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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 10 Hansard (5 September) . . Page.. 3153 ..

MR DE DOMENICO (continuing):

Therefore, should there be any voluntary redundancies, they have to be met out of the central pool. Mr Berry, that is a fact that even you should have known. All those workers will still be members of the Public Service. Any redundancies will be voluntary. Any voluntary redundancies, in accordance with Government policy, will be paid for out of the central pool. You have had two goes.

Mr Berry: On a point of order, Mr Speaker: One part of the supplementary question was, "Is not this a sneaky way of shifting the responsibility to somebody else to sack somebody?". I just want to repeat the question I asked.

MR SPEAKER: You are wasting the Assembly's time. Resume your seat. You have asked your question and your supplementary question. Mr De Domenico has answered both.

MS REILLY: My question is to Mr Stefaniak, as Minister for Housing. What is the auditing process for maintenance that has been undertaken on public housing? How can residents and the community be assured that the work is always of excellent quality and to requirement and that the best price has been obtained for the work undertaken?

MR STEFANIAK: All government departments are regularly audited. That is just as a matter of course, Ms Reilly. It is interesting that you raised that question as if there is something wrong with the work being undertaken on public housing.

Ms Follett: There is.

MR STEFANIAK: "There is", says Ms Follett. That is interesting, Mr Speaker, because I sat here during a debate on public housing only a couple of days ago in relation to the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement and the new arrangements, and I heard the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Whitecross, praising public housing; saying how good the terms for tenants were; that things did get attended to; how dreadful it was in private enterprise; how lucky we were that we did have a public housing system - this was on the MPI, I believe, on Tuesday - and the necessity for keeping it that way. Now, only a couple of days later, here we have Ms Reilly indicating, "No; there might be some great problems there". No, Ms Reilly; I think Mr Whitecross actually is right there. We have a very good record in public housing.

MS REILLY: I have a supplementary question, Mr Speaker. What follow-up action is taken by ACT Housing when there are complaints about maintenance or the lack of it? Is a log kept of complaints that are received about poor or slow response to maintenance requests?

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