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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 2987 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I am also obviously not convinced that we will not end up with a greater focus of low-income people in particular areas as a result, which is the total opposite of what you have claimed. You have said that we will continue to have a society which has a mix in all its suburbs and we will not have the problems of greater polarisation in our community. I am not convinced that that is going to be the result at all from these new reforms.

In conclusion, I will just say that we think it is extremely difficult to see how the Commonwealth could provide sufficient subsidies to enable poorer tenants to continue to live in areas that have a high rental market value. Again I say that the most likely outcome is that those least able to bear it will be forced to move to areas which are further from employment and services. I state again that that is a particular disadvantage in this city now because of the state of public transport, and the very people who need public transport and amenity of services the most will be denied them.

The Commonwealth Government's attempt to split supply of housing and subsidy for tenants appears to come only from ideological philosophy which is really based on the demand-side approach, and this has not worked in the UK and New Zealand. I know that you say that people in this country - politicians, Labor and Liberal - are moving in this direction, but that does not make it right. If you do your research you will find it has not worked in other countries, and that is why we have grave concerns about the consequences of this movement.

MR MOORE (5.16): Madam Deputy Speaker, I think it is interesting that the Department of Social Security, under the Liberal Government, now looks after housing. The Department of Social Security is an organisation involved with welfare, and it would appear that housing has been moved across to a situation where it is considered a welfare issue rather than an issue of general interest to the public and of fulfilling a role on which I have spoken on quite a number of occasions in this Assembly in speaking on the difference between public housing and welfare housing.

The announcement that the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement is due to be renegotiated for July 1997 has raised a whole range of issues, and I want to run through seven main concerns on this, Madam Deputy Speaker, and give four possible advantages. Although I say at the beginning that the foreshadowed idea of the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement which sees rent subsidies paid to tenants rather than to State governments is something that I consider a significant step backwards, it seems to me that there has been quite a deal of pressure from the industry, particularly the housing industry, for this sort of move for some time. Contrary to the way I heard it explained earlier, I think that it does tend to follow the sort of approach that was initiated, firstly, by Mr Brian Howe in the Federal Government. But I also point out that it was one that was not accepted by his Labor colleagues. Much as there have been many things which Mr Howe has done which I agree with, this is certainly not one of them.

The first concern that I deal with is the notion of disenfranchisement, and that is the issue of the temptation to sell off the stock of inner city dwellings in order to get a bigger return so that we can invest in further numbers. The difficulty with that is that it will force tenants into the outer suburbs. What we should achieve in Canberra is an equity in distribution of our public tenants across Canberra. I think at the moment there is only a handful of suburbs that have no public housing in them. But we should be ensuring that

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