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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2133 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

We know that they have taken money out of the roads budget, because we have just discussed that. I think it is unfair that public tenants have to take the full brunt. It is unfair for the 4,000 families and individuals on the housing waiting list to be asked to bear this. It is also unfair for those people who work in the construction industry to have to wear the loss of jobs in construction programs.

Let us discuss the $5m for this year. We can talk about the $5.4m later. The ACT Housing tenants' contribution to the State financial contribution - that $5m - could be converted into 50 more houses. That means that 50 individuals or families on the housing list could be offered housing that is affordable and appropriate to their needs. That would be great. I am sure that 50 families and individuals would be really thrilled to have that possibility. Of course, that is working it out on $100,000 a house; but, if you are buying some of the bargains that public housing is selling off, you could probably get a house for a lot less. So, there would be more than 50 people involved. If you look at it over the last two years - we are talking about $15.4m - using the same basis of calculation, 150 or possibly 160 people could have been housed if the Chief Minister had not generously given that money away. The other question you have to ask is: Why did she not think to consult the public tenants about whether they were happy to give up that much of their budget? I am sure that a number of them would have had considerable opinions on that matter.

One of the other interesting areas in this year's budget is maintenance. There has been much discussion about the additional moneys that are being spent on maintenance; but, if you look at the financial statements, you will see that ACT Housing has had trouble spending its maintenance budget. In fact, in the last two statements that we have had, which are for February and March, there has been considerable underexpenditure. You could almost go as far as to suggest that by the end of March they had spent only about half of their maintenance budget for 1996-97. Even though I was assured at the Estimates Committee hearing that the money would be spent in this financial year - and I was very pleased to be assured by the Minister about that - you have a situation where you have public housing tenants with a landlord who, I am sure, is following world's best practice in these matters, who fails to do maintenance in any sort of speedy way, because he underspends by that amount of money. You can only consider that to be the case.

I, along with a lot of the other MLAs, I am sure, receive many complaints from people about maintenance - maintenance that is not done, maintenance that people have to wait for. Quite often, quite serious issues need to be addressed. If people who want their houses painted ask, they are told, "No. There is no money". I am sure that it was a shock to them to find out how much money was actually sitting around, unspent, at this time of the year. I am sure that the Minister is now going to assure me that all the contracts were let and that, in fact, this maintenance has all been done. But Ms Tucker raised it in the estimates process, and we discovered how much maintenance in the whole process has not been done but needs to be done, recognising the age of the stock. It is quite outrageous that the Minister is not able to manage that part of his budget to the extent that there is expenditure going on during the whole year - or will we find that it is the weather that has created the problems?

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