Page 2248 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 28 August 2007
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
with much interest. We are particularly interested in maintaining the arts and community precincts intact as much as possible. Unfortunately, it looks as though it is a policy of government to spread community groups out around the area—more of a pepper and salt type integration approach. We have seen this with the ROCKS area demolition, with those groups being largely separated throughout City West and now unable to share resources and spaces. The groups are mostly being accommodated in temporary portable buildings. Of course, they are very grateful that they have a home at all but, with little to no insulation, they are freezing in winter and—time will tell—possibly roasting in summer.
As for the arts precinct, it is hard to tell what is meant by that. There are certainly some coloured bits of metal on flagpoles near the Street Theatre. Perhaps that is the art. I understand that there are plans to rebuild the Street Theatre, which is not even very old. You would think there would be a much more efficient way to improve our arts facilities.
The major disappointment about City West—and this is a shared responsibility between the ACT government and the ANU—is the failure to provide affordable accommodation. We have an accommodation crisis on our hands here in Canberra, and the best that the government and the ANU could come up with was self-contained apartments for international students. Needed though they may have been, this is not affordable housing except for those with incomes high enough to afford it. Students are still waiting for an affordable solution which balances out the major reductions in both public and university owned housing in the ACT. This has been a concern, especially in the inner north, for the past 10 to 15 years.
The Community Inclusion Board was also an issue that I explored with a great deal of interest at the hearings. We are still waiting to see the poverty impact analysis that the Community Inclusion Board was given to trial. It was to be run across the homelessness strategy as a pilot. I am yet to see a report of that project, although that is not to say that the board has not been busy.
The household debt pilot project, developed with a number of community partners, produced a thoughtful report with a number of meaningful recommendations that are easily accessible on the government website. Some of these related to increasing accountability in regulation in respect to low doc and no doc loans, and that is something that this government was very cautious about supporting last week in the context of a national approach. It is worth nothing that the board pointed out to government in July that Queensland was already going it alone on that kind of regulation.
I am very supportive of the Community Inclusion Board’s work, but I am concerned that it is not having the significant effect where it might and that it does not offer a sufficiently broad or far-reaching analysis of ACT government policy. For instance, there does not appear to have been any analysis of the social impact of the cuts and changes made in the 2006-07 budget. I do not doubt that that would have been well within the capacity of the board.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .