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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 2991 ..

MR WHITECROSS (continuing):

Mr Speaker, as my colleague Ms Reilly pointed out, public tenants can live in their houses and enjoy their houses in a way that private tenants cannot. Private tenants, when they move into their house, get an inventory. Mr Speaker, I can tell you that some of these inventories make pretty fascinating reading. I have seen inventories for private tenancies which list the number of pin pricks in the wall in the toilet; the length of a scratch, its exact location on the floor and its exact location in relation to the door; and the number of rings on the curtain rail.

The level of scrutiny and the level of harassment engaged in in private tenancy are quite significant. While that may be okay for those of us who remain in private tenancy for a relatively short period of our lives before moving into ownership, it is not a form of tenancy which is appropriate for those of us who cannot afford home ownership and, therefore, are looking to live in a house for a long period of time. Why should someone who cannot afford to buy a house have to move every 12 months because you can get only a 12-month lease in the ACT? People trying to bring up a family, perhaps with diminished means, ought to have the right to security of tenure and ought to have the right to live in that house as if it were their family home, in the same way that you or I can as home owners. I think that is something which has to be taken seriously, and it is an important consumer right that people have.

Mr Speaker, just on that point, I want to pick up on something the Minister said. The Minister last week and again today made much of the fact that there are a lot of three-bedroom houses in the public housing stock, with only one or two people in them. He recited this statistic like it is some sort of scandal, and I think we have to get this into perspective. There are a lot of good reasons why one- or two-person households might be in three-bedroom houses. It may be that they have lived there for 20 years and do not want to move; and they should not have to move. It may be that they brought up a family there and it is their family home. Just as other people do not want to leave their family home, these people do not want to leave theirs. I do not think that the Minister should get too carried away with this rhetoric about the number of three-bedroom houses there are which have only one or two people in them. If the Government offers them an alternative and they want to move, that is one thing; but it is not intrinsically wrong for them to live in a three-bedroom house, any more than it is for one- or two-person households to own houses with three bedrooms.

Ms Tucker also raised today an issue which I think has to be taken seriously, which is this issue of the convenience and the quality of life of people in public housing. People in public housing have a right to be close to amenities and to enjoy amenities, and it ought to ring alarm bells in the minds of people in the community that people like Mrs Carnell are so anxious about the high number of public housing properties there are in suburbs like Braddon and Ainslie, which are convenient to community facilities, and their apparent fixation with reducing those numbers.

MR SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired.

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