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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 09 Hansard (Wednesday, 18 August 2004) . . Page.. 3822 ..

Shelter is a basic necessity, and affordable housing is an issue that must be considered with seriousness and some urgency. Providing affordable housing, especially for young families, single-adult and single-income households, is an imperative. These people need to be able to pay their mortgage, afford their rent and be able to live with dignity at the same time.

We need a better scheme but this is just a half-better scheme and cannot be implemented in parts without placing the burden unfairly in one party’s lap. This is my reason for not supporting the bill, though I do believe that it was founded on a just cause, and I thank Ms Tucker for bringing this issue to the fore. I would expect the government to look further into this important matter. It is important for the sustainability of Canberra and I would expect the government to act on a pending problem on which, by its own admission, we could do better.

MR HARGREAVES (10.53): It is a really vexed question about how we actually approach the issue of lower cost accommodation for people. I am a bit worried sometimes when I hear the term affordable housing. I know there are academic definitions of affordable housing but I just do not know whether or not the definitions are particularly shared by everybody.

Is it a relative term—affordability—in terms of its relationship to our annual median salary, for example, or disposable income or what? What does it actually mean, particularly as it applies to unit developments? Does it mean that there will be lower rents in that development? Does it mean that there will be a lower price to buy the things? Does it also imply perhaps an acceptance that some units within a development have a lower standard than others—a lower standard of fittings—and therefore, Mr Speaker, are we actually saying to people, “Because of your financial circumstance, you can live in something which is less acceptable to someone with a higher income”? Therein lies part of the problem that I have with saying that you have to have a certain percentage of the unit development being made available for so-called affordable housing.

It also occurs to me that Ms Tucker is quite right to bring the thing forward. I actually pay her that courtesy and point out that she has been struggling with a solution to this issue for many years, publicly and privately. Whilst I might disagree with her on this particular one, I actually applaud her attempts to try to find the solution. What we have here is a social problem and it needs a social solution. It concerned me a bit that what we are asking for here is a smaller segment of our society to carry the burden of this solution.

Mrs Dunne made the point that developers will actually cut corners, if you like, and will shove people out the back, as it were; they will create a hovel within the unit development, that sort of thing. I think she is right because, unless there is a shared commitment to the solution, then you are going to get these corners that are cut; you are going to get lower standards. At least we have this shared commitment within the community as a whole, between all the stakeholders in the community, saying, “Yes, this is a solution; we can all embrace it.” That is fine, but if we just want to say to one segment, the risk-takers who are putting their money into a unit development, “Oh, it’s your responsibility; we’re fine; it’s your responsibility to make sure there is a certain

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