Page 405 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 4 March 2008
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MS MacDONALD: Thank you, Mr Speaker. Minister, do the current media stories reflect the real story behind the government’s housing policy?
MR HARGREAVES: I thank Ms MacDonald for the opportunity to give a further explanation. As I have just outlined in answer to the question, the process for allocation of priority needs housing in the ACT is a very good one. The policies were developed not as a brainchild of the government or Housing ACT but as a combination of a consultation process with the community, six ministerial forums, a housing summit and the work that the department did as a result of those consultation processes. We also spoke to the Joint Champions Group. We talked to Shelter, we talked to the Tenants Union and we talked to all of the peak bodies and lobby groups.
We are seeing here a policy that has been developed in consultation with the community and is responsive to that community. But that does not stop some people wanting to pull a particular story out of the ether, in typical tabloid fashion, and make an absolute example of their misery—people who want to politically exploit their misery. That is nothing short of despicable.
The way this happens, of course, is not a reflection of existing policies. What happens is that something is put out into the ether which is blatantly wrong. For example, Mrs Burke put out a media release a couple of days ago which said that the higher needs waiting list time was 111 days. That was in fact the position on 7 January, so the position is two months late. Had she bothered to get out of her laziness, she could have rung us and asked whether the figure was still right. If it was, we would have said, “Certainly.” If it was not, we would have said, “No, Mrs Burke; we will stop you making a fool of yourself.” But all the resources of government cannot stop her making a fool of herself. We cannot do it. We ’fess up to failure.
It turns out that over Christmas, when, since time immemorial, people’s families go into stress, distress and quite often dysfunction and disruption, we get a spike. And that is how we get the figures that Mrs Burke trots out as being the average all the time, which is absolutely incorrect.
Mr Pratt: Oh, so your website misleads the public, does it, John?
MR HARGREAVES: In fact, because this is an aberration in numbers, we actually allocate out specific housing on a temporary basis to get over the spike.
Mr Pratt: Oh! So your website misled the public.
MR HARGREAVES: Do we see a recognition of that out there? No. All we hear is Mr Pratt prattling on in the background because he is in love with his own voice. If I had a voice like that, Mr Speaker, I wouldn’t be in love with it.
MR SPEAKER: Order! Come back to the subject matter of the question, please.
MR HARGREAVES: Thanks very much, Mr Speaker. Speaking of people making fools of themselves, I would like to suggest that we do not have a policy of eviction.
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