Page 2524 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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The community were demanding that Housing ACT tighten their belts, so we passed that obligation on. The overmatching funds of $485,000 were cut out of the sector. Do you know what happened, Mr Speaker? The sector rose to the challenge. Shelter was one of the first to come in and reorganise and say, “Okay, this is what we need to run.” We have been working with them, I think, particularly well—so much so that we now have the great confidence in Shelter to recognise them as the peak advocacy group. We had so much confidence in the community housing sector that we put those 132 properties out—and $50 million worth of revolving credit. That does not sound to me like a lack of confidence.
Some of the changes to PRHAP were interesting. What we have done is reduce the waiting list to change the paradigm from cheap housing into housing for people in need, making it such that the allocation of premises is based on the requirements of people on the list, and at the same time put significant funds into the public housing stock acquisition system over and above those amounts of moneys which are recycled anyway in the salt and peppering program.
It is a cheap shot to talk about people in Burnie Court—that we do not put more public housing for people near Woden. We have refurbished or renovated that block at Burnie Court. That was a cheap shot. In fact, that particular development at Burnie Court is going to be sensational. There are going to be a significant number of older people who will be able to move into that particular part of the world in a whole heap of different configurations. I am told that the building works are not far away at all. We are not talking about years et cetera. We now have final approval for exactly what they are doing. We have a series of apartments; we have freestanding units; we have houses; we have multistorey buildings; we have adaptable housing; and we have public housing in there. And what is it? A short walk to Woden.
Dr Foskey does not seem to know that. If she does, she does not acknowledge it. What are we going to do with the money? We are going to use it to buy other properties. She criticises us because we are saying to people, “You might have too many bedrooms.” We are going to say to people, “Yes, you might have too many bedrooms. Would you like to consider moving to something else?” We are going to offer somebody something in the same suburb with their same supports and their same networks intact.
It will be a brand new place to replace something which is 30, 40 or 50 years old. If they say to us, “No, no; here’s my reason for wanting to stay: I’m attached to this because it has been blah, blah, blah,” we will go away. But if they say, “This is great; I’ll move into a two-bedroom house in the same suburb, closer to the shops, with a tiny yard—I can’t mow my other one—where I don’t have to do my eaves and all that sort of stuff. Yes, I’m happy to do that—with brand new appliances. Happy to do that”—what we will do is either fill that other place with someone who has the requirements to suit it or sell it and use the money from the property sale to build or buy something appropriate for the next person on the list. We have a management-initiated transfer of power right now. That is the one that Mrs Burke keeps insisting I use for dysfunctional people, and it is the one that we do use from time to time. We could use it a lot more if we wanted to, but we do not.
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