Page 4478 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 14 October 2009

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(2) calls on the ACT Government to:

(a) commission an independent comparative analysis of the formulae for government funding, and the property ownership and equity models, that apply to the various non-government housing providers within the ACT and in each State and Territory, with a view to their impact on the viability of non-government housing providers and quality of services the providers can deliver; and

(b) table that analysis in the Assembly by the last sitting week in November 2009.

The ACT Greens believe in the positive role that non-government housing can provide in assisting vulnerable people in our community to live in a stable and socially inclusive environment. The Greens acknowledge that, for a non-government housing provider to be able to succeed, it needs a stable financial footing, achieved through its ownership of assets, the condition of those assets and government subsidisation. Various governments can, however, place unsustainable conditions on non-government housing providers and put them in a situation which is unviable. We do not want to see this situation in the ACT. Therefore I have moved a motion today which calls for the collection of such data.

The motion which I have moved today is fairly straightforward. It calls on the ACT government to commission a transparent and independent comparison of the arrangements which support non-government housing providers across Australia and most particularly in the ACT and bring that information back to the Assembly.

I am aware that the Australian government has commissioned KPMG to provide strategic advice on the viability and sustainability of the community housing sector in Australia and to assess prospects for growth. It is unfortunate that the terms of reference for the KPMG review are not yet publicly available and that there is no definite time line for the release of the report. Otherwise we would be more confident about building a more detailed local analysis on the back of that work. Hopefully, that can happen.

The time frame for this motion is driven by concern in the local sector that some ACT community housing providers are in an increasingly difficult situation, and greater transparency would assist the development of housing policy and public debate. The non-government housing sector is growing in response to housing need across Australia. This is partly to fill in the gap created by governments that have backed away from public housing, to meet specific social or community needs on occasion, as a growth opportunity for community service providers, and as a way of building business and community partnership to deliver a form of guaranteed affordable housing in a market which, over the last 15 years, has seen housing prices escalate. In any event, I think we all recognise that non-government housing providers have a growing role in the national housing strategy, and a significant part of the social housing component of the federal government’s stimulus package is targeted to the non-government or community housing sector.

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