Page 2523 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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the commonwealth-state housing agreement. He only talks about bricks and mortar; he does not understand that a significant amount of CSA funding goes to social supports.
Mrs Burke: That is not true.
MR HARGREAVES: It is true. Mrs Burke says that it is not true. She was not sitting at the table.
MR SPEAKER: Do not take any notice of her interjections; they are disorderly. Direct your comments through me.
MR HARGREAVES: Okay; I am talking to you, Mr Speaker. She was not at the meeting of commonwealth, state and territory housing ministers to talk about this. The commonwealth does not even have a housing minister. I do not know what on earth Mr Brough was doing there. In fact, he was not there. Senator Scullion was sent to scurry along instead.
Dr Foskey and people like her claim to have the ear of the tenants. I reject that. So far, I have had six ministerial housing forums, the ministerial housing summit and the tenants summit of February last year. My department has had an incredible amount of consultation with all of the people in the advocacy industry out there. I have made comments that there may be too many peak bodies. There is only one now as far as we are concerned, and that is ACT Shelter. We will be entering into a relationship with them. That puts to bed, I hope, the precious comments of Dr Foskey. I will just wait for the general natter and everybody else to calm down, Mr Speaker.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Are you continuing, Mr Hargreaves?
MR HARGREAVES: Yes, I will, Mr Speaker. I can report to the Assembly that Housing ACT is currently undertaking further community consultation on public housing reforms announced in April of this year. (Second speaking period taken.) This is the bit that angers me so much about Dr Foskey’s outburst. It is just ignorant in the extreme. All she has to do is say to my office, “Will you get me a briefing on where we are at?” The answer to that would be: “Of course; in a matter of seconds.” I want to express my appreciation to the opposition: a lot of the reforms we have undertaken in the public housing and the community housing sector have been supported by the opposition.
Mrs Burke: We suggested a lot of them, don’t forget.
MR HARGREAVES: We could argue about that. It is not all about me; it is about somebody else. There was an accusation, particularly out of the Greens, that we had no confidence in the community housing sector, that we were giving them a hard time. Certainly we gave the sector a shake-up—as we did ourselves. When we were required to reduce the back-end administrative costs, we passed on the same obligations to the community housing sector. There were people out there who were spending 30 per cent on administration costs. That was really silly.
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