Page 1537 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 10 May 2017
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Already, as the minister for housing has mentioned, nearly 180 replacement homes have been located in suburbs close to Northbourne Avenue with more being spread throughout our city. This is consistent with our strategy which has been in place for years. The ACT government’s public housing asset management strategy 2012-2017 had the goal of reducing concentrations of disadvantage through public housing redevelopment and aligning housing with changing social structures and tenant needs. Indeed, I believe this goal was in previous plans. Principle 1 of the 2012 strategy states:
The larger concentrations of public housing will be progressively redeveloped ensuring the stock is well located across the city, and in areas with good access to public transport, employment, education and services.
I read again from the 2012 document:
The Government will undertake a rolling program to dispose of poorly performing Multi Unit Properties (MUP), optimising the return of public housing units on the development site and in other developments, with the aim of:
reducing concentrations of disadvantage.
In the section marked “dwelling location”:
The utilisation of undeveloped land throughout the older suburbs has also proved to be an effective strategy for the renewal of public housing stock.
For years we have pursued this goal, well before light rail. Members here may remember that this was successfully achieved in the past with the demolition of unsuitable, high density flats at Burnie Court in Lyons, and we have done so at other locations in the inner north and inner south. I quote again from our long-term strategy:
The success of the Economic Stimulus Package can in part be attributed to the utilisation of community facility sites in the suburbs of Bonython, Chapman, Conder, Curtin, Florey, Macquarie, Kambah and Rivett.
So this is not the first time that tenants have been moved into more suitable, lower density and better quality accommodation utilising community facility zoned land. In fact, as at 24 April 2017, there are now 342 public housing dwellings already constructed on community facility zoned land in the ACT. The task force has already completed construction on two sites in Chisholm and Monash, and construction is underway on a third site in Nicholls on the north side.
I want to speak directly to the Chapman and Kambah adaptive public housing developments which were built under the economic stimulus package by the ACT government. These were very similar in size to the current proposals and were also built on community facility zoned land, as I mentioned.
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