Page 4377 - Week 10 - Thursday, 22 September 2011
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stock of public housing to 10 per cent as a first goal and going up and up and up, driving more people into dependency. Public housing of course has a place. But what would be better, what would be much better, would be to not put people in that circumstance in the first place, to not be in a situation where so many Canberrans are being shut out of both the rental and the homeownership markets.
For too long, this government has neglected the concerns that the Canberra Liberals have been raising for a long time. For years, in fact, the Canberra Liberals have been echoing the concerns which have been raised with us and raised with the government and raised in every single media outlet that Canberra property prices are extremely high and the rental price too is extremely high.
This government does not have an answer. All this government does is release strategy after strategy. It does not actually implement them. Nor does it have a genuine will to actually address the concerns which are being raised.
In the Labor-Greens agreement there is of course a commitment to raise the public housing stock to 10 per cent. It is currently about 8.5 per cent. That means acquiring a couple of thousand more public houses simply so that more people can become dependent on the state. What would be better, what would be much better, would be a situation where fewer people have to go to the state for support. What would be better would be if we had a genuine housing and affordability strategy that would mean the supply of land, the building approvals and the industry were well equipped to actually deliver the supply which we so desperately need.
The Canberra Liberals do have a strategy. The Canberra Liberals will happily take to the electorate—whether it be in a referendum on this issue in 2012, along with housing affordability and cost of living pressures, amongst other things—our proposal on housing affordability versus the government’s proposal any day. We are confident that we have a strategy that can genuinely address the concerns that tens of thousands of Canberrans face.
It is not good enough that a generation of Canberrans are being shut out of the property market simply because this government cannot manage its agencies and cannot manage the supply and planning of housing. The Canberra Liberals have a strategy and the Canberra Liberals look forward to taking it to the 2012 election.
MS BURCH (Brindabella—Minister for Community Services, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Women and Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs) (5.02): I thank Ms Bresnan for bringing on this matter of public importance.
On 1 September this year, I attended the Chief Minister’s roundtable that discussed support for families and households experiencing financial stress. The roundtable focused on the cohort not normally in receipt of government support.
The ACT government has achieved many reforms on concessions for eligible households; however, there is more that can be done to support families in hardship. The community sector representatives that attended the roundtable identified three
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