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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3875 ..
At 5.00 pm, in accordance with standing order 34, the debate was interrupted. The motion for the adjournment of the Assembly having been put and negatived, the debate was resumed.
MR STANHOPE: As I said, these views are of the group which has most rigorously defended the rights of tenants and the position of tenants, the people whose lives and whose capacity to participate fully in the community we are debating now. I quote:
Despite reassuring claims this week by the Minister for Housing, Michael Moore, the proposed changes to public housing will not succeed in helping those in greatest need.
According to Welfare Rights and Legal Centre which has specialised in ACT tenancy law for over 15 years, the reforms will only add to the misery of those most deserving of our public housing.
The reforms come 18 months after Budget proposals to change the Public Rental Housing Assistance Program prompted such community concern that a Select Committee was formed to examine their likely impact. The Select Committee's recommendations, released in May this year, called for a serious redrafting of the proposals.
The official government response to these recommendations, tabled this week in the Legislative Assembly, states agreement in principle with almost all of the Select Committee's recommendations.
I digress to say that the point has been put most strongly by Ms Tucker that to that extent the government's response is simply misleading. I quote again:
Yet, according to Welfare Rights, its substance mirrors the very proposals which originally sparked the need for the Select Committee. With an implementation date for the proposed reforms of 1 January 2001, Welfare Rights now expects that the amendments to the Program which were drafted 18 months ago and which caused such community concern will be wheeled out again in the New Year.
If this happens, says Welfare Rights, the government is set not to change the face of housing in the ACT ...
The draft amendments to the Program contain provisions which Welfare Rights believes will contribute to greater transience, overcrowding and dislocation among the public housing population.
To digress again, those are the views of the people on the ground, the people who deal on a day - to - day basis with the tenants of public housing, the people most in need of an advocate and advocacy services. Those are the views of that group. This is the tenants speaking. It is interesting to note the extent to which the government misunderstands a number of these issues. It is interesting to note the extent to which it misunderstands the issue of overcrowding, for instance. The new arrangements that the government proposes simply do not understand the dimension of overcrowding that will occur under the arrangements that are to apply.
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