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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 327 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

More to the point, we are waiting to see what this government can achieve through development controls, on the one hand, and through its own development of estates such as Kingston Foreshore, to include a significant proportion of public and affordable housing. If the government is not going to deliver at Kingston, despite commitments from the foreshore authority when it was first set up, then it would be failing in its duty. I notice that in the development application for The Metropolitan, in Civic West, as called in by the Planning Minister last year, the environmental assessment includes a dot point which says that affordable housing is provided within the proposed development in accordance with the Affordable Housing Taskforce's recommendations for providing housing in this location.

This offers no reassurance that the government is really committed to the provision of affordable housing, sufficient to affect the housing situation in Canberra. Furthermore-no great surprise-there is no public housing component in this development. The minister has described this development as being at the forefront of the renaissance for Civic. Clearly it is a renaissance for young professionals living in up-market units, not the more diverse and varied community that Canberra is, in reality. In fact, the same community that is going to fill up Kingston will be there.

It is no surprise, then, that even the Connors inquiry into education funding warns us-and the government-that there is danger, even at our schools, for pockets of poverty and social differentiation to take hold. Unless this government is prepared to bite the bullet on both public and affordable housing, our inheritance from this government will be increasing fragmentation, inequality and social disharmony.

The other question is what happens with the public housing we do provide? If, as is inarguably the case at present, public housing is to be targeted more and more tightly to people who are living in the most difficult circumstances, then there is a responsibility upon this government and upon ACT Housing to provide the necessary social support that people living in such circumstances require.

My office is in continual contact with tenants of ACT Housing whose lives are filled with a range of difficulties. When Mr Wood was in opposition, he spoke of the same issues, and I know he understands them.

It is my responsibility to point out to him that we are still getting this flood of calls and, unfortunately, people are still saying that they believe they are treated with contempt; they believe their individual circumstances are ignored; they find themselves committed to unrealistic debt reduction; and they say that they appear at tenancy tribunal hearings, for example, to find themselves confronted in a legalistic and aggressive manner. By the time they reach us, many constituents are totally frustrated or intimidated by their dealings with an institution that seems to be unable to factor in sufficient care for tenants, and perhaps their children, whose lives have left them in very difficult situations.

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