Page 3600 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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Dr Bourke is letting down the people he is here to represent. He is a disgrace to this Assembly. What he just said was absolutely appalling. To evoke, in effect, race politics on this issue is a tremendous shame—a tremendous shame. I imagine that there are other people in this place that took similar offence. Ms Bresnan, I know, has carriage of housing for the crossbench, and she may choose to make some comments on this issue as well.
Further to the issue of housing, the treatment of Billabong by DHCS is questionable. I do think that they could have been given more support and I do think there was a better way of resolving issues which existed between the government and the organisation—the Aboriginal organisation. I do hope that Billabong and the government are able to come to a point whereby comparable services can continue to be provided.
One of the telling things in the budget is in budget paper 4, page 382, which talks about the average cost per dwelling in public housing. The average cost is now up to $11,401. This is a huge amount per dwelling—a huge, huge amount. Quite frankly, I believe we have got to be getting better value for money than we currently are out of that.
I believe ACTION and Housing, two areas of responsibility which I have carriage for from the opposition’s point of view, are both seemingly out of control insofar as they seem to be a bit of a policy-free zone. We seem to just be going on and on—the way things always have been; the way things always will be, it seems. I think there is a real opportunity. When we have the $60-odd million we spend in Housing and the $120 million dollars we spend on ACTION buses—when we have that kind of money, there is real potential to make a tremendously positive impact. It seems that we are just not getting that.
That $11,401 dollar figure which I just quoted from budget paper 4 is $1,447 more than the target. In 2007-08 the figure was $8,930. So you have got a rise of $2,500 over the course of this government—a huge amount. What is the improvement in service that tenants or the community at large are receiving as a result of that increase of $2,500 per dwelling?
We also saw evidence during estimates on 29 June about the turnover of housing stock, especially with regard to the report on government services and the evidence which lies therein. The report documents that the ACT is nearly 30 per cent over the average in terms of turnaround of housing stock. The ACT is at 38 and the national average is just 30. We also saw in the ROGS document that overcrowded houses are double the national average. We have got 7.2, whereas the national average is 4.3. We also saw that we are below the national average in occupancy rates. We are at 97 per cent, whereas the national average is 98.
The minister claimed that either the ROGS report was inaccurate or there were problems with it. However, there was no footnote actually saying this. As I recommended during the debate, if the minister thinks that the ROGS report is
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