Page 3607 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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Back to the directorate and the budget at hand, I congratulate all staff at Housing ACT on the work that they do. We have, for example, just recently had—and it is up and running very well—the improved support stronger communities initiative, which is providing support and sustained intervention to tenants due to some of their complex and challenging behaviours, and it is about supporting them and supporting the neighbourhood in which they live.
In June this year, we had 11,848 properties. I understand Ms Bresnan quoted 11,850-something. Let us say there are around 11,850 properties within our portfolio. On my figures, I have 132 bedsitters, 2,104 one-bedroom units, 3,624 two-bedders, 4,959 three-bedders, 835 four-bedders and 160 with five or more bedrooms. I made reference to Ms Bresnan.
There is an aspirational target of 10 per cent social housing within the parliamentary agreement. Based on the December 2010 figures, which would have seen us need an additional 2,780 dwellings, if that was costed out at $400,000 each, that would be $1.1 billion. If that was put out at $300,000 each, it is $834 million. These are big figures and big asks, but there is funding in this budget for some work on that. We have funding for more social housing. As I said in estimates, I have a particular interest in how we can use that within the community or social housing sector for supporting people with a disability.
There is a discrete funding line to support accommodation for people with a disability. There is support for more work to be done on common ground, which is a commendable project, but I have said not only to the common ground committee but publicly that this is something that this government cannot do alone and we are looking for not only our contribution but a commonwealth contribution and, indeed, a private contribution. I was very pleased to see that, I think it was, the Snow Foundation has put $500,000 towards common ground projects. There is also funding in this that builds on earlier budgets’ funding for energy efficiency in our public housing.
Just to finalise, if I can go back to the numbers, we have had nothing but growth in our social housing stock since the government came to power. This is in stark contrast to the Canberra Liberal Party when Brendan Smyth and his colleagues were in power. One of the most, I think, devastating acts to the vulnerable in our community was when he ripped a thousand properties out of social housing and flogged them. There were some brought back, but certainly the deficit is in the multiple of hundreds. That has taken a long time to repair. If you base it on our figures of $300,000, we would need to be finding many tens of millions of dollars to make up for any of the damage that Mr Smyth has done.
They stand here saying that they support our vulnerable, but, as the papers I have circulated say, they actually do not, that it seems to be Liberal Party policy—they are not refuting it; it has come out from the party office—that supporting the vulnerable is negotiable, that they will get to it when they have got time, when they think about it. That is evidenced by the fact that they ripped social housing out of the stock. It is
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