Page 3915 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 15 December 1992
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Mr Kaine: A long way from $1.5m.
MR CONNOLLY: Exactly, Mr Kaine. As I indicated, it makes sense when you adjust these things to put some provision in for future expansion, other than having an indexation provision. We are really saying here: At what level should the Minister be involved in the contracting for the buying and selling of houses? I do say again, as I said before, that that is the area where you get the danger of perception of ministerial involvement and impropriety in real estate transactions. You then get the perception that the Minister approved or did not approve buying those six houses from a spec builder.
We expanded our housing acquisition program very dramatically in last year's budget, because the home building industry in Canberra was in significant decline then. One of the ways we achieved that very quickly, to provide quick stimulus for the local building industry, was to spec purchase a large number of homes. We called tenders for those. We publicly said that we were interested in spec purchasing 30-odd homes. Six of those homes in one lot would be of this order. They are the sorts of situations where I do not want to be approving which builder we buy them from.
Mr Cornwell: Really?
MR CONNOLLY: No, Mr Cornwell, really. I want to set the global policy and I want to set out in budgetary papers which we bring before this Assembly what we are doing about spending public money, but I do not want to be the person who is making the decision that we purchase Mr Smith's homes or Mr Brown's homes.
Mr Cornwell: So, half a million is not enough; is that right, Mr Connolly?
MR CONNOLLY: Clearly, half a million is not enough, Mr Cornwell. If it was correct in 1987, it is clearly not correct now. You are left with saying: Do we take it up to in the order of $875,493.17, by some mathematical calculation of escalation in homes prices, or do you set a limit which has some factor for growth? The principle then, and this is the important one, is: Do you want the Minister to be involved not just in the setting of the policy and the setting of the monetary amounts that can be spent on public housing, which are always brought before this Assembly, and for budgets, but also in making the decision that we buy Smith's house rather than Brown's house?
Mr Kaine: No, but we want you to make up your mind where the money is spent.
MR CONNOLLY: You are right in saying no, Mr Kaine. That decision is well vested in the Commissioner for Housing, and the fact that there has been no perception in this community that there has been favouritism or shenanigans over the five years or so that the Housing Trust has been in existence and since this half million limit, as it then was and has remained, has been in existence, is testimony to the fact that that system works well.
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