Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

No, I appreciate that. But clearly, people will say, and they have every right to say: ‘Hang on. We don’t want to do that. But we do want the 50 houses.’ And there are other ways in which it can be done. I would have thought, given the creativity that exists within this country, that we ought to be able to come to an arrangement where, for example, the housing is owned as happens in the United States in some places, where loans are underwritten for the provision of housing for a whole village community. In the case of Indigenous communities, I think there should be no problem in accessing private resources leveraged off federal money and Northern Territory government money to build housing. It does not mean that you need to have a home ownership scheme, but it does mean that you need to have a coherent capacity for getting the money together and assuring people that they will get a repayment for their investment, and you obviously need to ensure that people are paying appropriate rents and that their houses are being serviced. That is another way of doing a similar sort of thing, except that it says to people, ‘You don’t have to compel yourself to a 40- or 50-year payment schedule’—whatever it is—‘for the life of a mortgage.’

So I have to say that, whilst I understand the intention, I do not agree with it. I think we can provide options, but it seems to me that that option is a very hard one for people. They might accept it, and they have every right to do so if they want to, but it seems to me that it raises some serious issues which they will be thinking about. I know, having had discussions already, that people are thinking about this very deeply. They are not taking it for granted. They are asking questions. They are very sincere in trying to get answers to those questions. They want honesty and all the rest of it, as you would properly expect. Ultimately, they will make a decision. All I say to the minister is: if they happen to make a decision which does not suit the model you have proposed, then be flexible enough to look at an alternate model which might also require you to provide up to 50 houses.

Question agreed to.

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