Page 3153 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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recognise that it helps them. That indicator could be worked on. I note that it says that it comes from local and national social housing surveys, so there may not be the flexibility within Housing ACT to actually rework that indicator in-house. Regardless, I do not think it is the most effective indicator we could have. I ask the minister and her directorate to look at a more appropriate strategic indicator—one that actually looks at the percentage of people participating in the community through their public housing as opposed to simply the recognition thereof.
MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (1.17 am): Affordable housing is an issue in Canberra, and we know people on low incomes find it difficult to access secure and permanent accommodation. The government measures affordable housing in Canberra by looking at averages and medians, but this does not reflect the reality of those people who are in housing stress. The government’s provision of public housing, emergency accommodation and homelessness services is essential to ensuring there is a safety net of stable accommodation for people.
The Greens believe some very good progress has been made over the last three years in increasing public housing stock due to the federal stimulus and the effective manner in which the ACT government has been able to turn those funds into housing. The Greens acknowledge the ACT government’s achievement of delivering a larger than expected number of older persons units in a timely and effective manner. The efforts, however, cannot stop there. Public housing must continue to grow, as we do not want to see a reversal in stock numbers.
That is why the Greens have the agreement item with the government to maintain the 10 per cent public housing figure and why we made a budget bid of $10 million through this budget to increase public housing stock. We are pleased to see $9.5 million of that has been appropriated.
Through question on notice No 366, I asked the government whether it needed to make capital injections in coming years to maintain stock numbers at the 12,050 figure. My reading of the government’s answer is yes, as the government has decided to provide $5 million per annum ongoing to maintain those numbers, and any capital injections above that $5 million will lead to increases in stock numbers.
We are still waiting for the public housing asset management strategy. It is now 2½ years overdue, given the previous one ended in 2008. The minister has said she will provide this by the end of the year. This document will be crucial in showing the plan to maintain public housing in the coming years.
Organisations involved in addressing housing and homelessness have been calling for public housing to be maintained, noting that it is stable, safe and secure accommodation that people need to be able to get their lives back on track. There have also been calls for current demand to be met so we do not see levels of demand increase dramatically in coming years, a point which was made in the recent report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Ms Burch, Mr Seselja and I all took part in the recent Vinnies CEO sleep-out, and John Falzon, CEO of Vinnies, on the morning after the sleep-out called on all those who took part to lobby for more public housing.
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