Page 1987 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 3 June 2015
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Paragraph (a) notes that the government is pursuing light rail. This is obviously correct, and the reasons why have been repeatedly debated here in the Assembly. What the motion fails to mention is that the corridor in this case extends from the city to Gungahlin in the first stage and includes Flemington Road, where there are also plans for social and public housing.
Paragraph (b) notes the full range of public housing properties along Northbourne Avenue but fails to mention that to redevelop the full list will take years and will be staged accordingly. Again, this goes to the point that some commentators have made—the suggestion that it is all going to be razed in one go, that people will be dumped out quickly and those sorts of things. The government has a very clear and deliberate strategy to make sure that people are given plenty of warning and that, as Minister Berry touched on and as I will come back to in a moment, people are assisted in making choices about where they would like to move to.
Paragraph (c) of Ms Lawder’s motion notes that the time frames for relocation have not been fully communicated. I acknowledge Ms Lawder’s concerns on this point and, as I just touched on, I do understand that it must be difficult for some tenants to frequently read about their lives and homes in the media, with little certainty. I can appreciate this from my time as minister as well, but to undertake a renewal program of this scale requires a solid lead-in time, with many complex contingencies that will be staged over years. The point is that it is impossible at this early stage to talk about exactly where, what and how the renewal process will occur. As we all know, some of these sites will require territory plan variations and the like, which, when done properly, do take time. That said, I would hope, and I trust, that the Minister for Housing will continue to consult, inform, listen and talk to those tenants as and when appropriate, to keep them up to date as much as possible. That is something that I am quite confident Minister Berry is committed to.
I cannot really talk to paragraph (e) with any great authority other than to say that some of the public housing along that strip is indeed ageing, hard to maintain, and hard to heat and cool in Canberra’s extreme climate. These properties in particular are, in my mind at least, exactly the reason why we need to renew the stock and build better and more appropriate homes.
The Greens have been calling for substantial public housing investment and renewal for many years now, so I am pleased to see that this is the government’s agenda. Yesterday we saw in the budget a very real and significant commitment to doing just that, and bringing public housing stock up to a modern and acceptable standard. Things like the energy efficiency rating of the new-build homes are a universe away from some of the residences that currently exist.
It is of serious concern that Ms Lawder is suggesting that Housing ACT has in any way deliberately neglected these properties over more than 30 years just to prepare for today. I do not think that the Canberra Liberals have any credentials in this space at all, given that the single biggest public housing sell-off in the ACT occurred in the mid to late 1990s, when Mr Smyth was the minister for housing. I note that Mr Smyth came in and talked about the history of the issue, but I do not recall him talking about this.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video