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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3028 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

As I say, to that extent we have anticipated the outcomes of the work that has been done. We have provided $2.5 million this year, and we have provided for a total of $10 million over the next four years. That is a significant increase in funding-significant additional funds for disability service delivery in the ACT.

Comment has just been made as well in relation to housing. Certainly there is tremendous pressure on public housing in the ACT. We have seen in recent years, certainly during the period of the previous government, that there has been a significant reduction in the public housing stock in the ACT. I am not exactly sure of the extent of the reduction, but certainly we now have some hundreds fewer dwellings than we previously did.

The debate around the availability of public housing needs to be held in the context of the significant reduction that has occurred in housing stock. As Ms Dundas just said, $3 million has been provided for community housing. I think we all understand, in the nature of community housing recommendations, that that money will be used as seed funding by those within the community sector committed to the provision of community housing.

We are, of course, looking for some new, innovative and lateral approaches to the provision of community housing. And those community organisations devoted to the delivery of community housing work very much in tandem with Housing ACT, or now with the Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services, to ensure, to the extent that we can, that there are appropriate levels of community housing here in the ACT.

In that context, mention has been made of the level of homelessness within the ACT and the tremendously tight circumstances faced by emergency housing or the refuges in relation to the number of clients seeking refuge or access to emergency housing-the number of people in the ACT that do not have anywhere to live, that sleep out, and the consequent pressure on our emergency housing services as a result of that. At the end of the day, very much of that is due to the enormous pressure that is placed on our housing services as a result of the combined effects of the age of much of the housing and the fact that we did, under the previous government, sell off significant slabs of our public housing stock.

It will be a long and difficult process to restore the housing stock to appropriate levels. It is one of those things-the minister, Mr Wood, refers to it as the cannibalising of our housing stock-that we sold off public housing in order to refurbish or to maintain other parts of the public housing stock. It is like the classic selling of the family jewels to pay the mortgage; at the end of the day, we all know you never get it back. It is the same with public housing. You sell some of your public housing stock because you cannot afford to maintain other parts of the housing stock, thinking, "Well, we'll maintain the stock that we have, we'll try to make a windfall gain from the sale of that public housing stock that is located within, say, the inner north and south, where the land has increased significantly in value and we'll apply the excess funds that we achieve through the sale of valuable public housing to the purchase of additional public housing." But, at the end of the day, you never do.

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