Page 1835 - Week 05 - Thursday, 10 May 2018
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Reid, specifically on Ainslie Avenue. The Australian Institute of Criminology has recently released a glowing report of the high density housing program and—credit where it is due—I commend the ACT government for getting behind this collaborative program involving Reclink Australia. Of course, it also involves JACS, ACT Housing, ACT Health and ACT Policing.
It involves the application of an on-the-ground, grassroots, community development approach to prevent crime and antisocial behaviour in Ainslie Avenue. I must commend the Reclink officer, Mark Ransome, who is a unique individual with street cred and the skills needed to navigate through some extreme scenarios on the ground. Mark is maintaining a continuing presence across the site, coordinating existing services to residents and introducing new events, activities and programs that provide opportunity for resident interaction and relationship building that address the needs of residents.
This program draws on Australian search evidence that showed social approaches to crime prevention, including community development, can improve neighbourhood cohesion, and it is working. The benefits of this program are very clear to see. As the report was done by the Institute of Criminology, it must be said that it focuses, as you would expect, on crime reduction, so it ignores many of the other benefits from the program. So the program is giving much more benefit than has been stated in this report, but well done to Reclink. I hope this will help in placing Reclink front of mind when the second Reclink community AFL cup game for Canberra comes around on 16 September this year. I am hoping to pull the jumper on for the Noise, and I look forward to an appearance from Mr Rattenbury at the event as well.
Continuing in the housing space, I could not let the week in this chamber pass by without mentioning some of the comments made yesterday by David Smith, the man most likely to fill the vacancy in the Senate. Speaking yesterday, Mr Smith said that he was concerned by revelations about 35,000 Canberrans, including 8,800 children, who are living below the poverty line. He said these figures from the ACT Council of Social Service cost of living report should be, in his words, “a real wake-up for the territory”. They were his words—that it should be “a real wake-up for the territory”, which I can only assume means the territory government.
He went on to make a statement that could well have been from a Canberra Liberals MLA. I will tell you exactly what he said: he said a lot of Canberrans do not realise that there are almost two cities here. This is soon-to-be Labor Senator David Smith, who I might say was one of the party’s opponents of the light rail network, but that is by the by. This is the killer statement from Mr Smith:
There are a lot of people doing really well, but there are a lot of people doing it quite tough …
Those are the words of Labor’s David Smith. I thought he must have stolen one of my speeches from in here, but this was his. He went on to say:
… we actually have one of the highest percentages of homelessness in the country, which is quite amazing in a city that, on the face of it, is quite prosperous.
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