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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 3947 ..

MS REILLY: One would think that, when you are putting up plans with concepts as broad and extensive as those put up in Ainslie, one of the things you would have in place would be a good community consultation process so people could know what is happening. No, there was no community consultation process. It was developed on the run to recognise the level of community objection to what was going on. There was no process in place. One of the vital missing parts of this whole discussion is that a plan such as this was put up with no process. It is excellent to see that the community got together. People took part in the community meetings that they have had the opportunity to attend.

Mr Humphries: We organised community meetings. That was the point of the exercise.

MS REILLY: A considerable number of them attended the meeting that was held last Sunday, which was not originally planned, Mr Humphries. People have taken part and have put up suggestions to have time to look at these redevelopment plans. You just have to ask what the hurry is.

One of the other major issues in this whole Ainslie process is public housing. Ainslie has one of the higher levels of public housing of any suburb in the ACT. I still do not understand what the objections are to the amount of public housing in Ainslie. I think 34 per cent is the amount usually mentioned. It is as though it is indecent and obscene to have this amount of public housing. It is often described almost in those terms.

The other thing is the connection between the redevelopment and the public housing sales, and whether they have good roads and whether there are proper parks. I find an interesting correlation between the quality of the roads and the quality of the parks. It is tied to the redevelopment process. That is a redevelopment process that always seems to have less public housing. When you look at this redevelopment process, it seems to fail to take into account the age of Ainslie, in terms of both the heritage culture of the ACT and the age of the residents. You are talking about residents who, in a number of cases, have lived in Ainslie for many years. I do not understand why they should have to make a decision about a large change of lifestyle in such a hurry. It fails to take into account the needs of a number of older residents of the ACT.

Mr Stefaniak mentioned the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement and what the impacts of that will be. Since the discussions on the changes to the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement have now slowed down quite considerably, thanks to the objections by a number of State Premiers and Chief Ministers, I am not sure why Ainslie has to be tied entirely to that process. We need to look at what Ainslie will mean in terms of the ACT community, not just the public housing part. There will not be any changes to the CSHA now until mid-1998. We should not hurry in trying to make changes to Ainslie in line with what might possibly come out of the Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement.

Mr Stefaniak: It has nothing to do with Ainslie.

MS REILLY: Mr Stefaniak suggests that it has nothing to do with Ainslie. Maybe he should keep all his bureaucrats aligned with that as well. I have moved this amendment in order to get into the Planning and Environment Committee process the details of the concerns that are being raised by the Ainslie community at this time.

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