Page 1040 - Week 04 - Thursday, 1 April 1993
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What is so different about the ACT that makes this so? Why is it that a housing stock of 12,000 houses - 12 per cent of our total housing stock - is inadequate to meet the needs of those who require assisted housing? That is essentially what we are talking about. Is there something wrong with this community that it is totally different from communities elsewhere in Australia?
Mr Lamont: Yes.
MR KAINE: Mr Lamont says yes. How can he be so positive? This community, we are told, is one of the most highly paid, most affluent communities in Australia, yet 20 per cent of us either live in Housing Trust houses, most on assisted rental, or want to do so. Some of those who want to do so are also living in assisted housing. That says to me that there is something wrong here; or, conversely, that there is something wrong in the rest of Australia, where people find other ways of solving their problems, but they still have difficulty. I do not know, but the fact that 20 per cent of the population either live in Housing Trust houses or want to do so suggests to me that we should be trying to find out why that is so. Maybe it is because the philosophy underlying the Housing Trust leads people to have greater expectations of the provision of public housing here than you would find anywhere else in Australia. Is that expectation a reasonable one? Again, I do not know, and that is why I support Mr Cornwell's proposal that we should have an inquiry into the matter.
There are other issues he raised. The question of uncollected rents seems to be a major problem. Mr Cornwell attempted to put some dimensions on that and he expressed a concern about it. Is uncollected rent unduly high compared to everywhere else in Australia? I understand that the Housing Trust says no. Maybe we should have a look at that. I could work through all of the things Mr Cornwell has put forward as justification for having an inquiry, but at the end of the day, no matter what I say, it is merely an opinion on my part that there appear to be some administrative difficulties in the way the Housing Trust is run.
If the fact that some of us in the community have concerns about this is not a good enough reason to have a broad inquiry into the nature of the Housing Trust, the way it does its work, and whether it is efficient and effective or not, what is justification? Do we have to come in here and prove that millions of dollars of public money is being embezzled or wasted before there is justification for an inquiry? I do not think so. I would have thought this inquiry would be in the interests of the Housing Trust. Once people start asking questions about the waiting list, about uncollected rents, about the size of the maintenance bill, those things in themselves ought to warrant an investigation, if necessary to prove that the trust is efficient, that it is doing its job right, and that those figures are good figures.
I do not know whether they are good or bad figures; there are a lot of people who say that they are not good. The order of magnitude of the amount of money that is invested in public housing, of the value of the public asset that is being managed by the Housing Trust, of the annual turnover of money through the Housing Trust and of the amount of money appropriated from the Consolidated Account to the Housing Trust each year is very large in the context of the ACT economy. Are we going to allow the Housing Trust to be held up to ridicule and
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