Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was here—with your dad, by the way, Mr Deputy Speaker—in 1991 under the Keating government when Gerry Hand moved some legislation through the House that ended up having a very detrimental effect on a particular cohort in our community, who were refugees; we left them with this massive debt, and it affected families for years and years. Eventually, we were able to repeal that legislation and free those people from that debt. One of my colleagues, Alex Somlyay, the member for Fairfax at the time, said to me: 'Russell, you were here when that legislation was introduced and passed; you didn't say anything about it.'

Well, there is some legislation that has come before the House now, in regard to public housing, and I think it's pretty poor legislation. It was introduced by Labor in their last term and has been carried on by this government.

When you look at public housing, it's all about Indigenous people, women and disabled people. So anything we do around the public housing area is going to affect Indigenous people, women and the disabled, because they are the people that mostly use public housing. If you're going to make changes and do those sorts of things, you have to look at the disproportionate effect it may have on a particular cohort of the community. If we, as a nation, don't look after, especially, the most vulnerable—women, Indigenous people and disabled people in public housing— (Time expired)