Page 2699 - Week 09 - Wednesday, 12 August 2015
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
unemployment. In other words, Chisholm, as at 2014 when these statistics were collected, is a suburb whose residents are some of the most disadvantaged in the ACT.
This government are building more public housing properties and creating further pockets of disadvantage in this suburb, which is already one of the most disadvantaged in the ACT. How is that salt and peppering? How is that not replicating what the government say they are trying to change from what happened along the Northbourne Avenue corridor? They talk about that being a pocket or suburb of disadvantage, but they are doing that again in Chisholm, for example. I just do not understand. There is no real commitment to salt and peppering here. What they are doing is creating further disadvantage in disadvantaged suburbs.
Research—not just this Dropping off the edge report, which is a recent report which I have been referring to today, but many other research papers—shows that building large concentrations of public housing in one suburb or area creates further disadvantage. That is not salt and peppering.
My question is: why is the government building new public housing in Chisholm when Chisholm is already ranked amongst the most disadvantaged suburbs in the ACT? It is about a lack of a strategic approach. It is a headlong seizing of vacant land without considering what the best approach to building public housing would be.
We can see already that earlier this year, when I had a question on notice about it, 21 per cent of all ACT public housing stock was located in Tuggeranong, 23.25 per cent was located in the inner north and 10.56 per cent in the inner south. By a rough back-of-the-envelope calculation, if there are 422 public housing dwellings in Braddon, 112 in Dickson, 349 in Lyneham and 403 in Turner, that gives us a total of 1,286 public housing properties in those four suburbs in the inner north area. If 1,286 of them are removed, that will mean that roughly 10 per cent of ACT housing dwellings will be taken out of that area. There is currently about 10 per cent of public housing dwellings concentrated in that area which will go somewhere else.
What we are looking at here is the creation of what Mr Barr seems to want—a hip, cool, new, expensive corridor down the proposed light rail corridor of Northbourne Avenue. He is not thinking about some of our most disadvantaged citizens. Mr Barr tries to tout this government as being all about protecting our most vulnerable citizens. How is this doing that? I am genuinely perplexed by this approach which further disadvantages some suburbs and creates a new, expensive area, because that is what the government wants—to sell off land down Northbourne Avenue for as much money as possible.
The motion today is calling on the ACT government to develop and implement a strategic approach to locating new public housing, not just seizing on any vacant land anywhere they can find it. It is calling on the government to ensure that new public housing is not further built in areas where public housing tenants will experience or be at risk of experiencing transport disadvantage. It calls on this government to ensure that new public housing is not built on a site purely because there is vacant land in that place. It is calling on this government to ensure that large concentrations of new public housing are not just built in one suburb or area and not just move what they see
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video