Page 161 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 23 February 1994
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The Industry Commission inquiry into public housing was informed that, due to the sales policies over the past 50 years, less than half of the stock built by the various State housing authorities remains as public assets. In other words, more than half has been sold off. Such asset stripping compromises the financial viability of the remaining pool of public rental housing, and ultimately leads to higher rents for the remaining poorer tenants and restrictions on the location and quality of public housing. After all, the poorer stock will not be eagerly sought by potential home buyers. The Industry Commission has also been informed that the trend is for people to initiate sales requests for housing stock that is brick, has good design and block size, and is close to services. What therefore is left? I quote from a 1986 essay on this issue. What is left is "a higher proportion of obsolete, or poorer quality stock which does not match contemporary standards and expectations". This is not the way that a commercial operator would manage a valuable asset. It also leaves open the question as to whether, as a recent newcomer to the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement, the ACT would then be in breach of its agreement, or would the Housing Trust be forced to purchase or construct high-quality stock in areas where stock has been depleted and bear the extra costs of such a policy?
The Government, through the Commissioner for Housing, presently offers low income earners housing loans to enable them to purchase homes. With finance available to low income earners and a more flexible private housing market, I can see no need for the ACT to free up current Housing Trust stock, effectively treating it as though it is private housing. There may need to be a review of the forms of assistance available to people wishing to purchase private accommodation who are on low incomes; but, overall, I am strongly of the belief that public housing stock is just that - public housing stock. It is an asset that belongs to the Canberra community as a whole, and one of the few assets that made the transition from the Commonwealth to self-government in fairly good condition. There are other well-known assets in the ACT which did not. I see no reason to trade the assets of nearly 300,000 ACT residents for the short-term and short-sighted gain of an increased cash flow and a stock of housing that isolates and causes further hardship for future tenants.
Madam Speaker, I would like to refer to the recently published Industry Commission report on public housing. I had a brief scan of this report to look at the comments that were made about selling public housing to tenants. My conclusion on the work that the Industry Commission had done was that they reached rather ambivalent conclusions. On page 76 of Volume 1 of the Industry Commission's report, under "Selling public housing to tenants", they say:
If public tenants are able and desire to buy the property they are renting, they should be able to negotiate with the property manager.
But earlier, in the same report, on page 71, under "Asset management", at the top of the page, they say:
The age profile of the public housing stock, the large housing estates and high-rise buildings are other constraints.
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