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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 322 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

Housing officers are contacting the residents of damaged properties to discuss their problems and ways of overcoming them. Arrangements have been made to have the properties inspected and assessed to determine whether the residents should be relocated. I know of one house where there was no fire damage-trees in the yard were scorched-but the wind has done some damage and we are not sure yet just how much the building has been affected.

ACT Housing is also considering providing tenants whose properties were damaged with a rent abatement to compensate them for their loss of amenity. We are still working through many of those issues. Housing maintained a presence at the evacuation centres when they were in existence and is continuing to provide assistance to tenants and all other members of the ACT community through the recovery centre-the shopfronts by phone and by field visits.

Housing officers were given the task of helping private tenants and home owners to obtain private accommodation and to assess those who may become eligible for public housing, so they have extended their interests beyond just their own tenants. In the urban areas, ACT Housing will replace the destroyed houses to modern standards that conform to new building and planning requirements.

As I have said before, existing tenants will be given the first option of moving back to the reconstructed dwellings. Mr Hargreaves, Ms MacDonald and I are talking about the day we will turn up at a place in Kambah and hand over the key to its tenants. Having spoken to them, I know that they want to go back there. We will get that organised. We would like to have the first house opened, but some of the procedures we have to lock into, being government, mean that we cannot always move as quickly as we would like.

Other issues being addressed include ensuring that clean-up work is being commenced, dealing with damaged fences and outbuildings, carports, sheds and the like, responding to repair and maintenance matters, and identifying the loss of amenity that tenants have experienced, which is one of the benefits, as Mr Stanhope knows, of the reference group we established. I have to say that I would not have thought that we would have to do a lot of work very quickly on fences, but tenants have made it quite clear that they need fences, whether to keep their children or their pets in. They need that security, so we have had to act fairly quickly to get those fences up.

In talking about the reference group, I should mention the fine work of Joanne Matthews from Ammon Place, a public housing tenant on the reference group who is doing a fantastic job, I understand.

We have put up temporary fencing and, as many in the community are wishing, we have adopted the policy of replacing destroyed fences with Colorbond fences 1500 millimetres in height. Where we adjoin private lessees, that involves seeking the agreement of the private lessees and their insurers. The fencing process is a bit complicated, as members can imagine as we have all experienced some of those problems, but we are working through it. It is anticipated that the demand for fencing will cause a shortage of both materials and contractors. ACT Housing's total facilities manager south, Transfield, has arranged for additional fencing contractors to work for us.

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