Page 101 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 15 February 2011
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are in private rental accommodation as well as owner-occupiers who are struggling because of their particular economic or social circumstances.
Of course, the government has also focused very strongly on improving the level of payments available to all low income households when it comes to the concession they receive for their energy and water bills. We have provided an additional $1.8 million over four years to increase the energy concession payment. This funding allows for a one-off increase of $20 on the maximum concession, bringing it to just over $214 per year, an increase of 10 per cent in the current concession and bringing the value of the maximum concession to approximately 15 per cent of the average household electricity bill. This is one of the most generous and significant concessions available in any jurisdiction.
MR SPEAKER: The time for this discussion has expired.
Adjournment
Motion (by Mr Corbell) proposed:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
MR SPEAKER: Ms Hunter, I believe your guest has not arrived. Would you like me to give Mr Smyth the call?
Ms Hunter: Yes.
Mr Howard Charles Grant OAM
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (5.25): I rise to speak in honour of Howard Charles Grant OAM. Howard died on 5 February, this month. As was so like Howard, he actually wrote his own eulogy so the facts would be straight. I just thought I would say a few words about a great bloke, a very strong business person in the ACT, a wonderful family man, and I would not dare have the temerity not to use his words. So I will read out selective parts from the document that he prepared.
Howard was born on 13 July 1929 as the first child of his 19-year-old mother, Irene. The family of three moved into a small weatherboard house in East Malvern when Howard was very young. A brother, Don, and sister, Lyn, completed the family in the years that followed. As a child, Howard Grant developed innovative and energetic traits that followed him throughout his life. In the small house in East Malvern, Victoria, where he shared a room with his brother for more than 20 years, he loved nothing more than to build cubby houses in the early years and, later on, do general house maintenance such as improving bathroom systems so that he could have a decent bath and providing easier electrical services for his mother to do the ironing.
Schooling was at Lloyd Street state school No 4139, where he did reasonably well in most classes and competed with one or two others for the top position. A report from grade 4 or 5 shows him coming first in a class of 59 students. Being handy with his hands, in the words of his father, it was agreed that Howard would be sent to a technical school rather than proceed with the high school program at Lloyd Street.
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