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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 7 Hansard (18 June) . . Page.. 1798 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

Indeed, Mr Speaker, I believe that there may be a tendency to push us towards welfare housing as opposed to public housing. Public housing is the system we have now where there is public ownership of a wide range of housing. On many occasions - in fact, one could argue, in most cases - people become involved in public housing because of a welfare situation; but then, as they gain jobs, as they become more able to afford their housing, they pay full market rent. That in turn, of course, subsidises the other housing, which could be described as fulfilling the welfare need. This notion of public housing rather than just welfare housing means that there is public housing around us, as there is in almost all suburbs of the ACT. There is no question of people being marginalised. Most of us know whether or not a house is a government house. Is it public housing? Yes. Is it welfare housing? We do not know. It is quite appropriate that we do not know. So we have a situation where our neighbours who are in need are helped without at the same time being put in a situation where they are embarrassed in any way about being in government housing.

Mr Speaker, this area of concern is not one that comes out of the legislation, I believe, or the agreement that the Minister is currently tabling, but really one that comes out of the broader discussions that were referred to, certainly by Ms Tucker and Ms Reilly, and that are going on at the moment in terms of the Federal Government's agenda on housing, and is something about which we must be particularly wary. It may well be seen as a method of saving money. If it is just dry economics that you are looking at, be warned that it will not be a method of saving money.

In congratulating the Minister on this agreement, I think it is a perfect opportunity to make him wary of any further agreements. The reason it will be an expensive option in the long term, with some short-term savings, is that we will spend the money on other welfare and policing agencies. Where we see situations of welfare housing and people being marginalised, we invariably see a greater discrepancy between those who have and those who do not have. We invariably see greater social problems, and you only have to look to the United States to know that that is the case. At a meeting I had with the person in charge of drugs policy in the Clinton Administration, Dr Lee Brown, when I was in the United States a couple of years ago, we talked about the differences between the social structure in Canberra and the sorts of issues that he had to deal with. I described to him the public housing that we have here, and his response was that if they had that system throughout the United States he would be able to resign from his position.

Mr Speaker, these are real issues of social justice and social equity and the sort of society that all of us in this house have spoken about at different times in terms of our aspirations. Public housing is one of the ways that we can achieve an equity that assists in preventing social dislocation. Mr Speaker, we know that we are not living in an ideal world, and we are never going to have a 100 per cent success rate. There will be people who are socially dislocated, and Ms Reilly mentioned the homeless in her speech. However, we are doing far better than most, and I think that is something that we should be proud of and be careful not to undermine.

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