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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Wednesday, 18 August 2004) . . Page.. 3819 ..

City West master plan does provide for about 5 per cent affordable housing, which we intend to carry through. But it will be a development in which we will be involved.

We have, through the Canberra spatial plan, set out objectives in relation to affordable housing. I think you would have to agree that generally what this government has put into public affordable housing, what it is doing, what it intends to do in relation to the initiatives set out in the Canberra spatial plan, means that that area is being addressed.

Like everything the government does in relation to community need, it is never enough. I do not claim that the answer we have is perfect and will satisfy every need, but it certainly is a stronger contribution than has been made in probably any jurisdiction in Australia.

Unfortunately, although there is a noble sentiment backing this particular proposal, it does unnecessarily reduce choices in our community; it would set up a parallel taxation regime which I do not agree ought to be there; it would probably distort the housing market; and it would probably have negative impacts upon the housing market, which is a revenue generator for the territory—a generator of revenue that goes to finance many of the other services that the government delivers to the community. So it may, in the long term, have a net negative impact and I doubt very much whether it would have any positive impact in the long term.

MRS DUNNE (10.42): I agree with everything he said, actually, but I will expound. I congratulate the acting minister because I think he has actually given a very good analysis of why we cannot support this bill.

I understand Ms Tucker’s concern. She has spoken at length and passionately about the need for integrating public housing into a range of other developments for a very long time. While these are laudable sentiments, I think that the mechanism proposed by Ms Tucker is not the right one. It has to be a policy-driven, case-by-case proposal rather than a blanket one-size-fits-all. It does distort the market. One of two things will happen: people will go about developing 19-unit developments to avoid paying the money or they will develop 20-unit developments and will develop at the back, in the third basement, with no solar orientation, two affordable housing units. So we will have A-class and B-class units within the one complex. Neither of those is a good outcome.

As the Treasurer and acting minister said, any of the costs associated with that would be borne by the people who buy the other units in the complex. For those reasons—while I understand the sentiment and I understand the need that Ms Tucker raises for integrating affordable and public housing into the general mainstream and having a salt-and-peppering effect across the territory—this is not the means to do it. It is a very hard thing to do.

We were discussing this matter this morning. My memory was refreshed that, under the previous government, one of the housing ministers approved the purchase of properties in housing developments in the newly revitalised part of Braddon, and the housing tenants do not like it; they do not feel that they fit into what might be characterised as a yuppie development; they do not like to live there. There is a high turnover of housing trust tenants in those places. In some cases, it just does not work. In other cases, like the City Edge development where the government, through community housing, had an

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