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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (5 December) . . Page.. 3641 ..

MR MOORE (continuing):

of tenure and assistance, the allocation policy for applicants, and the entitlements policy for tenants.

This review process should be guided by the fact that the ACT has the lowest proportion of its population on welfare benefits - 11 per cent against a national average of 18.2 per cent. I have to say that part of that is through the good management of this government, particularly the work of Kate Carnell as Chief Minister. In spite of that 11 per cent against a national average of 18.2 per cent, we have a higher proportion of households already assisted into public housing at 10.3 per cent against a national average of 5.3 per cent. In other words, whichever way you look at it, we are doing much better than any other jurisdiction.

Mr Speaker, I appreciate the effort of committee members in undertaking this inquiry and the submissions made to the committee by many organisations and individuals as part of the consultation process. I table the government's response.

MS TUCKER (3.30): I have not had time to look at much of the report, but I will make a couple of comments right now.

Mr Moore: Just adjourn the debate and come back to it.

MS TUCKER: No, I do not want to adjourn it. I can see a couple of things that I can already speak about. Obviously, this response is a joke. We have been told that the government will be picking up, I think Mr Moore said, 12 of the 14 recommendations. It is a matter of the sort of language used. The government says that it agrees in principle, but when you read what it is saying you find that it will be going ahead with exactly the same policy.

For example, the committee recommended that security of tenure for public housing tenants should be maintained and that, if the government wished to proceed to remove security of tenure for public housing tenants, it should first undertake a comprehensive assessment of the people likely to be affected and bring the issue before the Assembly for debate. What is happening there? Where is the reference to the comprehensive assessment in this response?

Basically, the government is saying that it intends to continue to impose eligibility criteria because it wants to knock off public housing and have narrow, targeted welfare housing. The same problems are there now as were there when the select committee looked at the issue. The government is setting up two sets of tenants here. It is going to have existing tenants who are tenants for life and it is going to have tenants whose situation is going to be reviewed every three to five years.

The status of existing tenants will change if their situation changes, so you will not have existing tenants seeking a transfer because they would then lose their status as a tenant for life, which is going to be a real issue for Housing. I do not know what Housing will think about that. I am really interested in finding out what Housing will think about this. You are going to end up finding that tenants who are not fully occupying a house will not be seeking a transfer because their status would change if they did.

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