Page 487 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 February 1993
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Madam Speaker, I will deal with some of Mr Cornwell's more extraordinary manipulations of statistics to give a result which he claims to be alarming. Firstly, Mr Cornwell relates repairs and maintenance - we spend about $20m - to the cash income from rents of $42.5m and he comes up with a 50 per cent expenditure level. Every public housing authority in Australia measures its expenditure on repairs and maintenance as a proportion of its asset base. When you look at expenditure on repairs and maintenance compared with other authorities, New South Wales spends 1.28 per cent, Victoria 1.58 per cent, Queensland 1.79 per cent, the ACT 1.87 per cent, Western Australia 2.39 per cent, Tasmania 2.58 per cent and South Australia 3.04 per cent. So the ACT is spending about in the middle of the range of repairs and maintenance to the asset base. Where is the scandal? There are the figures; we sit right in the middle. An expenditure level of around $20m is split up into $5m on cyclical management, $9.7m on urgent and minor repairs and $4.5m on property updates.
Is Mr Cornwell saying that we should be running down our asset base? Is Mr Cornwell saying that people who live in public housing should have to tolerate broken windows, broken doors?
Mr Kaine: No, he is not saying that.
MR CONNOLLY: He is saying that we spend too much, Mr Kaine, and if we spent less tenants in public housing would be enduring that. We are spending precisely in the mid-range of the amounts that are spent by similar public housing authorities in Australia measured as a proportion of the asset base. This is how it gets measured. So, nonsense!
Through the building assets management section of the Department of Urban Services we are undertaking a major review of the way we undertake our maintenance. We are achieving some significant savings through workplace reform and changes at the level where tradesmen and multiskilling efficiencies are being achieved. We have done away with an absurd system which prevailed under the former Government, where, in effect, if you had a broken window, you rang up the Housing Trust and they sent out a Housing Trust inspector. The Housing Trust inspector said, "Yes, I think you have a broken window", and rang up the Department of Urban Services. They sent out an inspector who said, "Yes, madam, you have a broken window", and went back to the depot and sent somebody out to fix the window. We are doing away with that multiple inspection level of absurdity. So we are achieving things.
Mr Cornwell has made a great play that rental arrears are at about $5.5m, and indeed that would be a matter of real concern. The figure is quite correct, but he omits to relate it to the amount of rent receivable. To determine the acceptability or otherwise of a level of current arrears - and current arrears are $2.65m - any professional and impartial observer would relate that level to the current rent receivable, which is about $90.3m. Looked at that way, current arrears have remained constant at between 2.5 per cent and 2.9 per cent of rent receivable over the past two years.
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