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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 7 Hansard (25 June) . . Page.. 2138 ..

Ms Reilly: They have given up.

MR STEFANIAK: Hardly, Ms Reilly. I do tend to respond pretty well to them, as you well know. I probably tend to get the bulk of the complaints. I am sure that Ms Tucker gets some; I know that you get some; but I reckon that I get considerably more than you do. I am pleased to say that ACT Housing does pretty well in terms of the national customer satisfaction survey. This is done for every Australian State and Territory.

Ms Reilly: You must read it differently.

MR STEFANIAK: Ninety per cent of people, Ms Reilly, are satisfied or more than satisfied with urgent maintenance - something we do particularly well. Seventy-one per cent are satisfied with the location of stock. Those are the two biggest features in terms of public housing in the ACT. For non-emergency maintenance, the figure is only about 50 per cent, and that is why we are putting more money into maintenance this year. That is why we are also looking at having things like the cyclical program. Because of a number of efficiencies and improvements we have made, we are able, in this current financial year, 1996-97, to churn more money into some cyclical maintenance, which addresses some of the non-emergency maintenance areas and lets us be proactive rather than just reactive.

But, again, with the non-emergency maintenance, one of the biggest problems, of course, is the old stock we have. That is a perennial problem, and that is also why it is important to sell houses - so that we can build new houses. Under the current Commonwealth-State Housing Agreement, when you sell a property, you have to build a new one. That is terribly important. So, we get rid of older stock and we build new stock, and that has to be a good thing. Ms Reilly, I know that at present the market is a bit dead, but we are hardly flooding the market. I do not think anyone who knows anything about it would really suggest that. Property markets, as you should know, are like swings and roundabouts. At some times values are less; at other times values are at a premium. Over a period of time, what you lose on the swings you pick up on the roundabouts. Generally, I think, in terms of our sales program, we have managed pretty well to maintain a very strong capital works budget, even in this current financial year. Next year, $34m is to be spent - $22m on new projects - which has been outlined in the papers there.

To get back to that survey, it is interesting, Mr Speaker, that tenants in the ACT who have rented privately considered public housing to be better in all aspects of service and product except for the quality and security of property - again, getting back to the ageing stock there - but, in all other aspects, they considered it to be far better than private housing. Even the Leader of the Opposition, as I mentioned in the Estimates Committee, said late last year, in a debate on public housing, that it is almost impossible to compare public housing with private housing. Renting public housing, with the service and the maintenance you get there, is so much better than renting privately, according to the Leader of the Opposition. I think that is a very fulsome endorsement of the Housing Trust and the service it provides to its clients.

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