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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (2 April) . . Page.. 1272 ..

Mr Stefaniak: I take a point of order, Mr Speaker. I think "warmongering"is somewhat unparliamentary.

MR HARGREAVES: It is not unparliamentary.

MR SPEAKER: There is no point of order.

Mrs Cross: Isn't that an imputation against the Prime Minister?

MR HARGREAVES: No. That is bad luck. I don't like him. Canberra started as a public housing estate. It was created when Parliament House was built. We had public housing stock back then. Mr Smyth was quite right when he said that we have the oldest stock in the country. Indeed, I welcome the idea of not building more but replacing the ones that are now old by selling them and spot purchasing new ones.

I wish the minister all the power he can get when he battles with the bean counters and Treasury. Sometimes I think accountants, Chief Minister's and Treasury are a bit out of touch with service delivery, particularly with service delivery line managers, who know how people feel, know how people suffer and know how people react to government policy. Often the people sitting here in Civic do not talk to the people who are fronting the folks in Tuggeranong, Belconnen and Gungahlin. The bureaucrats who are dishing out the dough do not talk to the line managers, the people on the counter.

Mrs Cross: He is talking about you, Ted.

MR HARGREAVES: No, I am not. I am talking about his officers.

Mrs Cross: I thought you were talking about the Treasurer.

MR HARGREAVES: No, not at all. Ms Tucker talked about the affordable housing task force. We did not have one under the previous regime. We have one now. Whatever it does will be an improvement on what happened before.

Ms Tucker talked about not understanding the turnover of housing stock to meet demographic change, so let me explain that. As people get older, they do not need a big house and a big yard. They need a town house. My father is in public housing premises in Duffy next door to a vacant lot where the premises were burnt out by the bushfires. My father lives in two-bedroom town house that has an emergency crash button. That is what I mean by changing demographics. A family with two kids live in totally different housing to that which older folks need. That is what I was talking about.

Mr Pratt also talked about the age of housing stock in Tuggeranong. It was nice to hear that he was wandering around the electorate looking at it. Perhaps he can put some muscle on his federal colleagues and get us a better deal under the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement. He made the point-and I would agree with him-that we are getting a healthy mix of community, public and private housing all over town. Tuggeranong is no exception to that.

I echo the minister's congratulations of Mrs Burke for telling us what Labor Party policy is and directing us to the website of the Labor Party-not that I know where that is. It

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