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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 1868 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

that has been attended to at the rate of some 500 a year. Again, people are in a bind. The tenants are in a bind. I often approach the Minister's quite helpful office with the case of people who have high heating bills or rising damp - they have all sorts of problems in their houses - and in part it is due to inadequate insulation. They do not want to pay high electricity bills. I had the case of one person who had installed, at a cost of about $2,000, some heating. There was piping through the ceiling from the stove and so on. It did not work very well, unfortunately. Lots of tenants go to some considerable trouble and expense to try to improve the heating in their home.

It would be an ideal situation if that program of 500 installations of insulation a year were expanded so that quite rapidly most of the homes were insulated and most of the heating bills for those families were reduced.

Quite a number of families - I do not know if anybody has figures - have installed insulation at their own cost. I have been to the Minister's office on some occasions seeking full payment or half payment or desperately, in the end, any payment to support that. I suppose not unnaturally, I get the answer: "Sorry, we cannot do that. You can take the insulation when you go, you people. It is your property. You can take it". But these people generally are long-term residents. It is not too convenient to put it in in the first place, and nobody wants to pull it out. Minister, I understand the difficulties. As with the first problem I mentioned, there is a need to see whether the insulation program can be installed more rapidly. I will not split my speech. I might seek an extension of time shortly as I want to raise another matter.

MR SPEAKER: You have another 10 minutes, Mr Wood, after this one.

MR WOOD: Yes. I might put them both together and then the Minister has to respond only once.

MR SPEAKER: As you will.

MR WOOD: I was approached by some residents of a complex in Ainslie. I might indicate that there is quite a deal of money being spent by ACT Housing at that place. As part of the upgrade there was a conversion to gas heating, which was welcomed. But there was a slip-up in the process in that the residents of the complex were not advised that they would need to make a security deposit to the gas firm. I think that was only a glitch in the process that went on and I think ACT Housing would now add that to their list of protocol when this sort of thing happens again in future. (Extension of time granted)

Mr Speaker, I have raised a number of times the condition of properties, the level of maintenance by individual tenants in this case. From time to time you see shock-horror stories about government housing properties that are in a very bad condition as a result of considerable neglect and a lack of living skills on the part of tenants - usually after they have left. I lump into the same basket the fact that tenants leave owing rent or, more commonly, tenants get strong letters, perhaps justifiably, from ACT Housing because they are behind in their rent.

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