Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight in the adjournment debate to talk about an area of government policy which is emerging as a significant problem for communities around Australia. I am referring to the government’s program for providing social housing developments in areas of Australia where there are concerns about the planning implications of these developments. The government has a program to roll out something like 19,300 new dwellings under its stimulus package spending in areas where social housing is required. By negotiating with state and territory governments, including for the provision of contributions of land and leveraging from community housing organisations, the government hopes to be able to maximise the amount of housing purchased under this program which costs in total something like $4.5 billion. Also, part of that program is dedicated towards the provision of funds to maintain and upgrade existing social housing stock around Australia.

That much is very laudable. We would all identify a very significant need for additional housing to be made available in all categories and all sectors where housing is required. The federal government is attempting to deal with that. The quibble that I have with the government tonight and which increasingly communities around Australia are having with the federal government’s program is the way in which it is being rushed. One of the common features about stimulus spending generally by the government has been that it is rushed, that it is executed in haste and that it is executed with a very large amount of spin. What is most important, it appears, is that a photo opportunity with a hard hat at the beginning of a project has to be paramount. Sometimes the Is are dotted and the Ts are crossed some way down the track—sometimes when it is too late to deal with the problems involved. I want to make reference to the areas where those sorts of problems might occur.

We have had some very disturbing cases brought to our attention recently. In Coburg, in Victoria, for example, there is a redevelopment of the former tramway depot on the corner of Nicholson and Moore streets which has given great concern to many residents of that area. Residents only two weeks ago discovered that bulldozers were tearing through the site preparing the way for a development with up to nine levels, including 200 public and private apartments as well as retail and offices. The project had been signed off and started without a word of notice to the local community. I do not know what the situation is in some states represented around the Senate, but I know that if people in the ACT discovered that a nine-storey development were to go up with 200 dwellings, plus retail, plus offices, in any urban part of Canberra there would be very serious implications for the authorities responsible for delivering those sorts of results. I have no doubt that that is what is going on all over Australia at the moment.

So serious is the community reaction in Coburg that we even have Labor Party figures coming out against the way in which the development is proceeding. The member for Wills, Kelvin Thomson, and the Labor candidate for the state seat of Brunswick, Jane Garrett, have both attacked the approach being taken for this development. Mr Thomson said:

I support social housing. But it is important to make sure local people are consulted and their views are respected.

Ms Garret said:

I think it is a matter of striking the right balance between making sure appropriate projects, and especially those including social housing, are delivered, while not railroading the community.

That is exactly what seems to be happening here. Communities are being railroaded because there is a time line being imposed by the federal government which broaches no challenge. These communities are being told: ‘You will get these social housing projects. You need social housing. Therefore you do not have to worry about the planning implications of the decisions that are made to locate those particular projects in your midst.’

Under the social housing project in Victoria, 75 per cent of 4,500 homes have to be completed by the end of this year. That is an extraordinarily large number of homes to deliver in a very short period of time in parts of Melbourne, where, much like other parts of Australia, there are great sensitivities about planning decisions and where sometimes planning processes can take very long times to deliver. I do not defend or argue that planning processes should take as long as they often do, but I certainly do not argue that communities should be cut out of any consultation whatsoever.

Another whistleblower in this respect is the Mayor of Frankston, Christine Richards, who was faced with an 80-unit social housing project catering to homeless people with drug and alcohol problems which was to be located 200 metres from a drug-dealing hotspot and four local hotels. The council there created a very large stink about this and appears to have prevented it from going ahead. Mayor Richards makes the point:

… the problem is the rollout is so quick that you have to circumvent public consultation to get it done in time.

The risk with that is in fixing short-term needs, there is the potential to create longer-term problems if they don’t listen to what communities are saying.

She went on to say:

We strongly questioned the appropriateness of location, but really we didn’t have control in the end over whether it would proceed.

That is the kind of outcome which the haste the federal government is demanding in this program is delivering to local communities.

It is not just in Victoria there are problems. In the seat of Bennelong, held by Maxine McKew, there have reportedly been crowds of up to 200 people protesting against new social housing projects, mostly two-storey buildings containing up to 20 units each. A local protest group has been formed, Residents Against Inappropriate Development, which has accused Ms McKew of failing to take residents’ concerns seriously. Ms McKew has responded by attacking this group and accusing it of being unrepresentative. She says that it is more important to have affordable housing in place than it is to consult with local communities. I really wonder whether a person holding a seat with the margin that Ms McKew does really should be saying something as foolish as that.

This has led to an understandable reaction on the part of many people. The Brumby government in Victoria has now called for more consultation with residents and said that its time lines seem to be too tight. The Minister for Housing, Tanya Plibersek, has responded by saying that she believed the states had had adequate time to carry out such consultation and ruled out greater flexibility in the funding deadlines. But Premier Brumby has responded by saying that Canberra’s time lines made consultation difficult, and you could understand why he would say that. In relation to this rollout, on 11 March the President of the Australian Local Government Association, Geoff Lake, said:

… we agreed in good faith to put aside the normal processes because we knew the government wanted to get money out … We expected our good faith to be returned …

He also criticises the process which has been used.

I ask members of this place to consider, when they see this kind of rushed program, what it reminds them of in public policy delivery in recent days. Of course, it reminds me of the botched Home Insulation Program, which was delivered at such speed, with such haste, that the important details about safety and preparation and checking those who were undertaking these projects were not done. Yet we have here something much more permanent than insulation. Insulation can be taken out—as long as the house has not burnt down. In this case you have whole projects going ahead with minimal or no supervision by local government authorities used to making decisions about these kinds of developments. There is no involvement by local communities, because they are not even told about these developments happening. The potential lies in these projects for great harm to be done to the fabric of local communities around Australia. Here is another example. Again, this is a government that talks about consultation; it says that it wants to bring communities on board with it, that it wants to involve them in its decisions, but it is not delivering that kind of outcome. The consequences of that kind of haste can be very severe indeed.

I call on the government to rethink the approach that it is taking. The projects we are talking about are largely yet to be rolled out, but the worst of the global financial crisis, particularly in Australia, is over. There is no need for these corners to be cut anymore. There is no need for the control-freaking in Canberra to be delivered on these projects in local areas. We need to rethink this approach. (Time expired)