Page 2042 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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I would like to take us next to who pays. We still have not had that question answered either. The Minister was able to say only that there is a flaw affecting public tenants and that the Government will deal with tenants of stand-alone houses. The Minister has failed to answer all of the questions.
Mr Lamont: No; you did not understand, Michael. I said that there is a flaw in the private rental market.
MR MOORE: I hear an interjection. He expects a fall in the private market. I actually made a note on that, and I missed it. He said that the way to resolve this is for tenants to go to their landlords and insist on a reduction in the rent they are paying. Oh, come on! The naivety is overwhelming. As if any landlord is going to say, "Oh, okay; I will reduce your rent because of that". ACTCOSS, in fact, gave you a suggestion on how to do it, and of course you are not prepared to do that. ACTEW were not prepared to do that, because they know that the system is fundamentally flawed. We ought not to let ACTEW get away with presenting a system that is fundamentally flawed and simply will not deliver what it promises to deliver. We are better off sitting here and rejecting it now and saying, "Go back and do it properly". If we do not reject it, they will not do it properly.
Madam Speaker, Mr De Domenico raised the issue of bigger families paying more. I left that issue alone because it had been so well canvassed in public that I felt that members were all aware of that, and I wanted to deal with a much more fundamental issue that I wanted to hear the Minister answer. But he has been unable to answer, Madam Speaker, particularly the important question about who is going to pay. Everybody is going to say that somebody is going to pay. It is Mr Wood's department, primarily. It is the government sector that is going to pay. In other words, people are going to pay in a different way - through their general rates rather than through their water rates. That is crazy. According to the Quadrant survey, the priorities were education and user pays. Let us implement user pays; but, if you do, you have to meter people. Instead, you are accepting a half-baked - in fact, a totally unbaked - system, something that is poorly thought through and that is clearly a snow job.
Madam Speaker and Ministers, if you do not support this disallowance motion you are not only allowing ACTEW to get away with it but also allowing this Minister to get away with it. Apart from a tiny part of the questions that were raised, he has not attempted to answer. He has been a total failure. If you let him get away with it now, if you let ACTEW get away with it now, then you have not set appropriate standards in this house. This matter needs to be sent back and they should come up with a decent system. As far as I am concerned, that decent system can start with a full user pays system.
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