Page 1258 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 29 March 2017
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but you should try, and in this instance I think the government can and should try harder.
First let us look at the public housing part of the issues. As I said, I and the Greens support public housing. Some of the public housing along Northbourne Avenue is indeed ageing, as has been well described. It is hard to maintain and hard to heat and cool in Canberra’s extreme climate. The Greens have been calling for substantial public housing investment and renewal for many years now and for a real and genuine salt and pepper approach.
For the Greens, this approach means that we have a range of social and public housing properties across the territory, not just in the inner north and the inner south. It means that we have a diversity of socioeconomic status in all areas of Canberra and that we accept that housing tenants are people first and tenants second. These tenants, like all tenants, may have connections to certain areas in Canberra dictated by schooling for their children, proximity to family, access to employment, study et cetera.
The idea of the salt and pepper approach is that we will not have the concentrations of disadvantage as we have had with the older, larger multi-unit housing developments which have tended to become concentrations of disadvantage. This is what has unfortunately happened along Northbourne Avenue. We will have diverse communities, as we see in our older suburbs where public housing was an integral part of the suburban community. Narrabundah, I understand, is still 30 per cent public housing.
The reason historically we have had such a diverse community in Canberra and such good provision of public housing is that, when Canberra was developed, basically there was no housing. If you moved to Canberra it was accepted that your employer normally would provide housing. My father worked for the university; so we lived in university housing. Of course the majority of people worked for the public service and their housing has provided the foundation for the public housing which has been well provided throughout the older, inner areas of Canberra. The issue now is looking at renewal of that housing and how we ensure that all of Canberra continues to have public housing.
I would like to draw the Assembly’s attention to a media release of 30 June 2014 in which the then Chief Minister and Shane Rattenbury, who was then the Minister for Housing, stated quite clearly that cabinet had just endorsed accelerating renewal and redevelopment of ageing public housing stock, responding to the needs and preferences of tenants along the proposed Northbourne Avenue redevelopment sites by providing accommodation within the 800-metre corridor including Flemington Road in the inner north and the city where possible; growing social housing through new partnerships, innovation, intelligent design, public and private partnerships and specific project budget initiatives that align with government priorities; and maintaining the salt and pepper approach to public housing in existing suburbs and expanding this approach to public housing in new and developing areas.
We really do not need to debate the rationale for redeveloping the ageing flats on Northbourne Avenue but equally we should not ignore the fact that there is still public
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