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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (2 April) . . Page.. 1270 ..

MR SMYTH (continuing):

The motion also welcomes the government's commitment to regularly update and turn over housing stock to meet the changing needs of the community. I would question the government's commitment to that. It is not the minister's commitment that I question. The way in which the government took decisions and changed those decisions in the space of a week or two denied ACT public housing and community housing the sum of $10 million that, according to the Auditor-General, was misused by the Treasurer.

It might interest Mr Hargreaves to know that during the budget process last year the government decided to give ACT Housing $10 million from the Treasurer's Advance, not for fire safety as the Treasurer told this place, but for social housing. That money was to be split, $5 million for ACT Housing and $5 million for community housing. If Mr Hargreaves' motion were correct and there had been a government commitment, that money would have stayed where it was.

We can argue about the legality of using the Treasurer's Advance for that till we are blue in the face. We will get to that in the Public Accounts Committee later. But we know that the Under Treasurer wrote to the CEO of Urban Services on 4 June and said:

I suspect, Mr Hargreaves, that that is cabinet decision 0187 from the budget cabinet 3 process. I made an FOI request for all the documents relating to this $10 million, and all I got from Chief Minister's was cabinet decision 0187 of budget cabinet 3 of 2002-03.

In early May, Housing was going to get $10 million, which would have been a good thing. The process, according to the Auditor-General, might have been a misuse of funds, but that money would have been a good thing. But some time after 23 May, more than likely on 30 May, that money, by cabinet decision or by the Treasurer acting alone, was diverted to fire safety upgrades. So the government's commitment to additional housing, in particular community housing in Tuggeranong, lasted probably one or two weeks and then disappeared from the books.

In answers to questions today, the Treasurer said that it was advice from the Under Treasurer that led to the $10 million being granted for fire safety. The Under Treasurer's letter of 4 June makes it quite clear. After the decision was made to shift the $10 million from community and social housing to fire safety, the Under Treasurer said that the issue of fire safety should be a matter of priority for the existing housing budget.

Why was the purpose of the funding changed? We do not know. The Treasurer seems to be woefully unaware of the reasons for this $10 million being expended, so I do not think we can expect an answer from him. I am not sure that we will get an answer from Mr Wood, because I would suggest he got rolled by the cabinet when, in an attempt to run the surplus down, cabinet agreed to spend this $10 million on social housing. Presumably somebody raised objections that this was in violation of the reason for the Treasurer's Advance, so the fire safety argument was invented. They will be issues for another day.

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