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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 10 Hansard (29 August) . . Page.. 3057 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

have in this day and age? From the usage experience of the tenants, I think that it was not.

Firstly, we were attempting to make the facilities we kept more tenant friendly, raising the standard of them and making them more energy efficient, sustainable and useful in the long term. Secondly, we were getting rid of complexes that had reached their use-by date or had no longer met the need or were inappropriate in their construction or for various reasons had become stigmatised and were better got rid of in order to get better usage out of housing stock.

There was an enormous throughput of clients for some of the properties we had. They would sign on and stay for 12 or 13 weeks. Unfortunately, at the end of that time, they either left or were evicted because they had not paid their debt. So we divested ourselves of properties that were not working properly.

Housing should be about meeting the needs and the lifestyles of the tenants where they are at. That is why we had such a big program to build aged persons units, and that is why we had acquisition programs to try to get larger houses. For instance, we had this enormous stock of three-bedroom ex-govies that tenants were not interested in. They wanted four and five-bedroom houses in the perimeters; they wanted one and two-bedroom flats closer in. We also encountered problems with the building industry, which had stopped building one-bedroom flats. They did not appreciate there was a need.

In my time as minister, we tried to alert the building industry to the needs of ACT Housing so that, when they were doing developments, we could spot purchase and therefore salt and pepper ACT Housing tenants across the territory-as they should be, rather than have them in inappropriate concentrations, which led to them having the stigma of being a Housing tenant.

My time as housing minister was incredibly rewarding. The majority of tenants I met were proud of where they lived and of the way they kept their properties. They did an incredibly good job of maintaining those properties-as if they were their own homes. They were their own homes. Those tenants are to be congratulated. Difficulties with the media and horror stories from shocked neighbours of ACT Housing tenants were unfortunate. There are probably as many shocking tenants in private accommodation as there are in public accommodation.

We met the needs of tenants where they were with what they wanted and did not shoehorn them into the inappropriate accommodation mix we had been given in 1989 as a consequence of the federal government being the largest landlord in the city.

Some of the programs we put in place I would commend to the government: the big flat strategy-to revamp those big flats; the breaking down of some of the concentrations; and the aged persons program to build more accommodation, not just in the inner city but where aged persons actually want to be. We were building in places as diverse as Higgins, Waramanga and Kambah so that these people could retire and be in appropriate accommodation where their families, friends and networks were. That was important.

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