Page 155 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 23 February 1994
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One of the jewels in the crown of public housing in this Territory, one of the enormous assets that we have and one of the great levers that we control for the future development of this community is the fact that we have in the inner city areas quite substantial holdings of public housing. That can be controversial from time to time. It is unfortunate that residents of Ainslie learnt that the Housing Trust is thinking about some redevelopment in public housing in Ainslie through a surveyor's - - -
Mr Cornwell: Why did you not consult them first?
MR CONNOLLY: I will explain, Mr Cornwell. It is always our intention to consult with the residents; but, as soon as the Government says, "Residents, we want to consult with you about this parcel of land", the residents quite properly say, "What do you have in mind?". If the Housing Trust had said in November, "We want to consult with you about that parcel of land", the residents would have said, "What do you have in mind?". The Housing Trust would have said, "Well, we do not have anything in mind". Then Mr Cornwell would have been jumping up in here and saying, "Produce the plans. Where are the secret plans? There is a conspiracy". What we have there is the failure to consult on the preconsultation, early consultation, forward-thinking module, which is a tad silly.
What is occurring there is that the Housing Trust is doing some thinking about what it could do with its asset. We will be doing some sketch plans and concept plans, and then we will go into the consultation mode with residents so that the residents can have some options. Madam Speaker, it really does stand to reason that, when the Housing Trust says, "We are thinking of doing something with that property", residents will say, "What are you thinking about?". If the Housing Trust says, "We really do not know what we are thinking about", the - - -
Mr Cornwell: How do you know that - - -
MR CONNOLLY: What we are thinking about is the option of spending a very large sum of money to bring very old houses up to an acceptable level of accommodation, which would house perhaps 12 families, or doing some heritage-sympathetic redevelopment for aged persons developments. We are looking at the feasibility of what we could do in terms of heritage-sympathetic redevelopment. We are doing some sketches so that we can then say to the residents, "These are the sorts of options we are talking about". If we were simply to say, "We are thinking about some redevelopment", sensationalist politicians like Mr Cornwell no doubt would run to the residents and say, "Look, they are going to build Burnie Court in Ainslie". Since we could not produce the sketch plans to show otherwise, Mr Cornwell would then say, "Uh huh, I have proved the conspiracy, because they will not come clean with their sketch plans". Of course, we would not have any sketch plans because it was too early.
Madam Speaker, there was a bit of a glitch there on the failure to consult at the preconsultation module, but let me assure you that there will be full consultation. The residents will see some sketch plans of what we have in mind. The type of redevelopment that we have in mind there has been done very successfully in other areas of Canberra in the last couple of years. The prime model of that would be the property that is known as Yanga Court, which is on Flinders Way in Manuka, where we owned two very attractive, old, late 1920s Federal Capital Commission houses - tiny houses at the end of very large blocks.
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