Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 9 Hansard (23 November) . . Page.. 2502 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

What on earth do you want to regenerate it for? All you are doing at the moment is chopping out services, chopping out facilities. Why do you not just bulldoze the place and be done with it? Regenerate! What a joke!

Where is Harold Hird defending? Maybe this was the Harold Hird initiative that nobody knew about. Here we are, regenerating Charnwood. Absolutely wonderful! Regenerate it after you have taken away the high school, after you have taken away all the local facilities. Wonderful, absolutely wonderful! It is the nub of what this Government is on about. Somebody has a good idea here. Somebody has a good idea there. Somebody once thought of an idea five years ago. Aha! Here is their big opportunity. Slip it into the budget somewhere. The fact that it makes absolutely no sense, that it does not combine with anything else, is too bad. This is all efficient and effective. It is going to reduce the deficit, and it is going to get Mrs Carnell re-elected in three years' time because there will be no borrowings. We are regenerating Charnwood. What a joke!

In the meanwhile, we are driving by people's properties. In the meanwhile, we are harassing people by going in and inspecting properties where they have lived for years and years. We are going around telling people that their bathrooms have too much mould in them. For heaven's sake! What on earth has that to do with the management of government property? When somebody has lived in that house for 10 years, who cares how much mould they have in their bathroom? Perhaps they should look to the intent of this whole program, which is to provide adequate and appropriate housing for low income people. It is not a program to harass people, to make them feel like second-rate citizens, to make them feel that they are there at the mercy of the goodwill of this Government. They are throwing people out.

Now we find, again not detailed in this program, that there is to be a bond. Most of the people going into these houses are on benefits. They have absolutely no money. What are they going to be put on? A bond. What a joke! It is revenue-raising from the poorest of the poor in our community. We have to have faith in this Government. We have to think that this is a good and efficient government because it is trying out a new pilot scheme in Belconnen, with new officers, who now have the task of harassing people, of examining their properties, of telling them how to live, of putting them on bonds, of taking money from the poorest of the poor of this community. After closing their high school, after mocking them for wanting to support this high school, after mocking them because the 250 students who were in the school and all their parents said that they were proud of that school and wanted that school, after they said to them, "We do not care about any of that; you can just forget your school because we want that property.", after all of that we find out that they are going to regenerate the Housing Trust properties in Charnwood. What a joke!

If ever there was a good reason why this Government does not deserve our support and why this budget line does not deserve our support, here it is in the stark evidence of the sheer incompetence of the group of people we see before us, the total lack of heart, the total lack of concern for the poorest of the poor in our community, the contempt in which they hold them, when they say, "You will be clean, you will be tidy, you will live in a particular way, you will pay money in a particular way, we will direct debit you.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .