Page 4847 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 1 November 2017
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suits their needs, circumstances and wishes and be able to live with dignity, choice and autonomy. The consultation beforehand, as Ms Orr commented, was considerable and focused, which meant the summit was coming from a significant base and did not start from scratch. I commend the housing minister for ensuring that she heard not just from the experts in the sectors but also from small community groups, tenants and individuals.
We know this is an issue that the community is interested in. As Ms Orr said, there were 340 participants from 125 different organisations in 26 workshops and 2,236 visits to the ACT government’s your say website. We have now done some really good consultation. The challenge now, as Mr Parton mentioned, is to make sure that we get real and tangible solutions that will lead to a stronger focus in the new affordable housing strategy or the boarding housing strategy. But all of this requires significant investment, commitment and action.
Whilst the motion notes that we have the lowest rough sleeping rate in the nation, it is important to emphasise that we also have the second highest rate of homelessness. This is an ongoing concern to me as I have often heard reports about women and children fleeing domestic violence and sleeping in their cars. I understand from numerous discussions that they are not being counted as rough sleepers. Options for these women and their children remain slim. Refuges are almost constantly full and there is a lack of exit points for them to transition to more permanent living arrangements. This is an area where we need to do better.
We know there is not one simple solution to solving housing stress. People in the community have different needs, aspirations and circumstances, and there need to be a range of options for them. We are committed to helping first home owners enter the market, supporting low income earners find sustainable and secure tenancies and ensuring that vulnerable members of our community have somewhere safe and secure to live. The Greens, of course, are aware that many of the key levers are in the federal domain, especially negative gearing and capital gains settings. That is why my amendment includes a call for some of the things that the ACT government needs to advocate strongly for with federal colleagues. We need national policy change if we are going to improve housing affordability and accessibility and make homelessness funding more secure.
I understand that the commonwealth is stipulating that jurisdictions must develop a housing strategy if they are to get funding from the commonwealth. However, the responsibility for the commonwealth to contribute to solutions remains. The Greens believe we should be strongly advocating for changes in capital gains tax and reductions in the incredibly generous negative gearing provisions. These have been discussed at some length but, unfortunately, action has not been taken. There is a limit to what the ACT can do when these policy settings are wrong.
A couple of sitting weeks ago I talked about a limit to what the ACT can do with regard to unsustainable population growth, which contributes to the increasing need for housing and other services. Unfortunately, neither Liberal nor Labor seem focused on this, given the response to my amendment a couple of weeks ago. We have housing to house people. Population growth is a key driver of the need for more
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