Page 1887 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 1992
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I add at this point that Housing Trust officers have checked with their counterparts in Liberal New South Wales and other States to establish the nature of the procedures applying in other States, but the Liberal-administered New South Wales is a good example.
Mr Moore: They are not so conservative as this group.
MR CONNOLLY: They have found out that under the New South Wales not-so-conservative Liberal Government, as Mr Moore interjects, they operate in exactly the same way as we do, with identical procedures on privacy and confidentiality. They do so, however, without the set guidelines, and they consult with fewer neighbours than we are required to do. So our procedures are well ahead of those in New South Wales.
What this local rump of a Liberal Party complains about and tries to make some cheap political capital about in relation to a so-called lack of consultation is a more extensive process of consultation with neighbours than operates in New South Wales, or indeed any other State. We have also made inquiries in Queensland, South Australia and Victoria, which show that there are no set procedures involving all the relevant parties. Those practices which I have tabled provide the most comprehensive consultation process in Australia, a process well in advance of that embraced by the Liberal Government in New South Wales but which these local Liberals find unacceptable.
Consulting with the local neighbours has been a process that has taken the Housing Trust a considerable effort, and I commend Housing Trust officers, who have gone to extraordinary lengths in both the cases Mr Cornwell continues to refer to. They have attended public meetings outside office hours, they have arranged additional personal consultations on landscaping, and they have gone to meet with neighbours in their homes in the evenings, outside public service working hours, when they have been requested to do so. They have fully satisfied the requirements of the ACT Planning Authority, as Mr Cornwell has been told before, and they have been informed by the Ombudsman's office that they have behaved appropriately. That is significant, because in the ACT the Ombudsman can complain about any issue of maladministration. When residents have grizzled to my office, saying that they do not want a SAAP service in their street and that we have acted improperly, I have always recommended that they go to the Ombudsman.
I table, with appropriate names and addresses deleted for privacy reasons, a December letter from the Ombudsman relating to a Monash facility for homeless youth, saying that the Housing Trust has acted appropriately. I also table a far more extensive letter dated 13 July 1982 in relation to the house Mr Cornwell complains about and about which he made his speech. It sets out in some detail the consultation that had been gone through. It sets out all the procedures, and it makes the point that the Housing Trust acted appropriately throughout. I table that Ombudsman's letter.
Mr Cornwell has made much about what he calls full-scale security lighting and security screening at one particular property. Those facilities consist of motion-activated external lights, which any person can purchase quite cheaply from their local hardware store and have installed by a qualified electrician, and security screening, which is, again, freely available from your local hardware store, advertised in the newspapers and on television - and, I would add,
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