Page 1776 - Week 05 - Thursday, 2 April 2009
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other forms of social housing at the federal level after the inaction and declining funding of the Howard years.
As Mr Hargreaves has reminded us, it was a proud moment during this government’s first term when we earmarked $33.2 million from the home loan fund for social housing in December 2003. This set the scene for a progressive agenda that has persisted to this day. We followed up that $33.2 million capital injection with the release of the Canberra plan and social plan and set a standard for substantial capital injections into social housing over the subsequent years, including our $50 million line of credit to CHC Affordable Housing to deliver affordable housing over the coming decade.
The commonwealth’s stimulus package is $6.4 billion for social housing nationally. This will allow for the construction of 20,000 new social housing dwellings within three years, primarily for people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Also included is funding for urgent maintenance to upgrade around 2,500 social houses. The specific objectives of the initiative are:
• to increase the supply of social housing through new construction and the refurbishment of existing stock that would otherwise be unavailable for occupancy;
• to provide increased opportunities for persons who are homeless or at risk of homelessness to gain secure long-term accommodation; and
• to stimulate the building and construction industry both through funding the additional dwellings and increasing expenditure on repairs and maintenance. This will also help stimulate businesses that supply construction materials and help to retain jobs in the industry.
I am pleased to speak to the motion in support of the commonwealth’s commitment to social housing and note that it will continue the approach of the government in establishing a fair and equitable housing system. It will also enable ongoing delivery of key services and new approaches to homelessness to work with people to establish sustainable housing.
The dwellings built through the stimulus package will meet the needs of people on public housing waiting lists, including age and disability pensioners, people of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent and women with children escaping violence. In other words, they will house some of the most vulnerable in our community, which is already the focus of the government’s approach to public housing. It is estimated that the new dwellings will reduce waiting times for people with high housing needs on public housing lists nationally by 50 per cent, which will allow the ACT to build on the reforms to public housing waiting lists that have already been implemented.
The package is very advantageous to the ACT. The ACT’s share of the funds to be channelled into social housing will be $103 million, $96.5 million of which will provide for the construction of around 290 homes over two years, with the balance of
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