Page 2766 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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10 per cent some time ago but, now that technology has arrived, we can drop it down to six per cent. That is a reasonable figure.
Of course you have to change systems; you do not just sack people. The systems cost money. We have a couple of small housing providers who have decided they want to join up, and they have. We are assisting them in that process. We are creating consistent systems. When they are finished they will not have three different sets of personal computers, they will not have three different types of systems where one is on Access and another is on Excel. They will have one. They will have one support service provider. That is where the cost savings are going to be made: not in people but in those systems. The same thing will happen in ACT Housing.
Dr Foskey accused me of cutting funding to some peak bodies. Indeed, we did, but not for the reason she is intimating. She is saying, “You did not like their advice, so you cut their funding.” That is absolutely ludicrous. That is insulting to both of us. We cut them because they were receiving funding in the overmatching funds, over and above the commonwealth-state housing agreement. The money was not there. Also, the costs of the administrative systems they were using were too high, the same as those of the community housing providers. We have said to them, “We understand the difficulties you are in. We will work with you to overcome those difficulties.” But the simple fact is that we cannot afford it. As with a lot of these budgets over the national benchmark, we are not saying, “Let us get right down to the national benchmark,” we are saying, “Let us get a heck of a long way down towards it.”
Dr Foskey criticises the cuts from housing but, as I have said, it is the back-end services. There will be no cuts to people in our support services like debt counselling, anger management and all that stuff. But we will be changing the way in which we do business. She accuses us of closing the shopfronts. I have not had one complaint about the closure of those shopfronts. Do you know why? Because the people were not going there in the first place. In one of those shopfronts there was not one person. The staff had been absorbed into the system. We do not have the rent of three of those shopfronts. There is an instant saving. Those services are being provided elsewhere. I need to address the issue of the $30 million promise. I will keep this as brief as I can.
MR SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired. Mr Hargreaves to go on.
MR HARGREAVES: On and on. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. This needs to be put on the record: when the Stanhope government came to office it promised $30 million worth of housing, and it has delivered $30 million worth of housing. How we get it is immaterial to the process. It will deliver. When I say 90 properties, it is only roughly 90 properties. It depends on the configuration, because it is based on need now. To that degree, I will turn to the changes to public rental housing assistance program called PRHAP. Dr Foskey has made criticisms on this particular one.
The Stanhope government is about helping people in need. The previous public housing waiting list was a time-based system. If you waited long enough you got a house or a two-bedroom apartment, as long as your income was below a certain level—which you could artificially manage. Now we are saying that you have to satisfy more stringent criteria to go down there. It has to be based on need: women fleeing domestic violence, people with dual personality diagnosis and complex needs, people facing imminent
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