Page 930 - Week 04 - Thursday, 7 May 2020
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At the time that she was elected, in 2004, she was living in public housing. She was qualified to live there because of her financial situation at the time, but because of this she was vilified and called a bludger, and worse. She was not. She was a single mother and her income when she moved in meant that she qualified for public housing. Once it increased, of course, she paid market rent. This market rent helped to fund our public housing system. She then moved into private rental.
It is possibly sad that the contribution of public housing tenants who move to a situation where they can pay market rent, thus making the housing system more financially viable for Housing ACT and providing a measure of security for people who go in and out of reasonably paid employment, is not acknowledged. You might get a contract for a year and you have enough money to pay private rent. If you lose that contract and lose your housing, you are back at the end of the waiting list. The changes are not all good.
I suspect that she was the only public housing tenant to ever be elected to the ACT Assembly, and I would think that she would be one of the very small number elected to any Australian parliament. I think that our democracy is lessened because low income people are generally not represented in our parliaments and have very little voice.
2004 saw the ACT’s first and only majority government, so Dr Foskey was the only Green MLA not to have been part of a balance of power. Dr Foskey worked very hard and effectively despite that. She asked questions, raised issues and generally pushed the government to do better. She brought her considerable intellect, knowledge, compassion and generosity to her job and she supported and was supported by her staff—Roland, Clare, Sam, Indra, Andrew, Fiona and Kate.
One area where she did succeed was with the Narrabundah long-stay caravan park. Because of her advocacy, when the private owner sold the land, the residents were not evicted. The ACT government organised a land swap with the owner so that the residents could stay. Because of Dr Foskey, over a hundred households, some of which had been there for over 20 years, had and still have long-term, affordable housing. The long-stay caravan park is still part of Canberra’s affordable housing.
In 2008 Dr Foskey passed, with the welcome support of the Labor Party, the Protection of Public Participation Act to stop intimidatory lawsuits, known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPP, cases. These seem to have fallen out of fashion a bit, fortunately. These are cases which are intended to intimidate the other side and to silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defence until they are forced to abandon their criticism or opposition, and possibly go bankrupt as well.
The most famous one in Australia was in 2005, when the Gunns forestry company launched a court case against 20 individuals and organisations, including, most famously, Senator Bob Brown. It was claimed that the defendants had sullied its reputation and caused it to lose jobs and profits. The defendants claimed they were protecting the environment.
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