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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (3 April) . . Page.. 1372 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

I will speak to both my amendment and the general motion. I am aware that the task force was formed in February 2002 and that it handed down its report last December. In other words, many of the more difficult and significant issues were parked in the affordable housing task force basket. In fact, we were raising these issues quite a long time before that and it was a great relief to me when the current government decided to say that they would take proactive action by establishing this task force. I was very pleased to see that happen because I think this area has been left neglected for far too long.

However, I have some concerns about the current process. It has taken very long for this task force even to report. Here we are in April of 2003 and in the meantime a number of fairly large-scale developments and territory variations have proceeded, and even been called in, without the benefit of an affordable housing strategy to guide them.

Kingston Foreshore, the Metropolitan, the Hungarian-Australian Club, as far as I am aware even the Griffin Centre, and many more developments, including detached housing in Gungahlin, Belconnen and Tuggeranong, are all proceeding or have proceeded apace.

This minister's task force has made comprehensive recommendations covering a wide range of strategies designed to deliver affordable public, community and private housing in a number of configuration. I do not accept all the recommendations of the task force, nor do I believe it has covered all the issues.

There is a real shortage of crisis accommodation for young people, for men and for women with mental health and substance abuse problems, for people on the margins of our society, which impact on the housing situation more broadly, but these issues are not addressed in the report. Nor were the benefits of a mix of tenants in public housing factored into tenancy management discussion under "developing social housing", and it seems to me that there is considerable further work to be done there.

Furthermore, while there is some discussion of reconfiguring public housing stock in the interests of so-called "better utilisation", there is no discussion of expanding that stock. Indeed, the reverse is the case. The Greens and many other community organisations have already questioned the benefits of handing over public housing stock to community housing organisations, as has happened in the past and is further recommended in this report.

I notice that the bibliography of the report did not include the select committee report on the role of public housing, of which I was chair and Mr Wood was a member, nor the report of the Youth Housing Task Force.

We are concerned also about the promotion of Community Housing Canberra Ltd as such a key organisation for the development of affordable housing in the ACT and we are uncomfortable with what appears to be a fairly quiet reorganisation of its governance arrangements in order to facilitate that progression. And that is as good a place as any to point out the abrogation of responsibility that is going on.

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