one thing that stops that at the moment is the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement. Mr Cornwell, indeed, acknowledged that in the debate here some weeks ago where he said, "Well, of course the Liberal Party acknowledges their obligations under the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement to retain houses in public ownership and, if you sell off one, you buy another".
I am concerned that if they had control of this in this town they would, consistent with the agreement, be flogging off inner city housing and buying housing at the margins. They said that. Under the agreement they could probably get away with that. I suspect that what they really want to do, certainly from Mr Westende's and Mr De Domenico's utterances, is to reduce the sum total of publicly held housing stock, and that they are prevented from doing by the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement, as are any other governments in Australia that would take such a policy into their heads.
That has been a significant achievement of that agreement. It has kept State and Territory governments honest. It has kept a commitment to public housing and prevented State or Territory governments from seeing their public housing stock as merely a tool to fiddle with as part of budget balancing exercises where you flog off some public housing in tough times to balance your recurrent budget. That is prevented by the foresight of the Chifley Government in its agreement. It continues to be prevented by the current agreement. We will be arguing very strongly in Commonwealth forums to retain that agreement, because we believe
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