Page 1515 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2017
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Public housing—petitions 8-17, 9-17, 10-17, 11-17
Criminalisation of a non-consensual sexual image—petition 5-17
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (10.22), by leave: I will speak briefly about the public housing petitions because obviously we will be speaking a lot more about that through my bill, which is about to be presented and which deals directly with technical amendments; and some of the issues with public housing are down to the flawed technical amendment process.
But first off I want to acknowledge, as our Liberal colleagues have done, the incredible concern and interest in the suburbs affected by the public housing. We have to realise it has been a toxic mix of poor consultation. People have been concerned about any sort of development on those plots which have been vacant since the suburbs were developed, and for Holder and Chapman and Mawson that is a long time. The neighbours had, justifiably or not, an expectation that that was going to continue, so what we are seeing is partly just a reaction to infill rather than just a reaction to the sort of infill.
We have ended up with a very toxic situation which I know we are going to be debating at greater length in Ms Lawder’s motion so I will not go through much more. Mr Hanson quoted from a letter that I wrote. As he said, it was a long letter and he did not quote the two paragraphs which followed what he did read. With your indulgence, I will quote that:
Good design is the key to the success of new public housing developments, not density alone. Design should look beyond bricks and mortar to facilitate community integration. Considerations such as light, warmth, connection to the outside and social space are essential. Public housing, like all housing, needs to suit the site and the likely tenants–some degree of flexibility in the size of proposals is useful, as good design and layout can help ensure better outcomes for tenants and the community, so proposals should be assessed on a case by case basis.
For optimal social outcomes, public housing should be well integrated with the local community as well as specific support being given to residents. The size of developments will vary, for instance aged care often needs to be larger to allow services to be brought in. The social outcomes of very large developments such as those on Northbourne Avenue are often very poor – for individuals and the neighbouring community.
But we will be talking more about this shortly. I actually intended to speak about the petition that I lodged about revenge porn. Organised by Mr Rhys Michie, this has around 500 signatures on the criminalisation of revenge porn in the ACT. We cannot afford to wait and pretend this is not a problem for the ACT. We saw only last year how many schools in Canberra were linked to a ring of students from over 70 high schools around Australia orchestrating the distribution of pornographic materials of hundreds of young women behind their backs and without their consent. This year we saw a man take his own life after being extorted over his use of Grindr.
Our new technology with selfies, webcams and cameras everywhere as part of our phones makes it easy to get more images with or without the knowledge and consent of the person pictured. Social media and the internet make these images easy to share and distribute widely. We know our laws do not deal with this new technology.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video