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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 1 Hansard (20 February) . . Page.. 337 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

Most public housing tenants are severely disadvantaged. Many have not completed high school, and many have chronic illnesses or disabilities. Many have substance abuse problems and many have a broken employment history-or no employment history at all. We are not fulfilling our moral obligations to our fellow Canberrans if we think we have done enough by simply providing a roof over their heads. Every disadvantaged person is worth a public investment, to help them overcome the causes of the disadvantage.

I will acknowledge that the ACT government has made some attempts to address this disadvantage. Community settlement support workers have been engaged to help recent migrants in public housing, and community development workers have been based part time at public housing dwellings.

The digital divide project has been rolled out at some public housing complexes to help low income residents gain computer skills. These are worthwhile initiatives, but there is clearly unmet need among ACT Housing tenants, and an even more acute need among the people on the waiting list for public housing. More investment is desperately needed.

There are a number of questions that still require answers. We need to be looking at how the government can provide affordable housing through the masses of developments happening throughout our city. We know that the cost of housing in this city has gone up drastically, as has the cost of renting. The provision of more high-rise complexes of flats by public developers does not lessen the burden and does not make housing cheaper. The ACT government should be looking at how these new developments could be made adaptable and affordable so we use the developments that are going up on ACT land to help the people of the ACT find housing.

We must question what is going on in our multi-unit complexes. They were built a number of years ago and reports have repeatedly called for attention to be applied to these properties. Yet, even the current minister has taken his time in making decisions about the future of these properties, whilst still committing significant amounts of money to them.

I am disappointed that this government has not been able to make the commitments for which we were so hopeful for the provision of public housing. Whilst we might have been able to address the decline in the number and availability of public housing, we still have less public housing today than we did a few years ago. The growing housing crisis in the ACT is not one that can continue to be ignored.

I thank Ms Tucker for bringing this down as a matter of public importance today. Although it has sparked a heated debate in this chamber, I hope we all agree on a number of basic principles. The right to housing is a human right. We should be supporting people who cannot, in a time of need, get housing through other means, by making sure that public housing is accessible; that it is clean and safe; that we are not waiting seven weeks for the turnaround of one public housing tenant to another; and that our public housing tenants are supported as they live, often in times of great need.

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