Page 3081 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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The media release says:
“The notion of the Greens that we can go back to the times when the most deserving of our community needed to wait far too long for housing relief is just something too terrible to contemplate,” concluded Minister Hargreaves.
It is interesting that he should quote these figures—the figures that I uncovered in the briefing to incoming ministers and put out a press release on. It ran in the Canberra Times a month or two ago. It is interesting that he should pick up on the very figure that I put into my media release. At the time, I do not know how complimentary he would have been about that story and about that media release, but I am glad that, as time has rolled on and the minister has matured, he has come to the point of view that I formed a couple of months ago—that 10 per cent and the appropriation of 1,500 houses would simply be bad economics.
The really interesting thing about this is that Mr Hargreaves puts out this release and he bags it all out. He bags out the costs, but it is his Chief Minister and his Deputy Chief Minister who are signatories to that agreement. Katy Gallagher and Jon Stanhope signed up to that agreement. They signed up to an additional 1,500 houses—as you say here, 1,500 dwellings at a cost of $900 million. I did not see that fact in the release here. Maybe I have got to reread it; maybe I have got to go over it or get my adviser to look at it. But it is interesting that he does not acknowledge that the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister also signed up to that agreement.
I am not sure that putting $900 million into public housing in the ACT is the best way to spend $900 million and I am not sure it is the best way to serve those most deserving in our community. Housing is one need, but there are many other needs and, given that we already have about 11,000 properties or thereabouts—a bit more, the Chief Minister says—
Mr Hargreaves: I am not the Chief Minister.
MR COE: Sorry—that the minister for housing says. Given that we already have 11,000, what we need to be doing is making sure that we have the most deserving. (Second speaking period taken.) What we need to do is make sure we have the most deserving people in those 11,000 properties rather than simply acquiring more and more properties.
As the minister said in estimates, it is quite possible that we have people in the ACT in public housing who are earning more than $100,000 a year. If we have people in public housing in the ACT earning more than $100,000 a year, the system is failing. I think the system is failing. We need to make sure that we have people who are on the lowest incomes or people who are not able to take care of themselves in those properties. To have people in a public housing property for perhaps five or 10 years on an income that could be two or three times the average male income is probably not the best way forward. We should look at ways of bringing people out of public housing so that we can free up that property for someone who is more deserving.
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