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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 9 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2669 ..

MS REILLY: There are a number of figures that you can choose. What would the impact of putting further houses on the market at this time be? The market is already delicately balanced, considering the fact that there is a slump. Prices went down by 5 per cent in June alone. What is the impact going to be? When you put the public housing onto the market, what prices will be obtained? Are we going to be looking for replacement as required under the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement or for market? In a low market, does that mean we will not get sufficient to replace, even if you decide that you will replace? This is a grave concern for the people within the industry. What is going to happen if additional houses are placed on the market at this point?

The cut of $10.4m in the housing budget, we are told, will have no impact. It must impact on the construction of new housing. I understand that yesterday you said that there will be $26m for new housing within the ACT and this would get 180 to 200 new units, the number you now claim is all you would sell off, so there would be no change to the housing market. The amount allocated this year is considerably less than the $40m that was allocated last year. There will be a cut in construction. What is going to be the impact on jobs if we take this amount of money out of construction? What is going to happen to builders who are building on spec? Last year there was a quite large purchase program. What will happen to those units? What will happen to the market if we do not ensure that the right type of housing is built?

We talk proudly about the building of APUs. It is an extremely good program and an extremely popular program, but without public assistance there is no way that older people can access good quality housing at a reasonable price. Those dwellings on the market that are targeted at older people are, in the main, at the higher end of the market. This is not the type of housing that older people can access, unless they have considerable sums of money.

You talk about new public housing that will allow flexibility, but you seem to have great reluctance to maintain the asset which we have. You have to consider the impact of sales on the whole market, not just what access people will have to public housing. You have to look at what impact it will have on the private rental market and on the private housing market.

Mrs Carnell: You just said there was not enough on the private rental market, so putting some more on is going to be a good thing.

MS REILLY: It is not likely in the ACT at the moment, with the market as it is, that some institutional buyer is going to fly in from interstate and take up the slack, which I understand is one rescuing angel that is being hoped for. I think it is unfortunate and unfair that the public housing sector has to bear the whole brunt of the black holes which have appeared in the ACT budget. The money that has been cut out of the budget should be restored. If we are going to sell public housing - and obviously any dynamic housing market must have buying and selling - the money should be reinvested in public housing.

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