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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 7 Hansard (21 June) . . Page.. 2331 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

unreliable information? Is it the case that the KLA report points all that out and is a problem?

MR MOORE: On the contrary, Mr Wood. The delay with that has to do with the Auditor-General. We are trying to ensure that the Auditor-General is satisfied that the financial process of the accounting treatment is right. It is incredibly frustrating: we have a very good policy for transferring those houses to Community Housing but, because the accounting treatment becomes so important, the policy is slowed down. We are listening to what the Auditor-General has to say, we are working with the Auditor-General and we are accepting what he has to say, unlike those opposite who do not want to accept that he has said that there was a $344 million operating loss that they left when they left government and Mr Wood was a minister.

Mr Wood: I rise to a point of order, Mr Speaker. The point I was making was that the process was never put right in the first place.

MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order. You will have the opportunity to speak at the end of question time.

Public housing

MR RUGENDYKE: My question is also to the housing minister, Mr Moore. Minister, I am aware of a family who made application to your department under the eligibility for early allocation of housing criteria, as outlined on the Canberra Connect website. Early this month the criteria under which they applied for their early allocation of housing was changed. A couple of the criteria upon which they relied have been removed from the Canberra Connect site. Could you advise whether that family's application will be assessed under the criteria as applied then or as the Canberra Connect site shows now?

MR MOORE: Mr Rugendyke, I'm not aware of why that criteria changed; I imagine it was in response to the policy decisions we made to ensure that we could deal with those most in need first. If that is the case, then I will need to ask Housing to look at this specific case and determine where it is at. As a matter of principle, where somebody has applied under a certain set of criteria, they should be assessed in terms of that criteria and positioned into an early access. With the new criteria coming into place, though, it may well be that somebody has a more urgent need and goes ahead of others, rather than being taken off.

If you can give me the specific case, then, as always, I'll have it assessed and checked against those criteria. But I'll also follow up the specific criteria to see whether it has been appropriately changed to match the policy decisions that were passed by this Assembly when there was a motion of disallowance moved which did not have the support of the Assembly.

Mr Humphries: I ask that further questions be placed on the notice paper, Mr Speaker.

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