Page 2511 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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building. The changes in the way we do things in the last year or so have been about capacity building. We will continue to work with the community. I do not know how many community groups I have actually met with and spoken to over the last three years; I propose to meet with some more. They are telling me exactly what they want. They do not want handouts; they want help. We will be giving them some assistance so that there is an infrastructure in place and they can support themselves. We have gone past the point of providing the leadership; we now have to provide the resources and the communities will provide the leadership. I am very hopeful that, in the next few months, we will see something emerge which will show that that leadership is alive and vibrant and can be supported by the government.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.14—Housing ACT, $22,700,000 (net cost of outputs) and $14,206,000 (capital injection), totalling $36,906,000.
MR MULCAHY (Molonglo) (9.27): The government is planning to appropriate nearly $37 million to ACT housing. This is a substantial area of government with a substantial capital investment. Indeed, Housing ACT currently has over $3.5 billion invested in property, plant and equipment. This is a massive capital investment. We have seen that, despite the ACT’s relative affluence, the level of public housing here is far higher than in any other jurisdiction.
This $3.5 billion investment in public housing compares to approximately $3 billion in the ACT government’s total investments in the superannuation provision account, territory banking account and other investments. Clearly, this is an important area of government, even in purely financial terms. It is important that ACT housing is properly run to preserve the value of these assets and to ensure that this huge capital investment is put to the best possible use, to satisfy as many public housing tenants as is possible and appropriate.
The ACT government receives substantial funding from the Australian government under the commonwealth state housing agreement. Between 1 July 2003 and 30 June 2008, the Australian government will provide, and has provided, more than $4.75 billion for housing assistance to the various states and territories. This includes funding for public and community housing, as well as home purchase assistance and private rental assistance. Of course, this does not include substantial general funding from the goods and services tax.
The minister has expressed some concern about the renewal of this agreement and about commonwealth involvement in ACT public housing. Yet there are signs that the ACT government is failing in its own management of public housing in the territory. There are signs that the government is failing to ensure that some public housing tenants are contributing properly to the costs of their lodgings. In an estimates committee hearing on 21 June, the minister revealed a strange policy that Housing ACT uses to alleviate problems in rental arrears amongst public housing tenants. Apparently, one of the ways in which Housing ACT is alleviating the problem of rental arrears is simply to reduce the rental payments for some of its tenants when they cannot pay. In other words, this is not really a strategy to manage debt at all; it is just a waiver of part of the debt. And which of its tenants benefit from this generosity?
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