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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 2 Hansard (1 March) . . Page.. 450 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

My job and the job of other members in this place is to make comment about whether this social service is being adequately accounted for by the government of the day. I do not believe that it is. The government claims that it cannot afford to spend an extra $300 million on housing. I am still waiting to see that figure unpacked. I thought I had asked for it before. I am interested in finding out where the government is coming from and how it arrived at that.

I know that the government has said on occasions that it is reducing its housing stock, so I guess that figure will be going up as we speak because it would be needing to build more and more houses or purchase more and more houses. But you have to see that cost balanced against the cost of not providing housing for people who are at risk of being further disadvantaged. We have now had from this government a recognition that we need to address poverty in this city through intervention and prevention. The government is looking at crisis services and a crisis response to poverty in the ACT. We are also hearing from the government that it understands and recognises that for the long-term benefit of society you have to look at the causes of poverty.

As we know, the poverty task force said that housing was a particular issue for the ACT, that it is a big problem for low-income people in the ACT who are experiencing poverty. That was said quite clearly by the task force. It is also well recognised that it is only from a position of safe and secure housing that you can actually address the other issues of poverty, which means that if you have safe and secure housing you can look at education, employment and other support needs that you may have. That is why people in the social services sector across all countries, not just Australia, recognise the fundamental and critical importance of housing.

The government has set a particular income level at which, after 18 months, people will be seen to be not needing public housing. If you look at the statistics produced in Australia over the last couple of years you will find an increase in the amount of casual work performed, casualisation of the work force. We know that that is having a very detrimental and disturbing effect on lots of people in this country. It has implications for people who want to borrow money. Banks are having to deal with that themselves in terms of finding ways of knowing that people will be able to pay back money that they borrow if they are doing casual work and do not have a secure income.

An obvious concern for people who do casual work is that they do not know whether they are going to keep their jobs because the very reason that employers like to employ people on a casual basis is that they can get rid of them easier when they do not have such a need for them. It may suit the profit margins of individual companies to do that, but it does not necessarily serve society as a whole. For that reason, people are going to be concerned about losing their safe and secure housing. The dilemma that was put to the committee by many in the sector was that people would have to make a choice between a job or a home, basically; that there would come the point where they would have to make a decision on whether they were prepared to give up their public house in the hope that they would be able to continue getting employment, even though they had no guarantee of it.

I am interested in Mr Moore's amendments today. He has acknowledged at least one problem with the government's approach, and that is to do with how much people who are sharing government houses pay. (Extension of time granted.) Under his amendments,

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