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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 9 Hansard (28 August) . . Page.. 2678 ..

Mr Whitecross: The Minister did not know that yesterday, did he? Your Minister did not know that yesterday.

MRS CARNELL: That is exactly what he said yesterday. The preamble states that changes in the current Commonwealth-State housing arrangement for 1996-97 will allow the ACT Government to sell public housing without the requirement of reinvesting the money. The fact is that it does have that requirement. Before we even start, the motion is fundamentally flawed. The motion goes on to say:

this Assembly directs the Government to ensure that:

(1) the proceeds from the sale of public housing will be used for the purpose and construction of public housing - - -

The fact is that the current Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement does require that, Mr Speaker. We cannot talk about what the next Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement will say, because at this stage we do not know what it is going to say.

Some discussions we have spoken about already would indicate a fundamental change as a result of Brian Howe's initial work in the area and work that is still going on. That would change the situation where the States are given significant lumps of money to provide public housing to a situation where the tenants themselves will get rental assistance. No longer will the States be the custodians of the money. The tenants themselves will get rental assistance, and it will be up to the States to manage the public housing portfolio, to ensure that it is reflective of what the tenants who get rental assistance actually want. The tenants themselves will be able to seek assisted housing in either the public sector or the private sector. That is what is on the table. I must admit that I have some significant problems with that and how that may affect Canberra. We will be debating that strongly with the Federal Government, but we will not be alone. A number of other States similarly have some issues that we believe have not been addressed. The reality is that the only agreement we can talk about today is the 1996-97 one, which, as I said, does require that any moneys from the sale of public housing be reinvested in the purchase or upgrading of stock or related purposes.

The second part of the motion says:

the mix of housing types and sizes including the location of public housing throughout the ACT community be maintained;

That is absolutely at odds with everything that members in this house, including people on the other side of the house, have spoken about. Mr Lamont spoke on this issue. He actually started significant public consultation on this issue. The reason that there needed to be some significant changes in the mix of public and private housing in some suburbs was that we believed, as I believe this whole Assembly believed, that we should not have suburbs with significantly more, or for that matter significantly less, public housing than other suburbs.

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