Page 368 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 2 March 1994
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would be minimal. We are dealing with approximately 1,230 properties. Many of the people living in these properties are elderly and may not wish to buy them. The assumption seems to be that if we drop the term to five years every person who is eligible to purchase a Housing Trust property is going to rush forward to do so. That is obviously nonsense. The age of many people will preclude them from doing so or showing an interest in doing so.
Ms Szuty said that subsidisation by full rents was falling rapidly and therefore we had to protect the rebated stock by not selling off the non-rebated stock. I have just pointed out that in the last few years the non-rebated stock has already fallen from 20 per cent to 15 per cent. Therefore, subsidisation of full rents and the amount of money coming in from that are falling, in any event. We really have to look at other ways of raising funds. One of them, of course, could be to chase up the rental arrears, Mr Connolly.
Madam Speaker, the case for encouraging such sales is that 66 per cent of the current housing stock is standard housing, but only 11.4 per cent of people on the Housing Trust waiting list want standard housing. These are not my figures; I am quoting from the ACT budget newsletter of December 1993. Obviously, there is a massive imbalance between what people on the waiting list want and what is available. What better reason is there for allowing a few more tenants to purchase their houses and then using the funds generated to provide the type of housing that people on the waiting list want? It stands to reason. Why not sell off some of the current stock in order to finance accommodation that is required?
Mrs Grassby made comments about fears of people buying Housing Trust properties and selling them the next day to developers. She obviously had not read my Bill. I have stated quite clearly that anybody selling such a property must, in the first five years following its purchase, give the Housing Trust first option to buy. On the question of the current market value, Mr Connolly raised the matter of whether or not improvements were taken into account. We believe that the amendments that I have put forward will allow such things to be taken into account.
The one area that did raise some concern was that my Bill gives the tenant an unfettered right to purchase accommodation. I have listened carefully to the arguments, and I am in agreement that that is not necessarily desirable. I therefore foreshadow that at the appropriate time I will be moving an amendment to my Bill to add to subclause 17A(1) the following new paragraph:
(d) the ACT Housing Trust agrees.
In other words, it will allow the trust to have a say in whether a property is sold or not. I recognise that, if we are going to allow the trust to carry out redevelopment, then it must have some flexibility. We cannot bottle up opportunities to redevelop areas if in those areas you have a house or two that the tenants are insisting on purchasing. That could be the situation under my Bill without the foreshadowed addition of paragraph (d). A tenant could prevent redevelopment, and I accept that that is not necessarily desirable.
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