Page 2206 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 22 June 2005

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range from one to four-bedroom townhouses and apartments and to cater for a wide variety of people’s needs.

Canberra Cohousing’s strategic aims are to build a cohousing development of 15 to 30 houses in urban Canberra, to aim for the highest possible level of social and environmental sustainability in housing and to develop a diverse, tolerant, caring and supportive community. Canberra Cohousing has been allocated $620,000 to build six affordable and adaptable dwellings, thus contributing to the pool of much needed affordable housing in the ACT. However, there is a hitch. While offered a piece of land for purchase at market rates in Gungahlin, they are still waiting—18 months after their application was made—for the Land Development Agency to vary the lease arrangements. If the land transaction does not occur in the next financial year, the grant for housing will be lost. If this occurs it will be a great loss of a showpiece of socially and ecologically sustainable housing with a high percentage of affordable dwellings for the ACT. If one planet living chooses Canberra, that will be fantastic, but projects from our own backyard have the potential to be just as exciting.

Policing

MR HARGREAVES (Brindabella—Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, Minister for Urban Services and Minister for Police and Emergency Services) (6.17): Mr Speaker, I wanted to let the Assembly know, for the edification of Mr Smyth, the source of the figure of $68.2 million. Mr Smyth smugly sits there and says, “Go for it; I’ve got a piece of paper that says a different figure and I am going to do you later.” Well, Mr Speaker, the $68.2 million was the amount appropriated in the 2001-02 budget. That is in fact the figure put forward by the previous Liberal government, in which Mr Smyth was a member of cabinet. I refer Mr Smyth to page 27 of the Budget at a glance document that his government produced. It reads:

POLICING

2001-02 Policing Expenses: $68.2 m

Up by $3.1 million (5%) on 2000-01.

Mr Speaker, if we cannot rely on a budget that was passed by this Assembly, produced by Mr Humphries when he was Treasurer and supported by Mr Smyth when he was—

Mr Smyth: It changed.

MR HARGREAVES: Oh, it changed, did it? Oh, it changed, ooh, ooh—I suppose it dived into a telephone box and put its undies on the outside of its jeans, did it? Mr Speaker, my statement in this house was that ACT government expenditure has increased from $68.2 million in 2001-02—

Mr Smyth: And it’s wrong; you are wrong.

MR HARGREAVES: Mr Speaker, I can start from Mr Smyth’s own figures. If he wants to do something else about that, he can say which one of us has not said the absolute truth. I am relying on a budget passed in this place. That is what the budget was and that is the figure that is quoted.


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