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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2330 ..

MR QUINLAN (continuing):

Let me just close by advising the house that I have a semi-retired friend who lives in Conder and spends a considerable amount of his own time cleaning up his neighbourhood because there are insufficient cleaners to keep the place reasonable. My friend has spoken to the cleaners. I think there are three. Please tell us in your response, minister, just how many people we have on the job of keeping neighbourhoods reasonably presentable. Luckily, you have an extra part-timer doing it for you but, at the same time, he resents the fact that he has to do it regularly to keep the area in which he lives in a reasonable state.

MR WOOD (9.53): I will restrict my comments to housing. As usual, we see some good news announced in the budget. I share that good news: over $60 million in a 10-year refurbishment program. It is wonderful stuff. Congratulations, minister.

Mr Quinlan: Over 10 years?

MR WOOD: Yes, note the 10 years. We all acknowledge that housing stock in the ACT is significantly run down. We inherited that when we inherited self-government, and it has been a rather large burden to deal with. I want to acknowledge that. We know all about that. The stock is old. As do others in the community, we applaud the generosity of this refurbishment program.

I congratulated the minister in another respect-on the release of the ecumenical housing report on the big complexes of flats. I had not seen that level of detail about the stock before. I might have moaned or groaned or complained that we do not see enough detail of what Housing has in mind. In the budget, the government took on board some of what the report suggested and said, "Yes, we are going to carry out a refurbishment program." Seeing that report was good. It indicated where things needed to be done and what needed to be done.

But we have not looked at the other side of the story. What is the other side of the story? Where is the money coming from? That is the other side of the story. The minister did not give us a big announcement about that. He might tell us tonight. At estimates we were told, generally, that $60 million-odd would be off-budget. What does that mean? I will tell you what it means. I reckon that most of the $60 million will be found by selling assets. That is where it will come from. I might be told otherwise. I wait to be told otherwise. That is what off-budget is. I know money is regenerated and that Commonwealth money goes into housing, but that scale of expenditure will require something else. I do not think the government will be digging into its existing resources to do that.

The record of recent times shows that the government has been selling off its property to fix other property. In third world countries they call that cannibalising. A third world country will buy a fleet of buses and progressively cannibalise to put spares into other buses, and so it goes until there are no buses left. That is where the money is coming from.

I recognise the minister's difficult problem here. I want to acknowledge that. While applauding his openness in showing us where this work needs to be done, I also criticise him for not being so open and for not telling us in the same media statement where that money is coming from. He should have done that as well. It was not done.

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