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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 12 Hansard (21 November) . . Page.. 4122 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

They were sold at an average of $161,000 a property, which is not bad in such a dreadful, depressed market. Sure, some of those properties were in Griffith and Ainslie and good suburbs like that, which bring a lot of money, but others were in outer suburbs and did not necessarily bring a lot of money. Still, it was a very good result.

Yes, no-one likes having to give money to the Commonwealth, or not getting money from the Commonwealth, and that $10.4m was a very difficult decision which the Chief Minister had to take.

Mrs Carnell: It was not a decision. They said, "This is what you will do".

MR STEFANIAK: It was just a reality, I suppose, which was forced upon us. We are, I suppose, fortunate in that at least we can do something to counter that. We can have an effective sales program. It is pleasing to see the results of that and the figures to date, which I have just told you about. It is pleasing to still have a very significant capital works program which, I think you will recall from the Estimates Committee hearings, is only about $3m or $4m down from last year. In fact, it is higher than at some stages during the course of the previous Government. It is close on $34m in terms of new building.

There are some very impressive new buildings, if you have a look at the budget papers, such as 10 aged person units in Hall, 10 townhouses in Ngunnawal, eight flats in Ngunnawal, 15 houses in Ngunnawal and Nicholls, the Condamine Court redevelopment which we all like, and, finally, finishing off the Ainslie Village redevelopment, a project worth about $2m, and special purchase and dual occupancies. There are also such things as the COOOL project and further housing for the disabled. There is some money, $500,000, for a pilot project in Charnwood. That should be a very useful project, and you will see more of that in years to come in terms of the improvement to public housing there. So there are some very good projects going on, and we are always gearing our construction work to creating the type of housing that is more relevant now for our tenants. You have heard these figures quoted before, but over 30 per cent of our tenants are over 55 years of age, yet only about 10 per cent of the housing available is really appropriate for those needs. Now we often have one or two people in properties, whereas in the past it was more the traditional family units. Times are changing and we have to change. That is very important when you consider such things as the redevelopments proposed for Ainslie. It is a significant capital works program, Ms Reilly.

I do not know whether any of my colleagues in the Opposition have been the Housing Minister. I think Mr Connolly was, and then Mr Lamont, I think. I am not too sure whether Mr Berry ever was. Certainly, in terms of some of the old files I get, maintenance is a perennial problem and people will always complain about it. You can never do enough. We have a lot of old properties that need a hell of a lot of maintenance. Yes, we have been able to increase that budget by about $2.9m, and yes, that will be of some assistance. I would like to say that we will not get any complaints, Ms Reilly; but I am sure we still will, because maintenance is always a problem. I would hark back to what your leader said when we had this debate in September. That was that, whilst there might be a few problems from time to time in terms of maintenance in public housing, it is a hell of a lot better than in the private market. I only need refer you to what Mr Whitecross said about that.

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