2004-08-19
Madam Speaker Braham took the Chair at 10 am.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General): Madam Speaker, today I report on a new era in Territory Correctional Services. Internationally respected and highly experience prison official, Mr Jens Tolstrup, has now taken up his post as the new Director of Northern Territory Correctional Services. With over four decades of experience in his home country, Denmark, Mr Tolstrup has also worked as a consultant to correctional services in South Africa and Azerbaijan. He has chosen to make his new home in the Northern Territory, and I welcome him and his family.
Jens’ expertise lies in two areas vital to the current reform of Territory Correctional Services: staff training and professional development, and the introduction of programs to reduce the number of inmates who re-offend once released.
Mr Tolstrup has recently toured Alice Springs and Darwin correctional centres, and met with prison officers, program staff and Community Corrections Officers in each area. I am pleased to hear that he not only intends to regularly visit Alice Springs, but plans to travel to remote communities, and to those centres where probation and parole and remote Community Correction Officers are living and working.
The review cannot be implemented by just one person. This government is committed to an inclusive process, working with prison officers and their associations, and groups outside our correctional system, such as legal services and Aboriginal and community organisations, to bring forward these reforms. Members of the Prison Officers Association, prison management and non-custodial staff are meeting every fortnight to work through the recommendations. Subcommittees have been established around priority areas: training; recruitment and retention; facilities upgrade; prison industries; and prison case management.
Members of the implementation committee, from both Darwin and Alice Springs, travelled to Western Australia to see first-hand correctional centres in which similar reforms have been made. I have had nothing but positive feedback from everyone who participated in this trip. Western Australian officials generously provided information and answered questions on a broad range of issues, ranging from recruitment and orientation to case management and delivery of programs to indigenous inmates.
This government is serious about supporting and reforming our prison system. That is why we have provided $18.5m over four years to implement the recommendations of the Correctional Services review, and another $8m to upgrade facilities. By implementing the review recommendations, this government is continuing to attack the causes of crime and build safer Territory communities.
Ms CARNEY (Araluen): Madam Speaker, I thank the Attorney-General for his statement. On behalf of the opposition, I wish Mr Tolstrup well. He certainly has a job ahead of him. Both the Attorney-General and I know that some members of the Prison Officers Association have some concerns about Mr Tolstrup. I do not think it is appropriate for me to detail those concerns in the Chamber, but I do wish him well.
One of the issues that he will need to give consideration to is what to do with the extremely high rate of indigenous prisoners. Significantly higher, I might say, under the Northern Territory branch of the Australian Labor Party than it was under the CLP. There are many ironies in politics, I suppose, but one for me is that had the rate of indigenous prisoners been at this rate under the CLP we would have heard a number of people, many of whom would have been from the left wing side of the legal profession, screaming from the rooftops. Alas, we can hear nothing. I urge the Attorney-General to make this a significant priority area. In the context of the comments made by the Attorney-General welcoming Mr Tolstrup and wishing him well, I share with him in those sentiments.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General): Madam Speaker, I welcome the positive response from the opposition shadow minister. On the matter of imprisonment rates, we are certainly aware of the high rates of imprisonment. We are not going to back off. We have property crime down by catching repeat offenders. We hope to get people who are guilty of crimes of violence in prison where they belong. Equally, I believe the best way to bring the prison rates down is to stop those levels of offences in the first place and that is what these reforms are addressing.
Dr BURNS (Lands and Planning): Madam Speaker, I report to the House today on important work done by volunteer bush fire brigades. The volunteer brigades are established where regional bushfire council committees clearly identifies a need based on population and fire risk profiles. These regions have one or more volunteer brigades each with their own gazetted area.
There are currently 21 volunteer bushfire brigades within the Northern Territory; 450 trained personnel, and about 350 active current participants. These volunteer brigades do a fantastic amount of work - over 10 000 hours of active fire fighting duty - and they also participate in training, fundraising and other support activities. They are independent incorporated bodies, they operate under the Bushfires Act, and they have their own constitution. It is important to point out that the Bushfires Act does not include responsibility for the brigades in terms of managing structural building fires or other emergency incidents. Generally speaking, these volunteer brigades are very active where there are emergencies, and the Katherine and Daly River region floods are just two examples.
Most members might be aware that a review is about to be undertaken to determine responsibilities for fighting fires in our rural areas, where there is increased population density, increased risk of fire, damage to people and property. That is being undertaken with the NT Fire and Emergency Services and we are looking at better integration and better coverage appropriate for those particular areas.
The government, through the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment, supports the volunteer brigades with vehicles, operational funding and other grants. Currently, the brigades have 52 grass fire units; three of them have new vehicles provided this year. These are the four wheel drive fire tender vehicles that most of us would have seen in our time in the Territory. There are also 14 large fire trucks.
However, I have noticed just going back over the funding figures for years over the last ten years there has been a steady decrease in the amount of funding given to the volunteer brigades. I received representations when I first became minister about that, and I have set about to try to redress that situation.
This government has given a significant boost of funding and resources available to our volunteer brigades. I will detail some of those:
$150 000 for personal protective equipment including fire retarding overalls, helmets, boots, gloves and smoke goggles. That was a representation that was put to me at my first meeting with the volunteer brigades. I am proud to say that we were able to meet those concerns;
$150 000 for the purchase of three new grass fire units allocated to Beatrice Hill, Douglas Daly and the Milne Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades;
an additional $200 000 to be provided each year for brigade operational grants. I know that was welcomed by the volunteer brigades; and
an additional $60 000 to be provided each year towards a vehicle replacement program.
I did inspect a number of the vehicles at a number of the facilities. It is obvious that some of the vehicles are becoming aged and the volunteer brigades felt that they were falling behind in their vehicle replacement program.
As a government, we very keen to support these people who a fantastic job in our community. They give up their time. It is hot, dirty and dangerous work. As a government, we can point to the fact that we increased support for these wonderful people and the job that they do in our community.
Mr BALDWIN (Daly): Madam Speaker, I sincerely thank the minister for that information and for taking such a fresh approach to the Bush Fires Council and all the volunteers who work in that organisation. As the minister said, there is a great effort by a lot of people over a very wide area in some extreme situations at times.
I have raised the issues that you now seem to be addressing in this House a number of times, and I congratulate you for that. The previous minister seemed to ignore the whole situation even though the executive of the Bush Fires Council was making itself heard loud and clear by all of us apart from your government. However, I congratulate you on the work you are doing.
This is the cheapest organisation that you can have in the Northern Territory to look after the safety of property and people, and it deserves close attention. I can say on behalf of the former government that we always maintained attention to that organisation and had a proud relationship with them.
On the funding side, not only the vehicles and all the rest of it, but there is the need for you to turn your attention to some of the infrastructure funding that is needed in terms of buildings. I would ask have a look at that. It is a sad fact that the Edith Farms Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade will be, this Saturday week, opening a building that they have built themselves with federal funding because they could not get any funding from your government. I will be looking to see if you are invited to that opening. It is unfortunate that your government could not come through with the funding, but I am happy to say the federal government has and Nigel Scullion will be opening that building. I congratulate the Edith Farms Bush Fire Brigade for their efforts.
Madam SPEAKER: Honourable members, I advise you of the presence in the Gallery of Years 8, 9 and 10 students from Taminmin High School and Kamitonda Junior High School. Kamitonda High is a semi-rural school approximately three hours south of Osaka, Japan. Taminmin and Kamitonda students have been participating in a student exchange program for six years. On behalf of all honourable members, I extend a warm welcome to our students and the teachers accompanying them.
Members: Hear, hear!
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to report on a Mining Supply Seminar that I opened in Alice Springs last week. For the fifth year, my department has organised this mining and petroleum supply seminar which is designed to generate more mining supply business opportunity for local Northern Territory businesses.
The mining and petroleum sectors are of enormous importance to the Northern Territory’s economy. In terms of output, mining is the largest industry in the Territory and was almost 22% of gross state product in 2003-04 compared with 4.6% nationally. The value of mineral production, including processing, is forecast to increase by 6.8% to $1.4bn in 2004-05. The mining industry employs some 3500 people and spends $400m to $500m per year in the Territory. This does not count the impact of indirect multiplier expenditure and employment.
Although the oil and gas sectors are not yet producing at that level, the gap will continue to close and projects such the LNG plant and construction of the pipeline are providing direct opportunities for local industry. Over and above this, there are several major developments planned, or proposed, such as the $1.5bn Alcan expansion at Gove, for which the final board sign-off is expected next month; the $0.5m Blacktip gas development proposed to replace imported fuel oil for Alcan; the $0.5bn Trans Territory pipeline connecting Blacktip to Gove; and ongoing development at Newmont’s Tanami operations. There are also a number of smaller but very significant planned and proposed developments, such as the Olympia Resources project at Harts Range; tailings processing at Tennant Creek, and the Bootu Creek manganese project.
Ongoing exploration is paramount to the continuation and growth of the mining industry in the Territory and, in particular, Central Australia. This is illustrated by exploration activity for gold, including substantial drilling continuing in the Tanami and Arunta regions by Newmont, Tanami Gold and Barrick Gold; Goldsearch/Independence Gold commenced exploration sampling in the Docker River area; Giants Reef reported discovery of the Malbec prospect within the Chariot corridor at Tennant Creek; drilling and sampling for diamonds in the Georgina Basin by Elkedra Diamonds continued; and interest in potential nickel resources is high with numerous prospects in the Newhaven/Kintore region and at Barrow Creek and surrounding areas. These are being investigated by Mithril Resources, Discovery Nickel and others.
A key government objective is to ensure that the Territory does everything it can to achieve a realistic maximum share of the spend and employment associated with all these resource projects. This means helping local business win business; attracting new business and capability where appropriate; and maximising direct local employment by the proponents and supporting this with training initiatives.
Opportunities are not necessarily presented to local industry as a matter of course. They have to be actively pursued and competed for. Last week’s seminar in Alice Springs is just part of the government’s commitment to work with industry, at both the operator/developer level and the supplier level to maximise local outcomes.
Just as importantly, the Northern Territory government, through various agencies such as the Indigenous Mining Enterprise Task Force, actively encourages resource development companies to provide opportunities of employment for indigenous Australians.
Government also provides direct assistance to local businesses through the various business growth programs and upskill workshops available through the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development. Through these programs, it is our aim to provide opportunities which will enable business to compete on a professional level for the provision of goods and services to the resource development companies.
The Territory government is proud to provide the mining and petroleum supply seminar on an annual basis. Each year, participation is increasing and this year’s attendance was up from around 80 last year to over 100. It offered participants an excellent opportunity to learn first-hand how they can start up or increase opportunities for their business.
Finally, my department will be following up with all the participants over the coming months to measure the results of the seminar. Anecdotal evidence indicates that past seminars have led to increased business, but I want to ensure that we have an objective measure of the outcomes.
Mr DUNHAM (Drysdale): Charlatans, Madam Speaker, charlatans. These people got rid of exploration retention certificates. These certificates were to maximise local participation. You use words like, ‘We will do everything we can to encourage local participation’, well you are not.
Members interjecting.
Mr DUNHAM: Why don’t you have some tax incentives to net them off royalties? Why don’t you put Mines back to its rightful place of being a stand-alone department instead of being tucked away in some department that nobody knows where it is? Why do you attack the public servants in the Mines department for their independence in pursuing matters relating to mining incidents? They have a very proud record. Why don’t you stand up against the unions and say that this is an unfair attack on the public servants of this department?
Do not stand up here and give me all these platitudes about how it is 22% of GDP. We know that, and we know it is important. If you really want to run mining seminars for supply people, why don’t you run them for local people? Why don’t you tell local people that there is an advantage, that if they set up here, and if they are local and provide locally, that they will be given an exploration exemption certificate? What a great idea.
Mr Henderson: We will issue exploration licences and get some exploration happening.
Mr DUNHAM: You scrapped it. So do not tell me your bona fides. You have turned the Mines department into a branch, you have scrapped exploration exemption certificates ...
Mr Henderson: And we are issuing exploration licences.
Mr DUNHAM: You are issuing exploration licences. Well, let us have a look at it …
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Mr DUNHAM: You have them piled up. The reason that was fixed was because of the Native Title Tribunal - nothing to do with you! So, do not go claiming credit. If you really want to debate that, instead of having these little tiny statements where I get two seconds to stand up and talk about it, let us have a debate. Let us have a debate about mining. It is 22% of GDP. It is an important industry, but it is not served well by having these little mini-statements full of platitudes and patting yourself on the back.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): It is not unexpected, Madam Speaker; that it is all doom and gloom for the CLP. The reality is they talk about things and we actually do things - 700 exploration licences. We have opened the Territory to exploration licences. There are going to be four drills working in Tennant Creek in the next few months exploring for gold. Tanami Gold is going to explore for gold. Newmont is going to explore for gold. Newmont is opening up the Tanami …
Members interjecting.
Mr VATSKALIS: I have made it clear that the department of Mines could continue to do the investigations in the mine sites, but what we have to do is make sure that the department of Mines is not seen as acting for the mining companies; it has to be an independent branch, and a department that actually caters for all Territorians. We are not going to let Mines get away with anything they want like they did in the past.
Ms SCRYMGOUR (Family and Community Services): Madam Speaker, today I express the gratitude and respect that the Martin Labor government has for foster carers in the Northern Territory. I do not want to sound too over-the-top but, really, they are the unsung heroes.
Foster carers play a vital role in supporting and caring for children who need time away from their families. Often, these children have great needs and demanding behaviours and, as a result of their family circumstances and the crisis of separation from their parents, when a child is not able to live with their natural family it becomes clear just how important it is that we have our voluntary foster carers. It is the generosity and commitment of foster carers that provide so many kids in need with love and support 365 days a year.
The role of foster carers does not go unnoticed by this government. They have an extraordinary challenging task, but I know most foster carers find it very rewarding. This government has increased foster care payments by 8%. This is an average weekly increase of $10 to help meet the needs of children and families. Payments are now consistent with those being received by foster carers across Australia.
My department also provides support and advice to foster carers who are encountering difficulties. The support of foster carers is consistent with our Building Healthier Communities strategy; that is, to give kids a good start in life and to strengthen families and communities. As minister, I have met with the Foster Carers Association and will continue to do so on a regular basis to ensure that I am very aware of their needs and issues.
I congratulate the association on their recent incorporation. The successes of this association are only possible due to the tireless work of the volunteers. I would like to acknowledge the work of the committee, Judy Hansen, Julian Barry, Kerry Wetherall, Kristina Kent, Kevin Smith, Rose Campbell, Brody Parsons and Kate Race.
The production of the first comprehensive Northern Territory foster care handbook will help all of us deliver the best results for children in care. Next year, the Northern Territory will be host to the 2005 National Foster Carers Conference. I am very happy to say that we have provided $50 000 to the Northern Territory Foster Carers Association to assist hosting this event. This conference will not only provide a unique opportunity to create bonds and networks across the country, but also to showcase the Territory and to demonstrate to the rest of Australia our hospitality and the unique challenges we face. The government has also provided the Northern Territory Foster Carers Association with several special grants, including funding to employ a part-time Development and Resource Officer.
As I mentioned earlier, my department provides support to foster carers. It also works the other way. Foster carers provide an excellent contribution by helping to train staff in the department and providing insight into substitute care for the department’s officers. To date, this training has been provided free of charge, but it is right to formally recognise this work, and the government has decided to provide payment to foster carers when they help train child protection workers. The details of this policy will be worked out in consultation with the association.
In recognition of the role of foster carers and their families, a reception was held at Parliament House on 11 August. It was a delight to enjoy this function with many of the carers and children. The older children dressed up for this function, and the younger children stole centre stage - reminding me of the need for short speeches. The function was an opportunity for some of the foster carers to meet with each other for the first time. Perhaps the people we have to thank most are the children who, I guess, have to share their parents and their childhood with foster children who come into the family. It must cause some problems, but I think they also find it a rewarding experience.
Madam Speaker, this government applauds the role of foster carers and their families in assisting to build healthier communities.
Ms CARTER (Port Darwin): Madam Speaker, I welcome the minister’s report. It is certainly an area that requires increased assistance, there’s no two ways about that. I have met with a number of agencies with regards to this and it appears that there is an increasing need for foster carers in our community. Of course, it is something that very few people do actually volunteer to do and it is a very difficult thing to have to do.
I certainly applaud and support the foster carers in our community. As we all know, the children that they take into their families are often children with challenging behaviours, and parents are already busy enough with their children. It is fantastic that people in the community are prepared to open their homes up to children who are having difficulties, who are coming from families that have been struggling. It is certainly something that the opposition supports. I thank the minister for her report here this morning.
Bill presented and read a first time.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General): Madam Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a second time.
This bill is part of a national initiative to stem money laundering and organised crime networks. At the Leaders’ Summit on Terrorism and Multi-jurisdictional Crime in April 2002, the Chief Minister, along with other leaders, resolved to reform the laws relating to money laundering including a possible reference of power to the Commonwealth, if necessary, for effective offences. The Joint Working Group on National Investigation Powers was tasked with facilitating the implementation of their resolution and has recommended a framework for money laundering offences that will create an effective national response to money laundering. The offences are to be inserted in the Criminal Code by this bill, following the Joint Working Group’s recommendations, and have the support of all other state and territory Attorneys-General.
Money laundering is undertaken for a number of reasons. Firstly, because the proceeds of crime provide a direct link to the offence itself. Money laundering allows criminals to distance themselves from the criminal activity that generated the profits, making prosecution for substantive offence more difficult. It also removes the likelihood of the profits being confiscated if the criminal is caught by removing the link between the profits and the offence. Money laundering assists criminals to enjoy the benefits of the profits without drawing attention to themselves. It allows criminals to reinvest those profits in legitimate business and, perhaps most significantly, in future criminal activity.
There are three stages to laundering money. The first step is that the money launderer introduces illegal profits into the financial system. Large amounts of cash may be split into less conspicuous, smaller amounts and then deposited directly into a bank account, or used to buy a series of financial instruments such as cheques or money orders that are then collected and deposited into accounts at other locations. Once the funds have been placed into the financial system, the launderer can then engage in a series of conversions or movements to distance them from their original source. For example, funds might be channelled through the purchase of investment instruments or by wiring money through a series of accounts at various banks, perhaps disguising the transfers as payments for goods and services. Once these stages are complete, the money launderer then proceeds to have the funds re-enter the legitimate economy, for example, by investment in real estate or business ventures.
The problem of money laundering is one with enormous and far reaching impact. If effective laws are not created to check money laundering activities, not only will large amounts of criminal assets be protected from confiscation, but of greater significance, those assets become capable of investment in further criminal activity. In the context of global terrorist activities, effective money laundering laws may be seen as a key measure in preventing the sponsorship of terrorist groups and activities.
The bill creates an offence dealing with the proceeds of crime. The offence arises where a person who deals with money or other property that is the proceeds of crime either knew or had the belief or suspicion or should have reasonable grounds for a suspicion that the money or property was the proceeds of a crime.
The bill also creates an offence of dealing with property that is being used or is intended to be used in the commission of, or to facilitate the commission of, a crime but which cannot be proved to have been derived from crime. This offence fills a gap in existing money laundering laws in Australia. In 1999 in its report Confiscation that Counts: a review of the Proceeds of Crime Act 1987, the Australian Law Reform Commission found that a significant case could be made out for reforms that would extend money laundering offences to a wider range of activity in order to catch people who receive, possess, conceal or dispose of any money or other property in preparation for the commission of an offence.
Without an offence of this nature, a person who is detected dealing with property or money to set up an offence cannot be prosecuted. Like the money laundering offence, this offence applies where a person who deals with money or other property either knew or had a belief or suspicion, or should have had reasonable grounds for a suspicion, that the money or property was being used or intended to be used for the commission of or to facilitate the commission of an offence.
In order to ensure that laws cover cross-jurisdictional criminal activity, ‘offence’ has been defined in the bill to include offences against a law of the Commonwealth or another state or territory, or a foreign state if those offences would be an offence if committed in the Territory.
Both offences rely on proof that the money or other property was either derived from or used in the commission of some offence. The bill does not require, however, that the prosecution need to prove the specific offence concerned. It is enough if facts can be proved that constitute one or more offences. For example, if a person is apprehended in possession of a large amount of money that they admit to be the proceeds of a drug deal but refuse to provide the specifics of the transaction, it may not be possible to prove the actual offence that took place or who was involved in it. Alternatively, in some cases it may be clear that the money has been derived from one or more offences but it is not possible to say from which of the offences it was obtained.
The bill clarifies that this degree of specificity is not required. These offences are not intended to capture innocent persons who may have innocently owned or handled property that was later used in a crime. It is intended to prevent the activities of people who finance or otherwise facilitate the commission of crimes. In order to safeguard against any inappropriate use of the new laws and to ensure that they are directed at the intended targets, the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions is required before a prosecution for any of these offences can be commenced.
This bill reflects the government’s commitment to ensure an effective national regime to prevent money laundering. Madam Speaker, I commend the bill to honourable members.
Debate adjourned.
Bill presented and read a first time.
Mr HENDERSON (Police, Fire and Emergency Services): Madam Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a second time.
It is universally accepted that DNA identification has become one of the most valuable tools for police investigating crime and identifying people. It is well known that the Territory has the most effective and uncomplicated DNA legislation for law enforcement in Australia. It is the envy of other jurisdictions. We have successfully resisted Commonwealth pressure to ‘re-model’ the legislation in a way that other jurisdictions may now be discovering makes it very hard to use in the fight against crime.
Nonetheless, further benefits of DNA identification can be realised by further enhancing Territory DNA legislation. This government is also committed to ensuring that DNA is used appropriately, transparently and accountably and that personal privacy is protected, but without in any way weakening or limiting its use as a tool for identifying criminal suspects and clearing innocent people of suspicion.
I believe that the Police Administration Amendment Bill 2004 combines and balances all these important features. Now that we have arrangements for the exchange of DNA information in place, or soon to be in place with most Australian jurisdictions, and we are now in the position to upload DNA profiles onto the national DNA database operated by CrimTrac, there is a final step to be taken for DNA identification to be used regularly for cross-border criminal investigations. This is to legislate for our Northern Territory police to take DNA samples for other police forces and vice versa.
This legislation introduces the concepts of reciprocal registration and enforcement of forensic procedure orders and approvals. The new section 147E in the Police Administration Act will mirror corresponding legislation from Queensland and South Australia. So, if a superintendent of Northern Territory Police gives approval for a DNA sample to be taken from a criminal suspect in, say, Queensland, this approval, or order, can be registered with the Commissioner of Queensland Police and arrangements can be made for one of his officers to obtain the sample and send it back to the Northern Territory Forensic Science Centre. If the suspect’s DNA does not match the DNA sample from the crime scene here in the Territory, then the suspect can be excluded from police inquiries, so avoiding the need for extradition proceedings.
We hear a great deal about DNA identification for the purposes of criminal investigation, but it is also an invaluable means of identifying deceased people and human remains. However, the Police Administration Act does not permit access to the NT DNA database, unless it is for the investigation of a crime. Now, there are some disasters, both natural and man made, such as fires and explosions, where the victim is so disfigured or dismembered that normal means of identification, such as dental records and fingerprints, cannot be used. In these circumstances, DNA identification is used to identify the victims and assign body parts for the purpose of burial. In these circumstances, we may need to use the DNA database to help identify these victims. These amendments will permit this use and also on the rare occasions where access to the DNA database could help police and relatives find a missing person.
We also do not yet have the legal capacity to exchange DNA information with overseas police forces, neither to identify people suspected of committing crimes in the Northern Territory who have gone abroad, nor to assist identify our own people who may be victims of a disaster overseas, such as the Bali bombing.
Although in practice this information would probably be exchanged through the Australian Federal Police and Interpol, this government insists that the Territory retains control of this information and remains accountable for how it is used and by whom. Our current arrangements for exchange of DNA information do not contemplate the transmission of information to third parties. These amendments allow me, as Minister for Police, Fire and Emergency Services, to prescribe overseas jurisdictions with which I may enter an arrangement for the exchange of DNA information should the need arise. I, and the Commissioner of Police, will still retain the ability to enter arrangements with other jurisdictions for exchange of DNA information.
On the matter of accountability, Northern Territory Police staff have worked with the Information Commissioner to ensure that arrangements for the exchange of DNA information meet the standards we require to protect Territorians’ personal information and to ensure the public retains confidence in the whole process.
One area which we do see as important to tighten is what appears to be a drafting error in the original legislation. The legislation was intended to protect people who were not suspects but who had given DNA samples to help police in an investigation. We call them ‘volunteers’. The legislation prevents this information being used in evidence, except for the case in which it was given, and for other very serious crimes, such as rape and murder, attracting a penalty of 14 years or more imprisonment. However, it does not expressly prevent it being used in other investigations.
In practice, the Forensic Science Centre and police have followed the spirit of the legislation and have not released or otherwise used volunteers’ DNA information, except for these very serious cases. However, in my view, it is now time to correct this drafting error, ensure that the act accurately reflects the intention of parliament, which is what this amendment will do. This protection will extend to persons who volunteer forensic information for any purpose, whether to assist in a criminal investigation as a victim of crime, or to help locate a missing person or identify human remains.
Returning to the concept of accountability, the concerns of some people - and I suggest that they are not always well directed or fully informed - are that DNA samples taken by police could be analysed to extract personal information such as predictive health information. This information would be of no use to police for investigating crime. I am advised that human DNA which is analysed by police forensic scientists, is loosely termed ‘uncoded’ or ‘junk DNA’ and, if it codes for any physical or other feature, scientists do not know what that might be. The DNA profile that is extracted from analysis of this uncoded DNA is no more than a number. It is a long number and a unique number to that person but, as far as scientists know, it contains less information than the number on our driver’s licence. Therefore, to that extent, security and accountability surrounding DNA profiles held by police is far better than applied by other institutions holding more informative personal data.
However, whilst I can assure members that the Northern Territory forensic science laboratory has the highest standards of sample and information security, the government also believes there is always a need for transparency and accountability for what takes place in the laboratory. I believe that the Northern Territory is the first Australian jurisdiction to legislate in this area.
These amendments will require me, as the responsible minister, to approve and prescribe any new applications used by the Forensic Science Centre for DNA analysis. That means I, and the public, can continue to be confident of what information is being extracted from our personal DNA samples.
Madam Speaker, I commend the bill to honourable members.
Debate adjourned.
Continued from 20 May 2004.
Mr DUNHAM (Drysdale): I shall be brief, Madam Speaker, on the basis that these are straightforward amendments; they arise from a National Competition Principle agreement, and they were the second tranche of the amendments that were signalled in that agreement. The first tranche of some eight out of 14 have already been debated and gone through this House and these, likewise, are non-contentious, serve the industry well, and are straightforward. We would, therefore, support them.
I do note that the best interests of the Territory are foremost with the unlikely circumstance of two parties making application for the same piece of land. I guess it takes you back to the old gold rush era where two people would make the same application for the same piece of land. The department will pursue its normal course of looking at the merits of those two and, in the event that they are equally meritorious, will go for the earliest lodgement. So, it really does take you back to gold rush days.
All of the amendments, I know, are supported by industry and by the opposition, and further comment merely serves to take up the time of the House.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his contribution. He mentioned the amendments are due to the NCP. They are pretty reasonable amendments, and they provide some transparency and fair process to people who want to come to the Territory for mineral exploration and to start a new mine. We were very supportive of these amendments.
Mining is very vital to the Territory, as I said in my ministerial report. Despite some difference of opinion between us and the opposition, we will continue to support the mining industry in the Territory, not only by processing more applications for exploration licences, but by also having a look at the merits of the applications, especially when there is a competition between two applicants applying for the same piece of land.
It is my personal endeavour to have mines opening in the Territory. I do not believe mining is a dirty business. I believe mining can be a very good business, and some of the mines that operate in the Territory are exemplary businesses and they benefit not only their shareholders, but also the Territory, providing jobs and job opportunities not only for mainstream mine workers, but also for indigenous Australians. During the introduction of the Tanami Exploration Agreement Ratification Bill, I said that Newmont employed up to 20% of the work force from indigenous people in the area.
I am very happy to hear that the opposition is supporting these amendments. They will be incorporated in the act, providing a fair process for an open and transparent process, and also giving the right of appeal that did not exist until now.
Motion agreed to; bill read a second time.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy)(by leave): Madam Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a third time.
Motion agreed to; bill read a third time.
Mr AH KIT (Housing): Madam Speaker, I wish to provide the House with a ministerial statement on Home Territory 2010 – Moving the Territory Ahead. Before I move into the statement I table the Home Territory 2010 strategy for members’ information and interest and, no doubt, support.
There is a sense in which coming to be the Housing Minister completes a circle in my life. As I mentioned in this House before, I grew up in the old Parap Camp at Stuart Park. Then our family rented a Housing Commission home in Rapid Creek which had to accommodate 12 children. On a couple of occasions I have lived in Housing Commission industry housing. Since becoming a minister I have met with many Territory Housing tenants throughout the Territory. I have been impressed by the care they take with their homes and simultaneously appalled at the decades of neglect that has affected much Territory Housing and government employee housing. As I remarked before, it is not unusual to come across such housing that has not been painted for 20 years. As well, through my working life, I have witnessed the poverty of indigenous housing out bush where occupancy is regularly 15, 16 and sometimes 17 people per house. I know what poor housing is like. It is why I care about all public housing tenants; it is why I have been determined to increase the resources available to remote area housing.
It is why I have encouraged my department to develop Home Territory 2010 to bring social housing into focus as a major plank in this government’s commitment to social justice. In this, I must commend those members of staff who have worked long and hard on this project. The aim of Home Territory 2010 is to ensure safe, secure and affordable housing for all Territorians now and into the future, in particular, Territorians on low incomes or with special needs.
Home Territory 2010 provides exciting and challenging new directions for the Territory which includes:
a vision to grow and expand the affordable housing sector in the Northern Territory;
increasing the supply and range of affordable housing options across public rental, private rental and community housing in both urban and remote communities;
assisting low to moderate income earners into home ownership;
increasing the level of support for special needs groups in our community through flexible service provision and improved service delivery;
improving the way we do our business through partnerships across public and private sectors, effective communication and improved long-term strategic planning with industry; and
developing a pathway for our current and future tenants which supports clients in working towards sustainable, independent living.
The strategy recognises that to improve housing affordability and to help households in housing stress is a complex issue requiring a whole-of-government, whole-of-community approach. It acknowledges that a range of factors affect the supply and access of affordable housing including policy, market trends, local supply, funding systems, private investment, and the cost of building. Currently, half of the low income households in the Territory are experiencing housing stress.
Whilst comprehensive data on the total housing need is not available, the 1999 national housing survey identified that over 6900 urban Territory households are struggling to meet their requirements for daily living. The real need, including remote communities, is far higher. Public housing remains the primary choice for low income earners with 36% of the group living in public housing. However, the public housing system is unable to cope with the strain of demand. Viable and appropriate affordable options must be provided to help those Territorians most in need.
Data from the National Housing Survey reveals key segments of the community most challenged by housing affordability, and they are indigenous Territorians, lone persons, single persons with dependant children, and couples with dependant children. On the other hand, housing underpins economic growth and sustainable development and is an important catalyst for population growth and stability. Housing has a vital role in helping to build and maintain viable communities across the Northern Territory, including those in regional and remote areas.
The challenge is to have the provision of housing matching and complementing the growth and sustainability of the private housing sector as well as the building and construction industry. Government remains a critical provider of low cost housing in the Territory. Based on 2001 Australian Bureau of Statistic data, there are 55 800 dwellings in the Territory of which we are looking a public housing at 12% and community/indigenous housing at 11%.
We have proportionally the largest segment of public housing stock in Australia; over twice the national average of 5%. This is in part a remnant of the historical investment in housing by government post-Cyclone Tracy, but a reflection also of our relatively undeveloped economy. Social housing comprising public and community housing is a very large provider of housing, targeting low income earning Territorians, particularly in the very large community housing sector in the bush.
Many Territorians are doing it tough. As I mentioned, currently there is minimum of 6900 house holds in the Northern Territory in housing stress, which is defined as paying more than 30% of their gross income on housing. The majority of these households are in private rental or paying off their mortgage. Tenants in private rental are four times more likely to experience housing stress than if they lived in public housing where the tenant pays a subsidised rent based on a percentage of their total gross income.
However, in the bush there is no private market and therefore a complete dependence on community housing or government employee housing as the only housing choices. The stark tragedy of this is that there is an estimated $850m short fall of housing stock in the bush. This has resulted in substantial homelessness and gross over-crowding, with all the related social and health problems that result.
At current expenditures of around $40m a year, we are barely keeping up with demand. At this rate, it will take over 20 years to meet unmet needs by which time the population will have virtually doubled. It is for this reason the Northern Territory is the lead agency among the states and territories in developing major new policy in this area. I am pleased to say we will be producing this policy at the next Housing Ministerial Council next month in either Canberra or Melbourne.
Social housing is facing a number of significant challenges at this time including market failure in remote communities resulting in a complete dependence on social housing clients with increasingly complex needs, diminishing resources, ageing stock and limited private sector and investment.
During the last decade in the larger urban centres throughout Australia, a number of major changes affecting housing affordability have occurred. Average housing prices relative to income have almost doubled. The proportion of first home owners has fallen by approximately 30%. Average monthly payments on new loans have increased by 50%. The proportion of low rent has fallen by 15% and opportunities to access public housing have fallen by 20%.
Whilst the Northern Territory housing market has not seen the volatility of the other states and territories in Australia, there is a growing segment of our community under housing stress. Housing affordability is crucial to social and economic stability and future growth. Affordability is not a single problem but a series of interconnected problems affecting rental and home ownership markets and social housing provision. There are clear social and economic benefits to assist tenants to remain outside of the social housing system or, indeed, move out of it. Whilst in the short term the tenant may be financially better off through failing to access home ownership in particular, the tenant is considerably financially disadvantaged in the long term.
Research has shown that home ownership improves the economic wellbeing of a family, and improves stability with associated improvements in education and employment. Whilst the ability to purchase housing remains affordable by national standards in the Territory, we have the lowest take-up of home ownership in any jurisdiction. We have the highest proportion of renters, both public and private, at 45%, which is considerably higher than the national rate of 27%.
In regards to our vision, the aim of Home Territory 2010 is to provide access to safe, secure and affordable housing for Territorians most in need. It provides a long-term strategic approach to affordable housing, recognising that, for this to be achieved, coordination between housing tenures must be improved, and that a whole-of-government/whole-of-community approach must be taken. There are four key objectives. First, a sustainable social housing system; second, improving the way we do our business; third, a range of effective and responsive housing models that meet a diverse range of housing needs; and, finally, a housing market that underpins economic growth, regional vitality, safety and security.
I now wish to outline the key initiatives of Home Territory 2010. In regards to HomeNorth, through the recently revamped HomeNorth products delivered by Housing Business Services, government has improved access to home ownership for low income earners. While some home purchasers may be affected by housing stress, the HomeNorth products offer greater flexibility in times of financial hardship than the private market. This includes the ability for Housing Business Services to purchase a share, or additional share of the dwelling from the client, thereby reducing their financial commitment. The low deposit regime, as well as other assistance mechanisms, has improved affordability.
In regards to renal cluster village pilots, over the next six years, Territory Housing will develop medium-sized cluster villages to accommodate clients receiving renal treatment in each urban centre in the Northern Territory. This will only be achieved through working in partnership with Health, Aboriginal Hostels and relevant community organisations.
With the Equality Landlord Strategy, Territory Housing will apply best practice as a landlord. This means we must ensure properties are well maintained by us, as well as tenants. We must respond to complaints and we must communicate well with our tenants. An important element of this is to work to ensure that tenants are able to enjoy their privacy and, to this end, we have also developed a Good Neighbour Policy. Territory Housing views complaints of noise and nuisance seriously, and will offer advice and take necessary action in relation to all complaints against public housing tenants, irrespective of whether the complaint is made by another public housing tenant or private householders.
Territory Housing can only act in accordance with the Residential Tenancy Act but, in some cases, other agencies have the power to deal with complaints and therefore these complaints may need to be referred to police, community mediation providers, or other support services. Territory Housing staff will listen to complaints and will provide advice to help resolve the problems quickly. Territory Housing staff can advise about the process needed to be followed, and can provide a referral service to the other community-based agencies such as police and the Community Justice Centre, your local council, the Legal Aid Commission, the Anti-Discrimination Commission and many others.
In some of our unit complexes, clear signage has been erected identifying what is expected of visitors at our complexes, and for tenants who want to restrict access of other people who may cause disturbances. In some of our larger complexes a security presence has been installed giving tenants and surrounding neighbours the ability to directly contact the security firm to respond to specific incidents. In addition, we have local arrangements with police to move on itinerants and to tip out alcohol found on unauthorised people within our complexes. Local arrangements have also been made with Night Patrol to target hot spots. We can also assist tenants to place signs on doors of their houses to restrict access to people who may cause a disturbance.
With our urban renewal, we have already commenced a program in our public housing throughout the Territory involving up to $45m over five years. This aims to bring all of our public housing to a standard commensurate with newly-constructed housing, as well as improving the living conditions of thousands of Territorians. It is providing a major boost to small contractors in all Territory centres. Included in this is the provision of security screening; improvements such as driveways, fencing and sheds, and smoke detectors. We are improving the way we work with industry, including the private rental industry and the building and construction industries. To this end, we are developing mechanisms to consult the private sector, with an emphasis on partnerships with the sector, to increase private investment in public housing.
We are a big contributor of resources and a big employer of indigenous Territorians, but we need to do more. Initiatives such as the Indigenous Housing Authority of the Northern Territory’s community housing management program will improve service delivery on the ground. In regards to jobs, the central remote model developed through IHANT has seen good results, which we are expanding into the Miwatj and north-west regions in the coming year. Additional work opportunities are being developed through the Indigenous Essential Services Program through Power and Water. This develops employment opportunities on remote communities, and eight of the 72 communities are contracted to provide essential service officers, representing over $3m being invested per annum into local indigenous employment.
In conclusion, the overall aim of Home Territory 2010 is to assist Territorians most in need to access housing most suitable to their needs. As people progress through different life cycle stages, and their family structures and financial situations change, so do their housing needs and preferences. In the Territory, lone people and single parents with dependent children are highly represented in public housing comprising 26% and 37% of our client base respectively. Whilst disproportionately high compared to national averages - 22% and 10% respectively - this is consistent with other jurisdictions. Couples, lone people, and couples with dependent children generally aged between 25 to 55 years, have the greatest representation in the private rental market - 25%, 22% and 17% respectively. This is reflective of the life cycle which, on average, is highly mobile, has below average income, and has a high proportion of household members who are studying.
Home ownership is often linked with the formation and growth of families; couples and couples with children make up over 60% of home owners. On the other hand, lone persons represent 18% of home owners, many of them in the later life cycle stages. As we move through the life cycle, our housing needs change and a choice of affordable housing across tenures is essential. A more flexible approach is required rather that the one-size-fits-all models. Home Territory 2010 aims to increase the supply of, and access to, affordable housing across the Territory to improve the way that public and indigenous housing delivers its business to assist home ownership and build the capacity of the private industry and community sectors.
Public housing will continue to provide a safety net targeted to those most in need. However, it cannot be expected to meet all housing needs in urban centres. Indigenous housing delivered through the Indigenous Housing Authority of the Northern Territory will continue to assist with the housing needs of indigenous Territorians but cannot meet the enormous need in our remote communities.
Whilst both housing tenures remain crucial components of the social housing process, more must be done to build the range and supply of affordable housing in the Territory. Through Home Territory, a long-term strategic approach to affordable housing has been undertaken. This government believes that the provision of safe, secure and affordable housing is a precursor to the health and wellbeing of our community. We recognise that we must engage the community by way of two way communication and consultation and employ a whole-of-government/ whole-of-community approach in providing affordable housing.
The period between now and 2010 will be critical to the Northern Territory in addressing the social housing needs of our Territory. I trust that members opposite and Independent members of this Chamber will support the initiatives I have outlined today. No one pretends that solutions, especially in the area of remote area housing, are soluble overnight. But with goodwill from all sides of politics we can move forward together. I commend this statement to the House.
Madam Speaker, I move that the Assembly take note of the statement.
Mrs MILLER (Katherine): Madam Speaker, I thank the Minister for Housing for his ministerial statement on Home Territory 2010. There are some really good aspects in this ministerial statement and they build on what has been happening for a very long time in housing. I agree that the aim of the policy is to ensure safe, secure and affordable housing for all Territorians. I believe it is a basic human right to be housed and well protected. Glancing through the statement I notice some of the areas you are improving on and adding to, and I find especially important the good neighbour policy. I really hope that that good neighbourhood policy is issued to all people who live in Territory Housing so that they are well aware of their responsibilities to their neighbours.
I have never lived in public housing, but I have certainly have had plenty to do with it long before I came into this House. The first five years that I lived in Katherine I worked for a construction and maintenance company which had the repairs and maintenance contract for Territory Housing. For those five years I was very aware of how much money was put into repairs and maintenance. I find it quite offensive that the minister should say that there has been years of neglect, because there was certainly no neglect when I was working in that particular area. In fact, in some instances, repairs and maintenance to buildings was repeated in the same buildings over and over in that five years.
The HomeNorth scheme is a great scheme, and the revamped HomeNorth product this year has allowed more people within the Territory to have the affordability to purchase their own home where they may not have had it before. I welcome that.
On the medium-sized cluster villages for the renal units, we are very aware that we have a huge problem with renal patients. Most of them come from outlying communities and are disadvantaged in being away from their families and their close knit communities. I wholly support the renal cluster pilots. The health and wellbeing of people accommodated in those villages will be much improved because they will be surrounded by their family and other people who are going through the same problem.
The urban renewal of $45m over five years is going to be very well received. Some of the Territory housing has been in place since the renewal after Cyclone Tracy and it is time many of those have maintenance. In Katherine, many of these buildings were renewed and had a lot of maintenance following the flood. Most of the homes in Katherine in my electorate were renewed following the flood of 1998, but it is also good to see that improvements are continuing with the addition of driveways and sheds, fencing, and smoke detectors. I notice that there are still some security screens being installed in those areas.
One of the things that I would like the minister not to forget is assisting older Territorians with housing. We lose many of our senior Territorians interstate because they do not have affordable, suitable housing. Experiences I have had with seniors reveal that they feel uncomfortable unless they are surrounded by people of their own age. I encourage the minister to look at establishing housing suitable for seniors. I would prefer to see that in cluster models as well - either that or similar to a seniors village. Please do not forget our seniors.
One of the interesting things that I have noticed about this brochure, minister, is that you have been noted to be the minister for provocation and nothing much has changed with this. One of your statements here is:
Is that the sort of thing you put in for your public servants? That is disgusting. That is definitely not something that you put in a glossy brochure that sits on...
Members interjecting.
Mrs MILLER: In addition to that I have a letter here, minister, that you wrote to tenants. This is on Minister for Housing letterhead:
How insulting is that? The evidence is here that we have looked after public housing for all of that time, and for you to issue a letter like that, minister, on Minister for Housing letterhead, is appalling, absolutely appalling.
Mr Henderson: This is the real honest John, not like the one in Canberra.
Dr Burns: He will take a lie detector test …
Mrs MILLER: I would like to see him take a lie detector test, too.
Mr Ah Kit: What did the member for Greatorex do? He was the Minister for Housing once.
A member: Yes, he does not want to talk about it.
Dr Burns: He used to get out and paint them on the weekend himself.
Mr Ah Kit: He sits there quietly working on his adjournment.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Mrs MILLER: That is all right, I do not mind them having their little bit of fun, it has woken them up.
Madam Speaker, as it is highlighted in this statement, we have the highest proportion of renters in the Territory, therefore it is a huge job of Territory Housing to meet that market. I have asked for a briefing with the minister’s department. It is very difficult to get a briefing with this minister’s department, but I can get one, I think, in about two weeks’ time in relation to the number of Territory Housing houses that are vacant within Katherine, and also how many there are vacant throughout the Territory. I know there are quite a few. So I would like to see …
Mr Ah Kit: You want to know how many Aboriginal people live in them too, like the member for Araluen?
Mrs MILLER: While we are on the subject of indigenous persons, one of the issues that I have with Territory Housing is that there does not seem to be a policy in place for the number of people who can come uninvited into homes, who come in from communities and try to live in the one home. What they do is place a terrible lot of pressure on to the families that are already there.
We have a situation – I will use Katherine as an example - where we have a very nice family with children living in Katherine East. They do get forced on them visitors who arrive unannounced and, of course, they do not like to ask them to go. As a result of these people living in the one house – a three bedroom house with four children and their parents – in addition to that, they have had quite a large number of other people uninvited in their home. I do not say that they have not invited them, but they should not be there. It has caused a huge problem not only for the family who is there, but the domestic violence and the violent language that comes from that house also disturbs the surrounding neighbours. The police have been there several times.
I would like to see the minister introduce a policy to educate the people who come from the remote communities so that they understand that they cannot all live in that same house. They cannot live in that same house and must have respect for the families that are there.
All in all, this ministerial statement on housing will follow on beautifully from what has been in the past and build on it. I thank the minister, generally, for what I consider a pretty good statement. It is nothing outstanding and nothing over the top, nothing new, but I do support it. I do support your statement, minister, and I look forward to seeing these wonderful remarkable improvements that you are talking about here.
Mr STIRLING (Treasurer): Madam Speaker, I welcome the statement by the minister. The provision of housing for all Territorians, of course, goes to the fundamental social infrastructure of the Territory itself, and it does go to questions of retention and recruitment. If we look at the question of government employee housing right across the Territory, particularly that provided in rural and remote communities, government owns a lot of property right through the Northern Territory. It is property that, in some quarters, has not been maintained as well as it ought to over the years, so the government has, in the past, allowed its asset base to be eroded. Once we have less than optimum conditions for employees who do do it tough in many rural and remote parts of the Northern Territory - we have a considerable proportion of our public sector working in those areas – it does make it harder to get people into those positions in the first place, and to retain them once we have them there.
There is always a huge challenge for government to maintain and improve, and it is only something that can be worked at over time. Government simply does not have the resources to shove hundreds of millions of dollars into a challenge like that overnight; it has to be programmed and worked through on a priority basis. That goes for all government infrastructure, housing included.
Housing for seniors at the older end of the market is a question along with housing for young people and the questions around affordability for people seeking to get into the housing market with their first purchase. They are all fundamental questions that go to the heart of lifting the lowest rate of home ownership in Australia that we currently have, up to somewhere and, hopefully, in the future, beyond the national average, so that we do get much more of a normalisation of the community.
Whilst the transience of the Territory population when I first came to the Territory in 1969-70 and through the 1980s, has reduced over time, there are still many people who come in and out of the Territory. In some cases, they return to families down south because of the perceived lack of family support and extended family available to them in the Northern Territory. However, sometimes it would be for the reason of housing. If you can get a person or a family to buy their house, it is a first step toward a more settled family unit and employee in the Northern Territory.
In relation to those areas, what this government has done with the rebates for the principal home purchaser of $1500 off the stamp duty and the increased threshold before stamp duty applies for those first home owners, are all moves that cost government. However, we trust that they do increase that affordability and possibility for people to get their first home.
The goals that the minister has laid out for the government over the next six years are the sorts of goals that we should be headed for, and that should receive support right across the board. The fundamental positon is, as far as we possibly can, giving all Territorians the right to safe, secure but, most importantly, affordable housing in the first instance. That is exactly what the minister said.
We have to grow the affordable housing sector out there in the community at large; we have to increase the range of housing options available to purchasers; and we have to continue to look at how we further assist low and moderate income earners into the housing market. That is very problematic because you get into those questions of how that low income earner gets to a point of actually having enough by way of deposit to satisfy the lenders out there that they are a safe risk in going into a housing mortgage. There is also improved business approach by government and pathwaying people through to independent living.
They are the six goals that the minister has laid out. He has put down the fundamental cornerstones to what should be the delivery of a socially just housing system in the Territory. We do not pretend, on this side of the House, that those goals will be easy to achieve, but they will be achieved. We are going to continue to work on them and take the steps to reach them.
Supply and access are fundamental keys to affordable housing. The statistics show that we have the most affordable housing market in Australia at the moment. We get a factor of 52.8. If you compare that to New South Wales sitting at 28, it is a huge mark-up in our favour. That is always a snapshot in time and it is not going to remain like that. We have recently seen housing prices move quite dramatically as the housing boom in the southern states has come off and investors start to look to what they perceive as soft markets to put money into whether it is Darwin, parts of the Northern Territory, or Western Australia. We were always, and I would think we always will be, counter-cyclical in terms of housing price movements in the Territory compared to other southern states. That factor of 52.8 for the Northern Territory compared to New South Wales at 28 is derived by dividing the mean weekly earnings by mean week loan repayments.
The question of housing affordability is also tied to a secure employment environment. However, it also goes further than that in terms of the opportunities - and again, challenges - certainly in the first place for government where is it putting money on the line to provide housing, to secure training and employment opportunities, and particularly, I guess, in those rural and remote communities where lack of a labour market and lack of employment opportunities is so stark.
If you look at IHANT and how that works with the Department of Community Development, Sport and Cultural Affairs as the program manager, one project springs that springs to mind is the Tangentyere project in Central Australia. I met some of these people. They have five remote communities with four apprentices and one builder trainer in each community building two houses per year. I met those trainees at a function in Alice Springs some weeks ago. Tangentyere brought those trainees in from their communities to a function for trainees and apprentices in Alice Springs. It was terrific to meet those trainees and talk to them about the work they are doing, how the training was being delivered, and how they were going on those housing projects.
Some years ago when the army was into delivery of housing project at Galiwinku on Elcho Island in my electorate, a similar thing was done where a group of trainees worked with the established army construction teams but then went on to build a house in their own right under supervision of local building instructor. It was a marvellous program. We got those trainees through to Certificate III in a couple of instances. The problem was that once the army went and the trainees had finished on that particular house they were building the sustainability had not been properly built into that program and we lost a lot of the benefit of it.
We needed then at a community level to have that team held as a core and added to by further trainees over time so that those all those questions of repairs and maintenance in the community and who does it would be resolved. You would have a local construction, local housing team of indigenous people from Galiwinku fully employed and looking after the community housing. But it did show what can be achieved. Tangentyere is showing what can be achieved if government constructs its contracts right and, where government is putting money on the line, provides for proper employment and training opportunities within those contracts.
Housing prices: as I said, the counter cyclical movement that we have in the Northern Territory compared to the southern states has moved steadily over the last couple of years and I think will continue to move perhaps even more rapidly over the next 12 months. The Real Estate Institute figures year on year in Darwin show that Darwin house prices rose 23.8% in the June quarter 2004 compared to the movement of the June quarter 2003. It should be remembered that this was in a climate in which national house prices were going ahead in an unrealistic and overheated housing market.
Whilst the Darwin rise has been steadier than what we have seen interstate, it has been significant. It is a steadier rise and probably far more sustainable into the future in the sense that I do not think that we will overcook and then fall back.
Unit prices in Darwin also increased year on year, with a 15.5% increase over the previous June quarter. The median house price now in Darwin stands at $255 000 and the median unit price is now $190 000. That again reaffirms the decisions this government took in lifting the threshold for first home owners before stamp duty cuts in. We did that in advance of a rising housing market so that the benefits to first home owners are pretty strong.
Across the Territory, there have been increases - with the exception of Tennant Creek and there are individual factors there because it is a small sample size - but our rate of growth has been much steadier and probably more manageable in those terms than interstate where we have seen quite ridiculous house movement prices. People who watch reality shows like Auction Squad can see some quite absurd prices in and around Sydney. BIS Shrapnel predicts that Territory house prices will continue to grow steadily over the period to 2007. That growth is expected to be around 21.6%, which would make the average price for a house in Darwin roughly $298 000 and, that, at a time, as I said, when the rest of Australia is starting to soften.
There is a further indicator of the health of the housing market and that is vacancy rates. Vacancy rates in part determine rental prices, but they certainly determine development of new and upgraded units and when that development will take place. Palmerston’s vacancy rate is down to 3.7% and when you get down that low, you are actually getting units rented that, in a more steady market, would not be making the line. That is a very low vacancy rate for Palmerston. Alice Springs is at about 5%; Darwin is 5.5%, and is Katherine 5.2%. Sue Shearer and David Loy from the Real Estate Institute of the Northern Territory had a meeting with me last week and we were discussing these figures that they had bought with them. Those vacancy rates now are low enough to generate and trigger new unit development and housing market demand across those centres. Of course, that will mean further construction activity and more jobs for Territorians.
The issue that becomes important in this climate is the whole question, where I started, of home affordability. Probably the best indicator of that are the figures published quarterly called the Housing Affordability Indicator. Each state and territory is given an indicator showing those levels of affordability. It is worked out by taking the mean weekly earnings, dividing it by the mean weekly loan repayments and, on those figures, we have the highest affordability of the nation; over 52 compared with New South Wales, 28; Tasmania, 38; and Queensland, 32. We are considerably ahead of our interstate counterparts in terms of that affordability. However, in a rising house market, our indicator, of course, is going to drop. As prices stabilise or drop interstate, their affordability will come up.
The indicator is already down a little from what it was showing that home affordability has contracted that little bit, but I am pleased to say that the take up of the Minister for Community Development’s new HomeNorth proposals announced last month have been pretty staggering. Where that really manifested itself was in the show circuit. I happened to pop past the stand and speak to the people at each of the shows. I did not get to Alice this year, but each of the others I did. They were very happy and optimistic people working those stands because they had a steady stream of people taking the application forms, discussing what was required, what they needed to put up in order to advance their application and, in some cases, taking completed applications on the spot there and then. I thought that really was a measure of just how successful the new HomeNorth proposals have been.
Madam Speaker, it is always going to be a central issue for government, particularly with our challenges of rural and remote communities in the mix as well. The whole question of housing goes to those fundamental questions of a stable and settled Territory, and being able to provide housing of a quality that people are happy with will go a long way to further stabilising the population of the Northern Territory, particularly retention factors in and around rural and remote areas.
I thank the minister for his statement. The goals show a clear way forward over the next six years. As ministers of this government, we will all be keeping our eye one it and assisting the minister wherever possible to make sure that these goals are met.
Dr LIM (Greatorex): Madam Speaker, reading through the statement, I thought the minister made quite a number of motherhood statements. In general, it is a positive statement about housing in the Territory, and how this government proposes to continue the good work that has been done over many decades under the previous governments, federal and Territory.
Mr Kiely: It is not motherhood on the ground.
Dr LIM: I hear the empty vessels across the Chamber rattling already before they even hear what I have to say.
Mr Kiely: Yes, you were a lazy and indifferent minister.
Dr LIM: It is interesting that, over the years, especially of recent years with Housing 2003, which obviously compared last year, but had no other program to replace it until late this year with the introduction of Home Territory 2010. Nobody can disagree that Housing 2003 was a very good project which brought a lot of good public housing to Territorians. It created many, many …
Mr Ah Kit: You were an incompetent minister.
Dr LIM: It created many and ...
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Dr LIM: … and very much wanted seniors villages, particularly in the Top End, and I was glad to see that this government agreed to build a small one in Alice Springs last year. These seniors villages have been much sought after by many pensioners in the Territory. The ones I have visited up here - Tambling Terrace, Leanyer Terrace and all those places - are very well set out, and lovely complexes …
Members interjecting.
Dr LIM: … with a secure environment that our senior Territorians all wanted to have. I hear the constant interjections across the Chamber, and it would be interesting to note that, in fact, the member for Wanguri was the one who stood very hard and fast, and fought very hard to prevent the Leanyer Village from being constructed. Right through the whole election campaign three or four years ago, he vehemently fought against it, and mislead the residents in that area. Today, the complex has been there for well over 12 months. It has demonstrated to the neighbourhood that it is a fantastic facility, and now this government has seen the light and will now continue new projects along the same line.
What - well, puzzles is not the right word, because the minister obviously did his foreword in a very political way - the member for Katherine read it out earlier, and I think it is worth reading out once more. Halfway through the foreword, the minister said:
This is an indictment of the minister, when he accuses the department, his own staff, of not maintaining the housing stock in the Territory for that many decades. It is an indictment.
When I was the Minister for Housing, I recall that I visited a house in the northern suburbs and, in fact, assisted, for a short while, with the start of the painting program. Yes, as part of the program we provided paint for people who wanted to do their own work. It is not because we would not paint the house for them but, because, if they were prepared to do it, they could actually get paint to do their own housing at an earlier stage. The houses were all geared to be refurbished, repaired and painted. If somebody was prepared to do it themselves, they got the paint and they could do their house painting earlier than if they waited for the government system to come to their turn. That was the system.
Houses were being repaired, were being painted. Remember the houses that were damaged by tenants? Millions upon millions of dollars was spent by Territory Housing over the years – including the last three years of this government – to repair houses damaged by the tenants. Tenants had to be evicted by Territory Housing so that those houses could be rescued. This is an expensive exercise which will continue to happen.
I believe the minister owes his department a very strong apology for writing comments such as that. The staff of Territory Housing work enormously hard, long hours sometimes, well beyond the call of duty, to ensure that their tenants are well cared for. For the government, in the words of the minister, to say, ‘You guys have done pretty badly, you have really ignored your tenants’, is a real insult. The minister will one day incur the wrath of his staff.
We all know what housing is like. As a general practitioner, in my previous profession, I used to visit many patients living in Territory Housing homes. I know what they looked like, the conditions that they lived in. It is something that is a two-way thing - the government provides facilities and as much assistance as they can …
Ms Lawrie: No, you did not, you did not do anything.
Dr LIM: … and the householder themselves need to also respond by putting some effort into it …
Ms Lawrie: Programs were not funded.
Dr LIM: The member for Karama continues to rattle on and I still cannot hear what she says. As I said previously she sounds like a cat, and she continues to sound like a cat.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Ms Lawrie: Programs were not funded.
Dr LIM: It is about time she stopped, because it does not help one bit at all.
Ms Lawrie: No funding against the repair program.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Karama!
Ms Lawrie: He said he could not hear.
Madam SPEAKER: You are being provocative.
Dr LIM: The minister then went on to talk about data from the national housing survey and housing affordability. He grouped people into four lots: indigenous Territorians, lone people, single people with dependent children, and couples with dependent children. That means just about 80% to 85% of all Territorians. The only people he has not included in this are the double income, no kids category. When you talk about people requiring housing, obviously, in a jurisdiction such as ours, barely 50 years old, you have to understand that our housing stock is going to be definitely limited, and that people coming to live in the Territory would naturally, first of all, access government housing before they embark on purchasing their own. Therefore, you would anticipate that the public housing sector in the Territory would be higher.
The member for Katherine spoke earlier about the difficulty of maintaining homes, particularly where they are being occupied by Territorians who have come from the bush. It is a problem; we all know it and we see it every day. There is no denying that, sometimes, urban homes designed for four to six, maybe even seven people, are overcrowded with visiting relatives from the bush. In your own homes, you would not have 10 to 15 people living there. There has to be a system provided by government to protect the tenants of those homes. I remember in the last few months of my ministry we started to place on the front doors of homes rented to our bush indigenous people the names of people who were entitled to be in those homes.
That helped a lot because the tenant could show it to their relatives and say, ‘This is an official paper from Territory Housing that says these people whose names are on this list are the ones who are entitled to this home. Those names that are not on the list are not entitled to be here’. It helped because as we all know with indigenous relationships, there are family pressures, a sense of obligation and it allows the tenant to have an official document to support their request to their relatives not to misbehave, and to abide by the rules that are there. It assists and I see that the government has now improved on that basis by erecting signs, I believe, in homes to show people how to maintain and how to care for the homes. That is a good idea.
I also recall a program that was in existence during our term in government. We had an urban living program funded through ATSIC …
Ms Lawrie: Federal funding.
Dr LIM: … through the Northern Territory government, in combination …
Ms Lawrie: Axed.
Ms Carter: No, it is still going.
Dr LIM: Whenever a bush family came to town to live they could go and learn how to deal with a modern home.
Ms Lawrie: No.
Ms Carter: It is. I went to a thing recently.
Dr LIM: I pick up the interjection from the member for Port Darwin. That is a problem with the members opposite. They have some concept in their heads and they are not prepared to open up and see the value that Territory Housing has contributed to the wellbeing of all Territorians, urban as well as bush people.
The urban living program is indeed, was indeed, a very good program, and as the member for Port Darwin says has continued. It brought families in from the bush and showed them how to use a stove. I heard stories about people putting firewood inside the oven to cook with. I can understand that. My mother grew up using an open charcoal fire and when dad bought our first gas ring using a gas bottle into the home, she was terrified to use it because each time she tried to light the gas it would explode in her face. You have to learn how to use, what I would say is, modern technology. If you do not teach them, how do you expect them to care for their homes? Cleaning a house: how do you show somebody that a house needs to be cleaned? I believe continuing to promote the urban living program will ensure that people who are not used to a modern home can have the necessary skill to do so. I believe that is also important.
When the minister spoke about - I cannot remember what page it was now - but he spoke about having no private market in the bush. I quote his words: ‘However, in the bush there is no private market and therefore a complete dependency on community housing, or government employee housing as the only housing choice.’ I find it remarkable that a minister who claims to be the first indigenous Minister of Housing, who has lived out bush before, growing up in camps and all that, would have realised - and he used to work at the Northern Land Council, I understand – that the Lands Right Act, and the alienability of land out bush where Aboriginal ownership is determined, people cannot buy land.
You tell me, a group of people in the Northern Territory who own 51% of the land mass of the Territory - they own it. None of us can touch that land. That land is owned by a group of people and this group of people have 51% of the land mass. The whole of the Territory is 1.3m km2 so 51% is something like 700 000 km2 and they cannot buy the land or build a house and say, ‘This is my property’. They cannot do that. There is some mismatch there somewhere and somehow you, as government, need to progress this so that people who own all that land can have some financial benefit from that property. If I owned 51% of the Northern Territory, my God, imagine what I could do with it. You would be doing the right thing. You would be using the land to ensure that fair welfare is shared across the Territory. You should be using that not for political gain, but to ensure that people get a fair share of the resources of that land in a fair and equitable way.
The minister spoke about average housing prices and the affordability of homes to first home buyers. In the Top End, I see all this land available for Darwin residents and potential investors. In Alice Springs, we have been so hamstrung with land shortage that it is now beyond a joke.
Mr Vatskalis interjecting.
Dr LIM: The member for Casuarina interjects. He was the one who got up in Estimates last year, you will all recall, and said land will be released in Alice Springs early 2004. We are into late 2004 now, late 2004. The member for Stuart said: ‘I will put my house on the market if no land becomes available for sale by January 2004’.
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Government members!
Dr LIM: These are the people who make promises and end up breaking them. At the moment, there is still no land available. Buy me a residential block of land in Alice Springs for $100 000! That is the problem. We need to get land out. Darwin has lots of it. We do not have any in Alice Springs. This has been the cry by the real estate industry, by first home buyers in Alice Springs, by people who want to get into their own homes.
I come to HomeNorth and the scheme that the minister announced so loudly and proudly a few months ago. At first blush, it looked terrific. It looked really terrific; money is going to be made available by government so people on higher incomes can actually get into the scheme and they can reach a higher level of loans to buy the houses they want.
Over the last few weeks, I have received complaints in my office in Alice Springs. People have gone to TIO to be financially assessed as to whether they can; people who are earning up to $1100 a week have suddenly been knocked back. By the time they have their balance sheet worked out, they are told: ‘Sorry, you are buying a car on hire purchase. You do not have enough disposal income to buy a house’, or: ‘We can lend you up to $50 000’. What can anyone in Alice Springs buy with a $50 000 loan? You are just whistling in the wind. That is the problem. At first blush it looked terrific, and I congratulated the government for the Home North scheme, but it is all smoke and mirrors.
It is time this government looked at it again. The Treasurer needs to look at it closely. There are major issues, Madam Speaker. You are nodding your head. Obviously you have constituents going to your office complaining about the same issue. If members opposite have not heard it, then they have turned a deaf ear to their constituents. That is the problem. There are issues with HomeNorth. Minister, check it out, find out for yourself.
As regards training, house building trainees are something that we need desperately. The fact that the Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs has been so successful at it has been a great thing. However, this is, again, a racial thing, unfortunately, and there is no other way to escape it. Unless you are an Aboriginal person, you cannot be on a CDEP program. It is true that under the CDEP program, the Tangentyere Council could actually put these apprentices into building apprenticeships and traineeships. If you are a whitefella, sorry mate, you cannot have it.
I do not deny that Tangentyere Council is doing it very well, and good luck to them. I hope they keep doing it for the next few years. Here is the one opportunity where Aboriginal people can grasp these traineeships with both hands, get themselves skilled and become, in fact, the next middle class of the Territory. They can do that. I see many people now doing it in Alice Springs - Aboriginal people working in skilled jobs. That is the best thing they can do. The best welfare program we can have in the Territory is an employment program, people getting jobs, working gainfully; getting employed to do the things that we all do every day when we wake up in the morning. If we can do that, they will then have the income to be able to purchase their own homes, and if you can get the inalienability out of the Land Rights Act, you will truly see these people come to the fore, and I hope they do that.
Debate suspended.
Continued from earlier this day.
Mr Acting DEPUTY SPEAKER: We are returning to our ministerial statement on housing.
Ms LAWRIE (Karama): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise this afternoon to congratulate the Minister for Housing on what are ground-breaking reforms of housing policy in the Territory, reforms that I believe will make a meaningful difference to the quality of people’s lives in our beloved Territory.
Home Territory 2010 sets the platform and the foundations to move the Territory ahead. It radically changes what has been the emphasis of housing policy in the Territory in the past, which was an emphasis on bricks and mortar, to one that provides an emphasis on people; people who need the shelter that the Territory government provides through significant funding.
It has been a body of work that I know the department and members of government have worked solidly on for some three years. The member for Greatorex made some flippant remarks about Housing 2003 which finished last year and asked why it has it taken so long. That demonstrates the shallowness of his ability to understand that if you are going to undertake significant reforms in any policy area, you cannot do it lightly. It is a significant body of work that has been done by departmental staff and members of government to produce what we see in the Chamber today. These are massive reforms to the whole emphasis of housing in the Territory.
There are in excess of 600 public housing properties in my electorate of Karama so it is an area that I have, by need to represent my constituency, to get across. When I was elected I realised very quickly that the CLP housing policy was one that was geared to evict any problem tenants. They neglected the housing stock. It was significantly run down. Residences in Karama and Malak were 20 years of age and I can say, through experience, you were flat out getting anything done. There were bathrooms that were cracked, water leaking, hot water services broken, and inadequate fencing. You could not get a driveway, for love nor money. There were no sheds. I inquired at one stage with Housing about the number of sheds available through the annual program, Territory-wide. The answer was six. With 6900 Territory Housing properties, you can do your own figures to work out how likely you were to be one of the lucky six to get a shed. Basically, you were whistling Dixie if you wanted to get any improvements done to your Territory Housing home.
That made a significant impact on families who were trying to make ends meet, trying to get ahead with their lives. We had scenarios of toddlers playing in the mud of driveways, because Territory Housing was simply not funded to provide driveways. We had parents worried about children getting out on to roads because, again, there was no funding for adequate fencing.
We had elderly couples who were struggling with places falling down around them, inadequate kitchens, bathrooms, tiles that were chipped or broken. The houses, the units, were in a significant state of disrepair, and as bad as I knew Karama and Malak public housing assets were, I understood Alice Springs was worse, and you are flat out even getting a house in the remote parts of the Territory. Maningrida was something like 200 houses short of need. That was the state of housing in the Territory that this government inherited.
We have not been idle in three years. We have been working up policy to radically reform and change that so that we can never revisit that state of neglect. Funding has been put in consecutive budgets to increase the Housing budget. Looking at the 1999-2000 Housing budget – a cursory glance at that – you will see $60m disappeared from that Housing budget. I felt sorry for the ministers for Housing under CLP regime, they were hamstrung because the funding was not there to support the significant need that we had in terms of housing costs in the Territory.
Home Territory 2010 is delivering a policy framework …
Ms Carter: Make sure it is not going to be like building the hospice, never to be seen.
Ms LAWRIE: I pick up on the interjection from the member for Port Darwin. Member for Port Darwin, you may not have an interest in housing, but many people do. If you want to talk about the hospice, I am happy to debate that with you anytime. We are funding it. Your government never did. You could not even get the commitment out of the CLP to do it.
Ms Carter: You are all talk and no action, you guys. Where is the hospice?
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: I remind members about the protocol of talking across the Chamber, thank you.
Ms LAWRIE: 2010 provides the housing focus that this government is putting in place to introduce the basic needs of housing tenants. They need safe, secure and affordable housing, and Home Territory 2010 rates up there amongst the best housing policy in Australia, and I do not say that lightly. I have spent years researching housing policy throughout Australia, recognising the need to radically reform our housing policy here in the Territory.
I congratulate the minister for the energy and the passion he has brought to reforming housing. In particular, I know he has done significant work in obtaining significant millions of additional dollars out of the Commonwealth to address the housing shortfall in our remote regional areas, which was of critical need. This does impact on urban constituencies like Karama and Malak, because we had many people coming in from the bush, simply because the housing was not there for them in the bush, and being placed in housing in urban constituencies. That trend is now significantly changing.
We have also had, in the time that I have been the member for Karama, housing policy really come to the modern norm and modern practice of about a 20% density of public housing as being the top upper limit of what you want to have in housing densities. In context, in 2001, the public housing densities in Karama and Malak were up around the 38%, so almost double what is internationally recognised as your upper limits of the housing density. I acknowledge the same situation existed in Palmerston and, to an extent they face similar issues as Karama and Malak because of the public housing densities in those areas.
What we have seen in the past three years is a proactive policy change within Housing, whereby they are reducing those densities. That is having an appreciable difference in each street and each court, where you see a reduction in public housing. How do they reduce public housing densities? By making homes affordable for the public housing tenants to then purchase. HomeNorth has been a fantastic watershed as a loans scheme to provide people with the 2% deposit, as opposed to 5%. It makes it affordable for people to increase ability to purchase. The scheme has been fantastic. I know residents in my area have been taking up that scheme. They love the $1500 interest-free loan for whitegoods and their service fees, and the ability to make homes affordable if they are low or middle income earners. This, coupled with decreasing public housing densities, is starting to reform and reshape the actual look and social fabric of some of our suburbs where we have had significant housing densities in the past.
This vision to grow and expand affordable housing in the Territory will be the quiet achiever of this government in this term of government. People will not start to see the benefits for some years now. I have started to see the benefits in my electorate because we did have high densities, but the spread of the emphasis on home affordability throughout the Territory will be one of the most significant achievements of government in terms of the social fabric of our society.
Assisting these low to moderate income earners into home ownership was very necessary. We all know that the major financial institutions cover the mortgage needs of the middle to higher income earners but, if you are in the low to middle bracket, you did not have a hope of getting in; you were deemed to be a financial risk for them.
Improving the way we create business partnerships has been important. I note the significant work the department and the minister has done working with the indigenous housing authority, IHANT, in bedding down Commonwealth agreements which have brought millions of dollars of additional housing funding into the Territory from the Commonwealth, helping us to create a strategic approach to meeting housing needs of indigenous Territorians, both in the urban and remote rural setting.
To look at the issues, we have had to pretty well build up from scratch in many areas. Data was often insufficient or completely lacking. Therefore, in looking at asset maintenance, where assets occur, the identified 6900 urban Territory households struggling to meet their requirements for daily living, there has been a massive amount of work done within the department to build up the data they need to identify where funding should be spent, and to go to Canberra and put in the big fight for Commonwealth/state housing agreement for a better slice of that housing funding pie.
I recognise that it has been a major change in housing policy to say, ‘Let us look at people rather than just the bricks and mortar’. As we all know, each family’s circumstance, and each adult person’s living circumstance, is slightly different. The needs of one person with a disability differ from the needs of another person with a disability. Therefore, if we can create housing policy that provides a fair and equitable framework for these differences to be managed, you are saying to people, ‘We value you as a person with your individual needs’.
It is now available through this change in housing policy for people to go in and argue their own circumstances, and where they fit within that policy. That will make an improvement in people’s confidence and their awareness of being able to manage their lives and their life circumstances. Shelter is such a fundamental in life, and housing availability affects whether you are moving ahead with your life or whether, in fact, you are struggling with your life. There is nothing worse than homelessness. Many of us who went through Cyclone Tracy understand the issue of homelessness. We understand just what it does to your whole-of-life circumstances. If you can bed down housing policy that reduces the risk and the incidence of homelessness, you are making fundamental improvements to people’s lives.
I note that we are spending in the vicinity of about $48m to undertake what this policy says is urban renewal. Urban renewal provides the structural improvement to the assets that this government has made a huge commitment to. It is no small amount of money, as we know. The Territory budget has enormous needs on it, whether you look at health or education. I believe that housing, in the past, has missed out being stacked up against those other needs, and under-funded.
The urban renewal funding means that the housing stock that has been so terribly run down is going to be improved over the next few years. We are already starting to see homes in our suburbs being renovated. We have people quoted within the minister’s publication. I know they are not constitutes in mine, but certainly the elderly couple who talk about the house they lived in for 20-odd years, are delighted with the renovation that they had. I will quote from Home Territory 2010 publication:
As politicians we tend to all live in fairly reasonable homes. We do not have to rely on the whim of someone else in terms of the quality of our housing. It is certainly a significant difference to people’s lives to walk into a place that has drive way, a carport, a new kitchen, bathroom, painting, and tiling. That cannot be underestimated in terms of the turnaround it provides families and how they feel about their lives and their ability to step up to challenges in life.
I congratulate the minister and the department for going to enormous lengths to get in place the urban renewal program and the minister has gone into Cabinet and successfully won the fight for those millions of dollars that are needed to fund urban renewal through out the Territory.
The renal cluster village pilot is a fantastic initiative. Many of the constituents that I work with in Karama and Malak are renal patients who are dislocated from their communities. If we can achieve partnerships with Health, Aboriginal hostels and relevant community organisations to work with the renal community cluster and these pilots, that would be tremendous improvement to the social fabric of our suburbs. The past situation of just plonking people into these houses because they happen to be close to Royal Darwin Hospital where they happen to be given renal assistance, or they happen to close to the renal unit out at Nightcliff, and then leaving them pretty much on their own to fend for themselves, failed because it caused a breakdown in neighbourhood relationships. It is great to see strategies bedded into Home Territory 2010 to ensure that those circumstances are actually turned around and improved.
The quality landlord strategy bedded down into this policy is very much needed. There is a lot you can do if you are working in a strategic sense to look at quality neighbourhoods. Some of the things I have seen work in my constituency is working with NGOs such as Danila Dilba Social Wellbeing Service with problematic tenancies, and working with Anglicare or Amity in terms of their financial counselling with problematic tenancies. So families who struggle for a variety of reasons to behave in their tenancy rather than doing the quick fix solution of straight eviction and for many people this was a revolving door - 20-odd tenancies over some years which is an absolute indictment on a failure of a system - you are now bedding down tenancies and managing them through the able and qualified professional experience and expertise of the non-government sector.
Obviously critical to this is the local council, legal aid services, the Anti-Discrimination Commission, and the police. It is about saying what services exists, what services are appropriate, doing the appropriate referrals and tying those referrals to tenancy. I know the tenancy managers work very hard in managing the various tenancies but I encourage them to pursue this quality landlord strategy because it really will make for a reduction, I believe, in disturbances within the suburbs and better relationships between neighbours.
The Home Territory 2010 policy sets a framework for identifying the needs of people and meeting those needs within the issue of shelter which is a fundamental issue to people lives. We have a long way to go. We see in this statement significant unmet need in terms of housing needed, funding required for housing; I believe the Commonwealth has a lot further to go. We know they are still taking the Commonwealth/State Housing funding carve-up from census statistics that underestimate our population and our unmet need. I know the minister has a good rapport with his federal counterpart and has, through persistent requests, negotiations, and submissions, and a strong leadership role at the ministerial council, been able to secure additional Commonwealth funding above what they otherwise would have given us. I congratulate the minister for his achievements on federal funding.
I urge members opposite to talk to their colleagues about improving funding for housing from the Commonwealth. As a territory, we should be working with them and they should be able to justify their funding levels by recognising there are more current census statistics that should be looked at than the ones on which they currently rely.
Home Territory 2010 will deliver into the end of this decade fairer, more affordable housing for Territorians. Importantly, for many families living in the housing, it will be safer and more secure. There are pathways bedded within this policy framework to move people through their lifestyle changes, as the minister said, from their entry into public housing, one which is often an entry based on disadvantage and need, to improving their life circumstances, ultimately, to home affordability and purchase of that Territory Housing property.
I commend the minister for his vision and his passion to reform housing in the Territory. I commend the department. They know who they are, the officers who have worked closely through the three years to create this policy. They have done a fantastic job. Well done!
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, the member for Karama missed out the times when the CLP used to grab virgins and tie them to railway tracks as we put our little top hat on and twirled our evil moustaches and cackled insanely as we ran off to allow the train to run over the virgins.
We have a large level of public housing in the Northern Territory and it was a stock that was built up after the destruction that was wreaked on this town, largely in the Darwin area, as a result of Cyclone Tracy. As a consequence, we had, as the minister pointed out, about 11% to 12% public housing in the stock, which is about twice the national average.
What I would like to touch on is a very small fraction of what the minister had to say because I agree that we need to find new ways to deal with public housing in the Northern Territory. The minister has pointed out that it is going to take $850m to get that stock up to the standard that he would like. This is not a new problem. In fact, it has been raised by former Housing ministers as far back as Steve Hatton. I think $850m is a touch on the conservative side; it would be close to $1bn required. We will take the $850m standard.
The approach by this government is the social approach. They call this their social housing policy. What the government is advocating is to spend money on building houses in towns and remote communities of Central Australia, and this is done through a series of programs. The federal government has, as the member for Karama quite correctly pointed out, come to the party on this. However, there might be other ways in which we can approach the housing issue in the Northern Territory.
One of the problems of housing, especially for indigenous people in the Northern Territory, is that they are over-represented in the public housing statistics. What the minister does not point out with any detail, and it is an important point, is that most of the Aboriginal people to whom he refers live remotely, which means that they live in land trusts and the land law that applies to land trusts is quite different from the law that applies in our towns. That is a very interesting point because for that reason, Aboriginal people, believe it or not, cannot own their own homes in their own communities on their own traditional lands. As the minister said, and I quote:
If we are to believe that this is the correct methodology for building houses in our bush communities, let us reverse the argument and apply bush methodology to our towns and communities, such as Darwin, Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Katherine and the like. And what do we get? Well, if the government was to go through the old ATSIC roll and identify every Aboriginal person living in Darwin, and form something called the Darwin Land Council, and all of those properties were then invited to be converted to inalienable freehold rather than the normal freehold they have now, what would be the effect? I wonder if the minister would be happy to have his block of land - I think he lives in the Leanyer area - converted to inalienable freehold and become part of a land council which operates all of those blocks in Darwin? I would suggest that the minister would probably baulk at that, and with every good reason, because he understands the limitations that that particular title places on some homeowners.
I am not advocating this, but what I want the government to do is push a mental exercise upon members so that they consider this. Why is it that we would have a system of land law in this community which is different from home ownership in other communities? So, when you then have a government stuck with a situation where you have to build houses because people cannot actually build their own, because they are building it on a property that has some other interest in it, you are never going to be pushing people into a direction where home ownership is even attractive. One, because they just cannot own the homes, but, two, even if they choose to make those decisions and make their lives in their own communities, there is no way that they can step up to the plate.
The minister’s response to this is we will just build $850m-worth of homes, and we will have to go to the federal government for that. But the problem with that is that the federal government, and the minister well knows this, is not going to provide $850m for housing, and the Northern Territory government cannot even contemplate affording $850m for housing.
So here is a little mental exercise. Let us just make a small amendment to the Land Rights Act, and allow the Land Rights Act to change inasmuch as where it is possible, to buy a small patch, 800m2 of land in some communities. As I travel around communities, I see many people who have loans for cars. They are an asset which devalues in value, so the people who live in those communities are quite capable of getting loans. When I travel into some communities, I see some homes which are government stock, which are being very well looked after. They often have grass around them. If they do not have grass, you will see the dirt in front of the house is neatly raked into patterns. There are no piles of rubbish and those sorts of things, and more and more of these houses are starting to appear in communities.
The minister says we would like to get more private investment and private markets into the Northern Territory. Why can’t we look at these communities and see if we can find ways of creating or tapping into financial resources outside the areas of government? Let us say it is not even the purchase of the land itself, maybe it is the lease on the land which could be formed. So what happens is that you declare a small area inside a community boundary, you can have an allotment, maybe quarter acre blocks, and on that quarter acre block you are able to take out a lease, on which the lease itself becomes a valuable, tradeable commodity. That lease means that you can raise capital against it by going into a bank and raising a loan and that loan can be repaid at the normal rate.
Now, that lease is probably not going to be worth a great deal of money in itself, but once there is a house on it, and there is 90 years to run on a lease like that, that house then becomes something of value in the community itself. I wonder if an Aboriginal person, or otherwise, who owns a house on a leased property of which they have a 99 year lease, would be more inclined to look after that property, especially if they have a loan, than a person who simply has a house given to them and told: ‘Go for it, move in!’?
I believe that you would find that these houses would be better looked after. It has been my experience that, where I have seen loans taken out for cars by Aboriginal people in these communities, they become jealous guardians of that particular piece of property because they know that they have to repay those loans, and that is over the life of the vehicle. However, the difference between a car and a house is that a house is an appreciating asset.
If you go into a place like Hermannsburg at the moment, where there are many people who are capable of raising the funds that are necessary to purchase their own home - and let us say five people in the community of Hermannsburg go to the trouble of raising that capital, getting builders in, building the house, what would the effective value be on the properties that surrounded those particular houses? I would argue that, like in any area where you have increasing development, property values go up. Wouldn’t that be a remarkable situation, where you had people who lived on land trusts being able to raise capital to build their own homes, to then look after those own homes and increase the value of that property?
The extraordinary thing is that, if they actually built the house next door and had a rental property, they would start becoming taxpayers because they would have to pay things like capital gains tax like the rest of us do. They would start to fall into an economic system which is recognised universally, effectively, throughout the rest of the world. They become less isolated and more responsible for their property.
And guess what else? Here is a remarkable idea! The burden on government becomes less, so there will not be a requirement for the minister to go to Canberra and delve into the Treasurer’s budget and say: ‘I need to extract $850m out of your budgets collectively’. There will be increased economic vitality based on the fact that these houses still have to be built. All of a sudden, the training that we insist on doing in these communities will start to find an environment in which they matter, because the maintenance of these houses would have to go to local people who live in them and who live around them. All of a sudden, you could start to use this system of freeing up - even just within a small town boundary - people to be able to start to generate a little wealth.
One other thing that I would like to see happen in communities is that the government pursues what they are talking about in this Moving the Territory Ahead document and they do something else. Rather than just simply assisting indigenous people and showing them how to use a nail gun, how to put up a wall and those sorts of things - and they are truly useful - what about some business training? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if somebody living in Willowra, for argument’s sake, was able to run a business sufficiently well that they could pick up the local contract for painting the houses there? They would be able to contract, through the normal tender process, I would dare say, a lot cheaper than bringing painters in from Alice Springs. They could have a bit of business training. It would not take a great deal of work for that person to then find themselves wealthy enough to buy a paintbrush, rollers and some tins of paint, and they could actually start to pick up a few contracts around the community of Willowra. Once they started getting better at that, they could start vying for contracts elsewhere - Yuelamu perhaps, or Yuendumu or Ti Tree. In that method, you could actually be encouraging the growth of businesses.
I went through this exercise not so long ago with an Aboriginal person. This person travelled with me and he started asking questions about how to set up businesses and those sorts of things. The response was quite remarkable. I ended up driving him down Elders Street in Alice Springs and started telling him what happened in Elders Street and how businesses worked with money, and how it generated wealth, and that that guy over there was a plumber and that guy was an engineer. I place my thanks on the record to Ross Engineering for allowing me to take this chap into the workshop so he could see what happened in there. To Neil and Julie Ross, many thanks. This guy started to get an idea and he said: ‘Some of this stuff I can do. It is not particularly technical’. However, he did not have the business training.
It is all right to say Aboriginal people can pick up the jobs and the local council can employ them. Why don’t we take the extra step and let them employ themselves and pick up contracts from the councils, and encourage them to do so? The only down side for this poor fellow was when I explained how income tax worked, he was not too happy about that, he thought that was a bit of a rip off, and I can well understand why he felt that way because there is no shortage of business people who feel that way.
I have seen donkeys in the houses at Willowra because their housing stock has been built but no responsibility has been placed on the individual people who live in those houses to truly look after them. You can say to some of those people that they have a way of owning their own little patch of dirt over which they have complete control as individual people. Then you encourage those people through their own income sources to be able to build their own homes or look after their own homes that they have purchased. Imagine selling the existing housing stock? You ask yourself how well that they will look after them. Most people will look after them extremely well, and some people won’t, and that is going to be reflective of the rest of society because there are some people in Darwin and Alice Springs who do not look after their homes particularly well, but most people look after them extremely well.
What you would try to achieve by going down this path is stepping away from this welfare approach of governing people’s lives for them and actually giving them some governance over their own lives. To do that you have to create, in this case, a system of land law which would allow it. If I go to Aboriginal communities today, all too often I do not see people who are under-serviced; I see people who could not be more over-serviced. Their medical is looked after, schooling is laid on, there is a police station in nearly every community, with a few exceptions, road funding is looked after, they get an income every week or so, their overheads are very low and yet the results are very poor.
Why are those results poor? Because there is actually no ownership of anything. There is no ownership of your own home, there is no ownership of the governance issues in your own community - particularly those communities which do not have their own local government authority - there is no ownership of the community itself, and then there becomes disinterest.
If people own their own homes, and were capable of owning their homes in their own communities, I think that what the minister would find, and I am sure he would agree with me on this, is that the indigenous over-representation rates that he currently complains of would actually start to drift away. I am not talking about radical changes to the Land Rights Act. I am not talking about selling huge swathes of land. I am not even talking about selling the land. I am talking about selling leases in small patches around communities. That would be a starting point. I would bet London to a brick that at first it would be very slow, and then as time progressed and other people saw a handful of people succeeding in these communities, the idea would start to catch on.
I have seen over recent times banks prepared to make loans to Aboriginal people to buy cars, and over recent times, especially in some of the communities close to Alice Springs, the cars have been getting better and better. Why? Because the banks are becoming braver in lending money for cars. Why? Because Aboriginal people are rising to the plate in terms of their personal responsibility to those banks and their personal responsibility to pay that money back. What is the effect of that? When I see certain people driving around in very flash cars that they own and they pay for them themselves, the effect of that is a sense of pride. And those cars that I see which are privately owned in these communities are spotlessly clean, very well looked after and funded privately.
If there was a housing equivalent of that, it would take such a burden off the taxpayer, both Territory and federally. Enormous gains could be achieved, but it would take a small amount of bravery on the part of both the federal government and the land councils and any other participant to take that little step to find a way to make housing ownership possible in some of these remote communities.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I welcome the statement by the minister on this very important issue. I welcome the comments by the member for Macdonnell, some of which I might highlight in my own speech.
I come from, I would say, a fairly affluent area of the Northern Territory where the cost of housing is now becoming quite high. Recently, a block of land not far from my place in Howard Springs sold for $180 000. It is a five-acre block with absolutely nothing on it except the bush and electricity passing by. That is a fairly outstanding cost just to buy a block of land these days. When you consider how much it costs to put a house on there, obviously people who can afford to do that would have a fairly high income.
My concerns are more about those people who are disadvantaged, who generally are the ones who cannot buy their own house. There is no doubt that Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory are the most disadvantaged when it comes to housing. On a visit to Port Keats last year, it was shown that 90 houses were needed just to catch up with demand. There are more houses required just to cope with the annual increase of nearly 100 people. Sadly, there were not enough funds given this year; I think there were only enough funds for four or five houses. You can see that at that rate of population growth, places like Port Keats will never catch up. I believe the situation in many other communities is not much different. There needs to be ways to increase the availability of houses for Aboriginal people.
I issued a media release when the HomeNorth scheme was announced by the minister in June asking why the HomeNorth scheme could not be used by Aboriginal people as a means for them to purchase their own houses. I looked through today’s statement, and I cannot see any mention of the possible use of this scheme for Aboriginal people living on their land. Why can’t we work out ways that would allow Aboriginal people to have a bit of ownership, a bit of pride, even a choice in the type of housing they would like? It may not only be issues of land tenure; perhaps we need some form of bank, a government bank or government-backed bank, which will allow Aboriginal people to get a loan, to put a house on a block of land as well. Do you need to sit down with the traditional owners and work through the issues of land ownership? The member for Macdonnell mentioned leases of 99 years.
I would be interested to know if the government has looked at the issue of land ownership in light of the possibility of Aboriginal people being able to purchase their own house on that land. If there are difficulties, we should not stop there; we should try to work around the problem, even if we were able to set up a pilot program on one community. I am not saying this would apply to every community. There might be difficulties, but perhaps we can come to an agreement on one community and see whether such a program would be successful.
For Aboriginal people, is their only option renting a house from the local building association when their name eventually comes up on the waiting list? The HomeNorth scheme has potential to change this. I understand there may be problems with the issues of land ownership, as I just said, but, surely, after all these years, we can come up with a solution to this issue. We need some innovative ideas in making HomeNorth work for those people who need it most. Anyone who has been out to remote communities would know the sad state many houses are in. You can bet these houses are probably rented and overcrowded. Could it be possible that if people owned their own house, we might find there is less chance of these houses falling to disrepair? That is also a comment the member for Macdonnell made. Why? If you have more houses, there is less overcrowding. Naturally, if you have more houses, that is what is going to occur; there will be fewer people in houses. In fact, we were told at Port Keats there are quite a number of houses with 15 or 16 people in them. There is no way that house could stand up to that sort of population without being damaged.
Second, ownership means a lot more pride in their residence. Of course, if someone does damage the house, they know they will have to fix it themselves. There are other spin-offs, especially in the building industry. If more people have access to cheaper loans, then more houses will be built, and that will be a boost to the housing industry, and we know that building houses creates jobs. If these houses are being built on Aboriginal communities, does not that open the way up for more local employment?
Public housing is important. If Aboriginal people are going to have some independence in their lives, give them a chance to pick and choose like other Australians so they too can enjoy the benefits of owning their own home. Minister, I quote two important paragraphs from your own speech which I believe underline what I have been saying:
I do hope that those words will come true, especially for Aboriginal communities.
Finally, an area which I believe needs more attention, especially in my rural area, the area of Litchfield Shire, is the construction of retirement villages. It is so sad at the present time to see a large emigration of people in their late 50s and early 60s leaving the Territory. Many of those people are going to Cairns, Atherton or the Gold Coast. We are losing people who have lived here for many years. We certainly need high quality retirement villages where people can get the same facilities they would get in other states, but would attract people to stay here longer.
Housing is not only about families and Aboriginal communities, it is about our retirees, it is about the older members of our community, and it is important that the government does work with private developers to come up with ways of encouraging this sort of development, otherwise, the way I see it, we will lose most of the people we have come to know as, you might say, pioneers from self-government, to other states, and that would be a sad loss. So I ask the government to give that some serious consideration, especially in the rural area, because there is a dire need there for rural retirement villages, so people can feel like they still live in the bush but do not have to leave the rural area to enjoy their retirement.
Mr BONSON (Millner): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise in support today of the minister’s Home Territory 2010 strategy. I have listened to everyone contribute, and interesting points have been made. I will address some of those near the end and, hopefully, some of those will be addressed as I go through my contribution to this debate.
As I was growing up my father, who was a fire brigade officer, often said that people need food, water and shelter and these are the most important things in people’s lives. People’s housing and needs are very important to their broader wellbeing. We talk about housing, and we have to have the ability to turn a house into a home, for young families, for seniors and individuals, and we have to assist that happening.
In this position now for nearly three years, you come in from the outside, you look at the government process, and you often think government can press a button and save the world. But as you learn and grow, you look at the actual statistics behind what we are dealing with here. Roughly, we are approaching, as a total budget in one year of the Northern Territory, just under $3bn.
In the minister’s statement, he made a very important comment about what we need to realise about housing. The Northern Territory needs $850m to meet the current housing and infrastructure needs of our remote communities. That is not even talking about the urban needs; we are just taking about the remote areas. It needs to be recognised there are two definite areas of concern: one in urban areas of cities like Darwin, Palmerston, and Alice Springs, and those out in the remote areas.
What we are talking about - and these figures come from the Northern Territory Department of Community Development, Sport and Cultural Affairs’ Community Information Asset System. One-third of the total budget of the Northern Territory is required to address these issues. This is on top of the fire brigade, police, education, health, etcetera. What has become apparent to me is that the Northern Territory has limited budget and needs to assess how best to maximise those resources to address issues facing Territorians. It cannot fix the problems, and we cannot hide behind that reality - we cannot fix the problem. However, what we can do is maximise the dollars we have to try to get the best return.
In these structures that we talk about to do with housing and turning houses into homes there a number of key players. Why are they key players? Because they have a responsibility. What I mean by that is the Northern Territory government, the Commonwealth government and the individuals themselves are the keys players, the key structures, in providing, in this context, not only housing for those people who need and require housing, but also for those individuals who have the ability to borrow money to obtain housing for themselves. Why do the Northern Territory government, Commonwealth government and individuals play a role? Because they have a responsibility to look after themselves.
As a community, we have collected together and formed structures such as the Northern Territory government and the Commonwealth government to address issues of housing, health, education, power, and water, etcetera, and those structures are there to provide, as best they can on a collective resource, the housing requirement that we need to go forward.
Looking at all the figures, the Northern Territory government, in my mind, cannot address all the issues to do with housing facing them in urban and remote areas. I will clarify those. The individuals in those remote and urban areas do not have the resources to address these problems. So, who does it leave? The third player, the Commonwealth government. It was talked about in this speech, and I will run through the Home Territory Strategy 2010. We talk about the resources that we get from the Commonwealth government. Other members have touched on it, and I have touched on this before when I have been talking about housing, health and education issues.
There are many families who have grown up in the suburb of Millner - including in the electorate of Millner - in Territory housing. Territory Housing has down a job for those families for many years, and that needs to be recognised. Former governments have faced that responsibility and said that they will deliver housing. What we are arguing about here is prioritising those resources and what we, as government, are saying is that we are investing a larger amount - not that we are better than former government. We are arguing that we have made a commitment to invest more resources into this issue. Again, we need to realise that that resource is limited.
In my electorate I have the indigenous communities of Bagot, Minmarara and Kulaluk. There is no doubt in my mind that these communities are floating around in no-man’s land at the moment. The reason is because there is no investment in these communities - and that word has been used. There are resources going into these communities, there no doubt about that, but there is not an investment to improve or to get outcomes or returns in these communities I have said this before in this House that there is less than a three inch fence with people on one side living in first world conditions. On the other side of this three inch fence are people who are living in third world conditions. Members in this House have travelled throughout the Northern Territory and to town camps around Alice Springs, Katherine, Tennant Creek and town living areas in Darwin and recognise this as a reality. I recognise this as a reality. I encourage all members of this House to say yes, the NT government can do certain things. It is up to the opposition and Independent members to ensure that that happens. It is up to the NT government to ensure that we maximise the resources that we have.
The reality is that what is happening in remote areas in terms of housing is a national disgrace. There is no way we can dodge that. In a first world country so rich as what we are in resources, with a population of 23m, with the land mass that we have, compared to what is happening in other countries, the living conditions of people in remote areas for a variety of different reasons - some of it is individual to those communities, some of it is based on the NT government, some of it is based on the Commonwealth government - if we are to ever change that in the Northern Territory we need to make that investment. And the reason is that 29% - as quoted in the minister’s statement - of people living in the Northern Territory are indigenous.
I know for a fact that there are probably three paid positions for indigenous people on the Bagot Community. There are roughly 55 CDEP workers who have been working on CDEP for 20 years. CDEP, for members who do not know, is around $400 to $450 on top-up a fortnight. Imagine that! And people throughout the Northern Territory are living on this resource. What that resource income is doing really is making people sustain their lifestyle which is to live free, walk and talk. But there is no investment into the future of getting a return.
I have often said in this House that if we look at the Northern Territory as a business, that for a lot of historical reasons - and forget about blame, I am not talking about the blame game - there is 29% of the population, and not all that 29% because a large portion of that 29% has historically contributed to the development for thousands of years, for the last 200 years in the Northern Territory, and I am not talking about that population; those people will survive and they will continue. But there is a large portion, because of the historical reasons to do with race relations in the Territory and the lack of resources and dispossession of land and all these issues we know - and I am not talking about a blame game again - are at the moment not contributing to what we think is mainstream community or the economy of the mainstream.
So what we have is a business being run. If you said to a business owner that out of that 29% of this certain part, this department of your business, 20% is not producing and you are losing money on that 20%. Would you invest in that 20% to get a return on that 20%? And the business owner would say of course I would. If in over the long term of the next hundred years in the Northern Territory, if I can invest in that 20% and get a 20% return improvement in my business, would I invest in it? And the answer is yes! That is what we are running. We are talking about investment in that area.
The NT government has a responsibility to maximise its resources. Limited resources, under $3bn in a budget per year, the $850m needed to fix housing problems ain’t going to come from the NT government. Contributions: you can maximise what we have. The Commonwealth government has to come in. We as a group, as a government, as members of the opposition and Independents, we really have to lobby people in the rest of Australia to say: ‘What is happening is a national shame’. In that respect is I went on a recent trip to Perth and there I met an indigenous person who was involved with the Red Cross. He said something very interesting to me. He said to me that there are NGOs like the Red Cross have done a fantastic job for many, many years, do hours and hours of work overseas and provide resources overseas. But they do not work within Australia. So we have to start saying to not only the Commonwealth, but also NGOs and similar organisations: ‘Wait there. We have issues here. We have issues of health and education and housing. We need to address those issues because it is an investment in the future of where we want to be’.
Long-term Millner families in urban areas have used Territory Housing. I congratulate the minister because he is investing in the future, and the opening paragraph of his Minister’s Message in the brochure really sums it up:
That summarises where I come from, where he comes from. I grew up in Rapid Creek and Millner. I was lucky; my parents both had professional jobs and their parents had professional jobs and we were able to buy our own house, but we grew up with the neighbourhood kids. I would not have known what Territory Housing was until I was about 20 years old; I just did not think of it. People lived and brought up their families in Territory Housing.
I have a newsletter here that is going to be distributed throughout Millner this week. It is about a sausage sizzle in Gulnare Street. It is a bit of a report. All the local residents turned up, and many of those people were Territory Housing people. What were the issues? People were happy with the $45m refurbishment program. Why? Because there were literally people sitting in Housing Commission houses for five or six years in the Wet Season with buckets in their lounge rooms.
Again, I am not interested in the blame game. The reality is if you are paying rent in private accommodation and there is a leak in your roof, you expect that to be fixed. Territory Housing has a responsibility to do that. People are having their rooves fixed and they are happy. There is paint peeling off walls - I went to a house that had not had any painting done in it for 17 years. There was paint peeling off the walls. They are happy to have their painting done.
Security screening: I visited a residence where a family had lived since 1964 and brought up their family of three kids. Territory Housing has put security screening on their windows, and they are happy. We are talking indigenous and non-indigenous people, people from all different types of ethnic backgrounds. There was a lady with three kids all under the age of six. She told me the security screening made her feel comfortable at night. She said her ex-partner felt safer knowing that his kids and his ex-wife were in that house and they were safe.
These are the things that the $45m program is doing. This is what the minister has been able to deliver. That $45m compared with $850m does not scratch the surface, but that is what we have, that is what we are delivering.
I agree with a lot of the members talking about the purchasing of their house. I purchased my house two years ago. I feel like Tarzan when I walk around in my house, I love it. I feel better.
A member: You look like Tarzan!
Mr BONSON: I wish I looked like Tarzan! What I am saying is that I am encouraging people to look at HomeNorth. I will give you an example: I went to a Territory Housing house where the tenants are paying full rent and have not had refurbishment for 10 years or so. They are paying full rent because their kids have grown up in that household and they all work. There are three of them still living there with their parents and they are paying full rent because they no longer qualify for a subsidy. I walked in and talked about HomeNorth to them. You should have seen their eyes light up. I calculated that for an extra $50 on what they are paying, they will own their own house.
We talk about capital gains; house prices in Millner are going through the roof at the moment. Millner is the sleeping giant of the northern suburbs. People have an opinion of Millner. There was a house sold on the corner of Francis and Mills Street, and it went for $180 000. It was incredible. If you checked out the house and the condition it was in, but because of the block and the area, people are happy to buy in. It is still very cheap compared with other suburbs, but prices are climbing and that is good to see.
The $45m that we are contributing to refurbishment is dealing with long-term maintenance issues: roof leaks, paint peeling, security screens, sheds and fencing. The reason we are addressing it is because it is our responsibility, but it has to be driven. And the minister is driving this. Everyone has a personal interest, and the minister’s personal interest, obviously, is the realisation that there are many people in those circumstances. If a person like Jack Ah Kit can go from Territory Housing to a minister of the Crown, there is hope for everyone to do anything in life. We should never underestimate that.
I want to talk about the positives of what we are doing. I will quote from the brochure of Home Territory 2010. It is from John Ah Kit MLA, Minister for Housing:
increasing the supply and range of affordable housing options across public rental, private rental and community housing in both urban and remote communities;
assisting low to moderate income earners into home ownership;
increasing the level of support for ‘special needs groups’ in our community through flexible service provision, working across sectors and improved service delivery;
improving the way we do our business through partnerships across public and private sectors, effective communication and improved long term strategy planning with industry; and
developing a pathway for our current and future tenants which supports clients in working towards sustainable, independent living.
That is the issue. In the structures that we make in our democracy in Australia, the Northern Territory government has certain responsibilities and the Commonwealth has certain responsibilities, but individuals have community responsibilities.
I often have a view of the Bill of Rights in America. I have not met anyone who has agreed with me yet, but my belief is that the Bill of Rights puts the question on the person: What is my individual right? What is my individual right against somebody else? Well, my belief is that the way our constitution is set up, and if you look at many of the High Court decisions, they talk about implied responsibilities. What are your community responsibilities? What is your responsibility to others in your neighbourhood? I believe we should be looking at getting people into private housing, purchased by them. For those who slip through the gaps, we need to provide suitable housing to bring up their families, and the reason we need their families to be brought up in a proper way is because they will contribute if we invest in them.
The remote area issues about housing, is a Commonwealth issue that we have to plan a strategy as a whole-of-parliament to deal with. This is a national disgrace. We need to aim at solving this problem. I look forward to working with everyone in parliament.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise to congratulate and support my colleague, the Minister for Housing, on his statement today. It is a very important statement which indicates to people in the Territory the directions and the vision of this government with regard to housing. Quite rightly, in his leaflet which he tabled today in parliament, he says:
We also know that housing, and the owners of a house, creates wealth for families, it creates security for the children, it provides stability for the family unit and, certainly, creates a unity in the community. The housing issue is a multi-faceted role. We have to address a number of issues identified today, not only by my colleague, the Minister for Housing, but also some of the other members, including housing in remote communities.
Let me start with my own story about housing. My colleague, the Minister for Housing, said in his prologue that he remembered very well growing up in Parap Camp, and then in a rented Housing Commission house which had to accommodate 12 children. I grew up in Athens, in a very poor family, in the 1960s. I grew up in one room, one bedroom house, one kitchen; that was how we lived. We were only two children, but still it was a very run down house. My parents could not afford to rent anything else. There was no rental assistance, there was no Housing Commission housing; my father had to pay from the wage he was getting. He was a builder and I do not recall seeing my father home before 10 pm every night for two years. He used to work in his day job as a builder, and then he would travel to work on a block of land he managed to buy with his cousin, to build a duplex townhouse. Actually, it was palatial; it had two bedrooms and a kitchen.
So, that was the beginning of the housing that provided safety and security to the family. It was comfortable, even if it was overcrowded. It is a good indication of what housing can achieve for a family unit.
When I came to Australia, I was very impressed with the quality of housing, especially in Perth. I was also impressed with the level of home ownership in Western Australia. In my country of birth, purchasing a house is a very big expense and, as a result, many parents will provide a house as a gift to their children, hence the custom of providing a house as a dowry to your daughter when she is getting married for the new couple to live in. It is impossible for a young couple to purchase a house, especially when there is not the social infrastructure or the social structure in the country to provide the alternatives of assistance for young couples or a young person to acquire a house.
I recall when I bought my first house how proud I was. At the same time, it was difficult because we bought a house in times when the interest rate was sky-rocketing - 18.5%. My wife was working as a teacher and we had out first son and we decided she could stay at home for 12 months to look after the baby. However, because of the interest rates, she managed to stay home for about five months and had to go back to work after that to be able to cover the payments. Once again, we could not claim Housing Commission housing in Western Australia or any assistance because either there were no products available or our income was just above the cut-off line and we were not entitled to a Housing Commission house.
I have to admit, at the time, the housing stock in Western Australia was atrocious. Having working as an environmental health officer in some of the northern suburbs and having to inspect some of those houses, I was very glad I never asked for a state Housing Commission house to live in because, either it was not of good quality or they usually had Housing Commission ghettos with all the associated problems.
Of course, Darwin was different because you do not have those housing ghettos. You will find privately owned housing in streets with some Housing Commission houses, which is very good. You do not get the troubles and the situations you get when you have exclusive areas full of Housing Commission houses. I acknowledge what my colleague, the member for Karama, said about Malak. We have some problems especially where we have a high number of Housing Commission houses and people who live there are either low income people, or people who have been moved from house to house and from area to area.
The reality here in the Territory is that we have the lowest home ownership and also the highest rental rate than anywhere else in Australia, with 12% of Territorians living in rental property. Most of them, if not all of them, live in Housing Commission houses. Probably that is a remnant of the post-cyclone situation, where the Territory built a lot of houses. I know even now people have been living in the same house, or in Housing Commission houses, for the past 30 years.
Over the last few years, we have seen in the Territory a significant rise in the price of houses, and my colleague, the member for Millner, mentioned that Millner is a sleeping giant in the northern suburb. The reality is that all the northern suburbs have woken up and the prices have gone through the roof. I was very surprised the other day to find that a house opposite Nakara Primary School was sold for $350 000. It was a private sale and there were a number of competitors trying to buy the house for that price. Another house very close to my own was sold in a private arrangement for $576 000. Five years ago, this house would not have sold for $300 000.
Housing demand in the Territory is significant. Housing demand has put houses outside the reach of the people with average incomes. In some cases, out of the reach of people with high incomes because the repayments for a house of $500 000, $600 000 or $700 000, if you do not have a significant deposit, are incredible. It would probably exceed $2000 to $3000 per month. Unless both partners are working in high earning jobs, I do not think they would be able to meet the repayments.
We have a combination of factors which create problems in the Territory. The other thing of course, as mentioned by the member for Macdonnell and seconded by the member for Greatorex, is the situation with Aboriginal housing. The situation with Aboriginal housing in Aboriginal communities is complex. We cannot sort it out in one day or one month or even one term of government. There has to be a bipartisan approach by both sides – or all sides - of parliament. In addition, it has to be lobbied by us to the federal government to address these issues. My colleague, the Minister for Housing, said $850m would be needed to address the housing needs today in the Aboriginal communities and it will take 40 years if we spent $20m every year for this issue. The reality is we cannot afford it.
As Territorians alone, we are not able to afford this situation. We have to somehow address the issue and this issue has to be addressed by a combination of federal and Territory money. If we are really genuine about improved conditions in Aboriginal housing in the Territory we have to work together with the federal government. There are problems; there are complexities because of the land tenure system in place – that is not our making, that is a decision by the federal government. The federal government has to have a serious look at the situation with Aboriginal housing.
As you are aware, I worked previously as an Environmental Health officer. I have been outside Darwin, I have been to communities, I have seen housing that would not even exist in third world countries. These houses are an embarrassment for a developed country like Australia. Two days ago, I had a phone call from a friend of mine, Mr Carl Scully, a member of the New South Wales parliament and a minister. He visited the Territory to have a close look at housing. I believe he met with my colleague, the Minister for Housing, and with the Minister for Health, who took him to Ti Tree and Yuendumu. Carl rang me and said that he had heard stories about Aboriginal housing but he did not believe them until he went there. He saw the conditions and he had tears in his eyes. He could not believe the condition of the housing in Aboriginal communities. A few months ago, Carl Scully was arguing strongly against an extra allocation of money to the Territory for housing. He did not believe that we had such a need. Now he has changed his tune. Now he says he is going down south and he is going to speak to his colleagues in the New South Wales parliament. He is even going to speak to the shadow minister for Housing about the situation in the Territory and urge him for extra allocation of funds for the Territory.
The situation with housing is not only Aboriginal housing. We also had problems and we have problems with housing for public servants. We have argued many times about how to keep nurses, police and teachers in remote communities. The reality is you are not going to keep these professions in communities unless you provide decent housing. In my capacity as an Environmental Health officer, I had the sad duty to condemn public houses, houses owned by the Northern Territory government for public servants, as unfit for human habitation. That was an embarrassment for the previous government because they never put money in housing. They said that they put money into maintenance but the maintenance was patch-up work, just a coat of paint, but no serious money for the complete refurbishment of all houses, or the construction of new houses. My colleagues, to their credit, have allocated funds for the construction of new housing in Aboriginal communities, for houses for people with special conditions, and for housing for public servants.
What is very important is that this government has a vision. It has a vision of what it wants to do about houses. They four key objectives of this government is to provide a sustainable social housing system. With house prices going through the roof we have to find a way to provide housing – sustainable housing – for people with mid-low to medium level income. Most importantly, we have to be able to provide housing for young Territorians, the people who are starting their lives and the people who cannot afford to pay the $300 000 packages for land and housing. That was the reason when I was the minister for Lands and during the debate about Larapinta subdivision, I made sure that 10% of the Larapinta blocks should be available to young Territorians for first home owners, and I am very proud of it. I have been through it; I know what it means for a young couple having to face a significant bill every month to pay for the mortgage, and I have insisted there should be affordable crisis for the block in Larapinta so the total package of land and house will be within the reach of young Territorians.
Second is to improve the way we do business. I must admit that I have worked with difficult public servants and with public servants who are very keen to help their customers. In the last few years, I have seen a significant change in the attitude of public servants working in the Department of Housing. I never have a problem; I pick up the phone as the local member and I speak to people in charge of different areas in the department and things are happening. Yes, sometimes they might not happen immediately for various reasons, but they have the decency to come back and advise me why it is not happening, or when it is going to happen, so that I can pass on information to my constituents.
I will give you an example of what was happening before because I was really affronted by the member for Greatorex telling me that we lied; that the previous government did a lot for housing and spent a lot of money on houses. I was doorknocking in Alawa and I visited a lady who was 80 years old. She was sitting on her sofa and said, ‘I would like to invite you in but I am too ashamed of my house’. I asked why and she said, ‘It is a Housing Commission house. I have been asking for a long time for it to be painted and they haven’t done it because there is no money in the budget’. I told her I would like to have a look at it. I walked in and the only thing left on some walls was just the asbestos sheeting. There was no sealant, no paint and the whole thing was just incredible.
Later, I spoke to the people in charge and in the beginning they were reluctant because they did not have that particular house in the plan. When I explained the situation and the age of the lady, within a week they addressed the issue. They moved the lady out, put all the furniture in a container and rectified the house. These examples happen every day, not only my electorate, but I am pretty sure it happens in other electorates where people are facing the same situation.
We have to provide a number of effective and responsive housing models that meet a diverse range of housing needs. We need houses for families - small families and big families; young people and elderly people. In my case, one of my constituents had a heart condition. She returned from visiting family overseas and she had to rent. When she went to the Housing Commission, they offered her house that was totally inappropriate for her because a woman with a heart condition in her 70s would not be able to climb two flights of stairs to get to her unit.
We have to consider the needs of our clients; we have to be able to provide appropriate housing for people with disabilities, people with medical conditions, people with big families. Many people talk about noise, nuisance, and Aboriginal people living in mainstream suburbs and their relatives come from somewhere else and create a problem. We have to address these issues. This not an issue only for the Territory; it is an issue for other states. I came from Western Australia and it was exactly the same situation in some of the urban centres in Western Australia, especially in Port Headland because that was focal point for many Aboriginal people coming from the desert to visit their relatives.
I must acknowledge one common factor: the sometimes inflexible attitude and approach of some people working the department. Again, I had the sad duty to condemn public housing because they were trashed by people who had visited, some Aboriginal people. I used to laugh when I heard stories about sticks in the oven and lighting fires and cooking food on top of the fire until I saw it with my own eyes. The problem is that the public service and other organisations have to adjust to the realities of life. They have to bring people in to educate and train them and provide a proper house.
A good example was that people in the Kimberleys asked for several houses. The Western Australian Department of Housing built them beautiful three bedroom white people’s houses that you would build in the middle Perth. What the people wanted was two or three bedroom and a big room in which the whole family could get together and a big yard. They did not build those; they built a little square with a small yard. These people came from an area where the back yard was about two square miles, and they were put into 400m with a house that was more appropriate for Perth. That was a mistake. We have to adjust the design and use of our houses to what the client wants.
The housing market underpins economic growth. We have seen recently, with the upgrade of housing stock, a significant increase of contracted work in public housing. I know contractors very well; they have been working in the past few months putting screens on windows and doors, improving the safety and the appearance of the houses. We have had a number of houses being upgraded, so cabinetmakers, plumbers, electricians and painters were working there. After all, this provides jobs for Territorians. The people working on the upgrade are not coming from down south; they are local Territorians with a small group of people who are working mainly on Housing Commission contracts. That provides security to people, and improves conditions and housing for fellow Territorians.
It is important for us to improve the housing situation. That is one of the best ways we can attract people from down south: jobs and affordable housing. At the moment the Territory still has, when you compare it with Sydney, Perth, Melbourne or Adelaide, affordable housing. The latest HomeNorth package will provide the opportunity for many Territorians to access housing for the first time. When I say first time, it is because I know people who have lived in the same house for 30 years, and were unable to buy the house because either they could not raise the deposit, or they could not make the payments. I have people asking me for the best advice, which I cannot give - I am not a financial advisor - but the advice is you buy private housing at the department and TIO and under the new HomeNorth scheme. I am very pleased to forward to them the booklet, all the information, and quite a few people have made this final decision to buy a house.
Buying a house in the Territory does not only mean a financial commitment to the bank. It means a commitment to the Territory. People who buy houses in the Territory are most unlikely to move out of the Territory unless, of course, the family situation changes. Many people have parents down south and have to move, or they have been transferred because they work in an organisation that transfers them from here to there, such as the Defence forces.
As I said before, I was very impressed by Home Territory 2010. This booklet is very informative. It contains true stories of true Territorians who actually live in our neighbourhoods, and we know some of these people. We have met people like that, and we have seen the quality of the housing that is now being offered in the Territory. We still have to work hard to provide quality housing to Territorians. We have to work harder to make sure that people have that fundamental right of shelter, and acquire this fundamental right.
I urge both sides of parliament to work together to resolve housing issues, especially in Aboriginal communities. There is no way we can resolve it ourselves as a Territory. We have to engage our federal counterparts. It will be an indictment on us if we fail to work together to resolve the housing issue, especially in the remote communities.
Mr BURKE (Brennan): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise to make a few points regarding the minister’s statement. It was refreshing to hear the member for Millner speak this afternoon; I thought he made a few good points. What was refreshing was that he approached the debate in a mature way in recognising the constraints that are on the Northern Territory government, the constraints that are on Territory Housing and the constraints that are on, I guess, the Commonwealth. Although he seemed to suggest that somehow the Commonwealth would fix this problem in terms of dealing with this whole issue of inadequate or poor housing nationally, particularly as it relates to indigenous people. In that regard, I thought some of the points he made were very well made.
However, what was refreshing was that he did not dwell into the 20-odd years of CLP neglect, which some of his colleagues, including the minister, seemed quite eager to address. I found his comments refreshing because, when you listen to the other comments about how bad the former CLP government was, and the fact that houses had not been painted for 20 years and the plaster is falling off, I kept thinking, ‘Well, Territory Housing must be doing an awful job’. If you are one of the public servants who works hard in Territory Housing on a daily basis, it is too cute to say the CLP never gave them enough money and therefore all these things were neglected. I would like to see evidence of a house that had not been painted for 20 years in the urban area.
It is one thing to say the house has not been painted; I would like to go a bit further and then go back and ask: Why wasn’t it painted? There are BAMS programs in place; there have been diligent ministers prior to the member for Arnhem - and with no disrespect, one does not need to be an Aboriginal and to have lived in Housing Commission housing to, somehow, have some great insight on the housing problems in the Northern Territory.
I came from a pretty poor background and my family lived in a Housing Commission house with six kids. We did not have 12 in our house, but we had a family of six kids and mum and dad. My dad did not earn much and, certainly, in my neighbourhood the whole street was full of Housing Commission houses. So, it is not unique to Territorians, generally, to have had a Housing Commission experience.
The one point I thought the member for Millner made well was when he said: ‘Territory Housing has done their job over many years and that has to be recognised’. And they have; they have worked very hard over many years. Strategies that have come forward this evening such as Home Territory 2010 are no different than strategies that have been put forward in this House in the past. This one, for a change, looks to be far more of a PR effort for the current Northern Territory government, something that the CLP never did. It was always the Territory government; it was always produced entirely by public servants.
However, that aside, the strategies that are in place - the endeavours and aspirations for better housing; the way people look after their housing; the way they relate to others; the efforts we have to make with indigenous housing - are not new issues in the Northern Territory at all. The current minister continues a tradition of successive Territory governments recognising all of the issues surrounding housing that are reflected in his statement and also in the strategies. He should also, I believe, have the courtesy to reflect on the efforts of previous ministers; one of whom is the Speaker of this House. When you talk about all these years of neglect, by default you are not only criticising the public service involved, but previous ministers such as Madam Speaker - which is entirely unfair – who, in their time as ministers did a sterling job and, I would suggest to you, with no less effort, vigour and endeavour than the current minister in attending to the problems that are out there.
When we hear about this new-found understanding and feeling for people who need Territory Housing assistance, I can only reflect on the member for Wanguri when we were going to build - probably under Madam Speaker’s time - a seniors’ facility at Leanyer. Where was his care and concern then when he railed against that particular facility? He railed against the socioeconomic problems that it might bring to his particular electorate. That was his feeling for seniors in the Northern Territory at the time. That was a politician playing divisive politics in his own electorate on such an issue. I bet you when he goes out there now – and I am pleased to see he has walked back in …
Mrs AAGAARD: A point of order, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker! The member for Brennan knows perfectly well he is not supposed to refer to the absence or presence of a member.
Mr Acting DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, member for Nightcliff. The member for Brennan is well aware that he cannot make any reference to the absence or otherwise of anyone in the House.
Mr BURKE: Awfully sensitive. I do not care if anyone says that I am in the House or out of the House; it does not bother me.
Mr Acting DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, member for Brennan.
Mr BURKE: I bet when the member for Wanguri doorknocks that particular electorate now and goes around to each of those seniors, he sits down and says: ‘Oh, isn’t it a lovely facility you have here? Oh, it is a lovely unit. Do you have any problems? Do you need a wall repainted? Oh, I am so proud of you being in my electorate. Can I give you my current newsletter?’ What you should be saying is: ‘You lot, all you bunch here, if I had my way you would be somewhere over the hill, but nowhere in Leanyer’, which is what he wanted. So, when we talk about these aspirations and how we love the people who live in Territory Housing, some of us have a bit of a memory about some of the history and some of the actions that were taken with regard to those particular tenants.
I want to speak about my own electorate. I am sorry, minister, I cannot give as good a report card as the members of the government with regard to the efforts that are being made in their own electorate. When I look at my electorate, I see seniors’ housing that we proudly put in, as a CLP government, in areas of my electorate and areas such as the member for Wanguri’s electorate. Senior housing complexes, I believe, were clear evidence of a strategy of turning over older stock, getting better stock for seniors in particular, putting aside land for future developments under that particular strategy, and certainly under the term of this Labor government – I stand to be corrected – but I cannot recall any new seniors complex that has actually been built and occupied under that particular strategy.
I know there are some on the drawing board. I know there is one coming out of the ground in the Chief Minister’s electorate. Certainly, the momentum that was there under the previous program put in place by Madam Speaker and the member for Daly as housing ministers seems to have come to a bit of a halt. If there was any more momentum put into that particular program, good, because you are continuing a strategy that has been successful in the past and has seen, I believe, a turnaround in the general image of Territory housing.
There is no doubt that we can see efforts of refurbishment, including in my electorate, such as new fencing that is going up, which is pleasing to see, and a continuation of programs such as the security screens program – which again, if you were courteous and honest with yourselves you would give credit to Madam Speaker who was the Housing Minister at the time and pushed through that particular program. It is good to see that that program is continuing.
One of the issues that I have continually in my electorate is the issue of good neighbours versus unruly tenants. I suggest to you that any member of this House who would claim that they do not have that problem – and would even make the claim that somehow things have improved under the term of the Labor government – would simply be lying. I cannot sense any improvement in those issues in the general Palmerston area. In fact, one could even suggest that in some areas they are getting worse. There is a lot of work to be done and a lot of effort by Territory Housing through the minister to ensure that Territory Housing is a very proactive and professional organisation in the way it is resourced, the way its staff are trained, the way they are deployed in their duties and supported by their department and also by government.
It is interesting that this was a government that came to power saying that they would support whistleblowers – in fact, they were going to bring forward whistleblower legislation – if you were someone who was aggrieved by efforts in your department and you had the courage to speak out, you would be supported by government and you would be supported by legislation. I have had two instances that I have brought into the public arena in the past few months where people have come to me complaining about issues within their department and, sadly, I see none of that support evidence in the way those particular individuals are being treated. I note that there was a particular effort to identify and sort out the Housing officer who came to me. No support whatever from her senior staff in the comments that she made to me. And the issue of the Palmerston Health Precinct where nurses spoke to me about bullying in the workplace and lack of support by senior managers, the latest report I have heard is: ‘Once and if ever we find out who those people were, we will make sure they never work for Territory Health Services again’.
A member: Charming.
Mr BURKE: That is true. That is verbatim from the nurses themselves who still live in fear of somehow being singled out and identified by this great government that is going to protect whistleblowers and support people, public servants, who rightly speak out on issues that they have in their own workplace. When it comes to the rhetoric, when it comes to the glossies and comes to the actions, I believe this government is being seen more and more as a punitive and vicious government that will deal with anyone who speaks out.
When it comes to the issues of housing generally, I believe the member for Millner said it explicitly and that is we need to put to one side the issue of remote housing and how we as a government can deal with remote housing, and also the issues that surround housing in the urban area. In my electorate – sorry, minister, you are not getting a good report card from the people who live in Territory Housing. You are not and if you do not accept that I am sorry. I can only report that. I feel very confident that in my electorate they believe they were as well served or better served by the efforts of the previous CLP government than they are by the current government. I hope it is not a fact that if live in Karama or Millner, you get special attention from the ALP government and if you live in Palmerston, we will flood all the low life into Palmerston as long as we get rid of them out of our electorate. That would be a particularly divisive and punitive way of a government to act. In my electorate …
Mr Kiely interjecting.
Mr BURKE: I do not care what you think of it. The member for Sanderson is going to lecture me on what I can say in this House. Member for Sanderson, you won one election; good on you! You have had the support of your electorate for one election. I have won three, so when I stand up here and I speak for my electorate, they have supported me in the past, and I will continue to speak and I hope that I will get their support in the future. So do not lecture me on what I should say and what my electorate might think of it. On issues like Territory Housing and how the government supports their housing officers and the resources the government has put into training and supervision, the professional approach of how they deal with tenants, you are not scoring well. You are not scoring well at all, and if you do not like that, too bad!
This is evidenced, for example, at public meetings in various areas, the latest the minister would be aware of is Cornwallis Circuit where they have banded together as a community to try to deal with issues in the area that have arisen clearly and simply from Territory Housing tenants. It is not so much the actions of the tenants only; their frustration is the inaction of Territory Housing. That is where their frustration comes from. We have had Territory Housing officers speak to them, and they are at pains to explain to them the limitations they have in dealing with some of these tenants. When you hear the explanation, and you understand the constraints that they work with, prima facie it sounds reasonable. However, at the end of the day, you need to have a situation where if we are talking about the government and the taxpayer providing subsidised housing to people in need, that comes with some responsibility. The responsibility is to act harmoniously and as a good citizen to the people who live in your own neighbourhood. That is not occurring.
The latest one is this: I will table for the minister’s attention just to put it into perspective. These are Territory Housing units and these are the rubbish and recycle bins in one street. This is your professional program at work. This is what Palmerston people in my electorate drive past and see every day of the week. This is Territory Housing supported by its government at work. What you have is a mess. They are your tenants. These are the ones who are thumbing their noses …
Mr Ah Kit: May I have a look?
Mr BURKE: I will table it in a second because I want to read from it. The man who sent it to me you would be well aware of because he is very active and I congratulate him for that. He is also active, and I have supported him in this, too, in approaching Telstra to remove the public telephone from the street because it is a gathering place for gangs; it is a receptacle for urination and defecation; it is a place of fear, where others fear to tread. They want the public telephone box out of there as well.
This particular gentleman on this one, and this is one of hundreds of complaints that go in Territory Housing and they are well aware of it, says, and I won’t give the name:
Surely, this is not an isolated case for any member in this House. Surely, you get this stuff every day of the week from different places in your own electorate. I have people who come in to me who have bought their houses, have lived in their houses for many years, and guess what? – they are leaving Darwin. They are leaving Darwin because they have just had enough, and they cannot stand it any more. They have seen their investment in their street and their amenity being gradually eroded.
I understand the social problems that some of these people come with. However, I do get pretty tired of a policy that says we have to teach them living skills. You put them right in a neighbourhood where people have put a big investment in their properties, and then, by the way, we are going to teach them living skills. We will not worry about collecting rent; we will teach them what a broom looks like. Well, my people are not all that pleased about it. I suggest to you that, if Territory Housing wants to improve its image, if the minister wants to get greater support from, certainly, the residents of my electorate - which I would applaud, frankly; I will confidently work hard to win my seat at the next election - but if the minister gets credit for getting this sort of problem addressed, I do not really mind. He can take the credit, as long as the problem is addressed, and the problem is not being addressed, it is getting worse and worse.
When a Territory Housing officer has the courage to say to you, ‘I work in a reactive organisation that, too often, responds to a ministerial request which says, “Do something because it has now become a political problem”, but when it is a day-to-day issue, I am not trained, I am not supported, I am too young, I do not know how to deal with some of these people who often threaten me. I have people who are living in some of these units or houses that do not even have leases written, because we have backdated tenants who do not even have leases to bind them in those places, and I am being scared and frustrated’.
I would say to you that, rather than singling that person out, trying to run him down and make sure they do not work again, what you should be doing is saying is maybe it is symptomatic of a larger problem. Maybe it is symptomatic of the fact that when the government says that they are putting all this money into housing, and the bureaucracy of housing, maybe it needs to be drilled down and find out how much of it is actually flowing down to the people on the coalface who need it. They are the ones who are there every day of the week, and they are the ones who are tyring to ensure places are maintained, to ensure that the tenants are responsible in the way they act, to ensure that they are harmonious in the neighbourhood, to ensure that they only have the appropriate amount of visitors and guests, to ensure that they are not those units that are causing mayhem in the neighbourhood, and they look for support from their government and from their senior officers. They understand the legal restrictions at times that they work within, but they certainly want, when issues can be fixed, they want them fixed. For example, if you are …
Ms CARNEY: Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I move that the member be granted an extension of time to complete his speech.
Mr BURKE: Thank you. For example, it is of some frustration, if you are renting a house that on the private market would rent for, say, $250 a week, and through your personal circumstances you obtain that particular house for about $35 to $65 a week, I would say that comes with some responsibilities. All people want is for tenants to recognise and adhere to those basic responsibilities.
In one area they are having a barbecue in the park soon, I would applaud the minister and I will give him the date, he might want to turn up, because they are having the barbecue not to attack these people, but to try to get to know them better, to try to get them to understand the issues that they are dealing with, because they want to be good neighbours and they want to be cooperative, and they do not necessarily want them to be evicted overnight. What they want, though, is for these people to realise the harm they are causing to the neighbourhood, the generosity of the Australian and Territory taxpayer in the way that they are looking to deal with their concerns, and they simply want to be met halfway in meeting those responsibilities.
I have had enough time in getting the points across I wanted to make. I recognise the importance of the statement, the initiatives that are coming through in Territory Housing, and the efforts of the government in dealing with – as the member for Millner pointed out – very difficult issues that will take some time to address, and need to be addressed, on all fronts. However, one of those fronts has to be that if you are receiving the generosity of the Australian taxpayer in attending to your needs, you have a basic responsibility to come halfway, and that is all that Territorians ask.
Mrs BRAHAM (Braitling): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I take the opportunity to comment on the minister’s statement because, as the minister knows, I have many concerns about public housing within my electorate. We have been in contact over a number of months over this. I am pleased to say that the Department of Housing has endeavoured to address the problems as best they can. I am also pleased to see that many of the recommendations I made to the minister some time ago have been put into place.
I ask the minister to re-think some of the things he is saying. In the statement, he said: ‘I care about public housing tenants’. I believe you should make an amendment to that and say: ‘I also care about their neighbours’, because it is the neighbours who quite often are suffering because of the attitude of the public housing tenants.
Some of the things the minister mentioned when he was talking about the quality landlord strategy are many of the things that we have discussed and put into place in some of our difficult streets and complexes in Alice Springs. I say to members that you need to keep close contact with the police. We now have a process whereby if there is a drinking party in the car park of the complex, the police will go around and tip out the alcohol and confiscate it, just as if it was a 2 km law breach. It is extremely good that they are able to do that at last. They are also imposing trespass notices stating that people should not be there if the tenants in the units do not want them. That way we manage to get rid of them for the people who have the problems. The ‘no grog’ signs are also an excellent idea if you can get those onto your tenant’s house, because it is the tenants who are suffering because of the behaviour of a few.
The minister has listed many things they have done. However, one thing that he has still not addressed is a camping area for those people who come in from out bush. If these people come in from out bush - and we are talking about the trouble that they make when they arrive as visitors en masse to someone’s unit or house - then we have to find an alternative. The alternative, in my mind, is to make sure that they have a pleasant camping area that they can go to. I notice that many of the cars that come into our complexes used by the people causing problems are registered in South Australia. They are obviously coming from the Pit lands. However, you cannot have 10 people go into a two-bedroom unit without havoc eventually happening. You cannot have 20 people playing cards on your front lawn without disturbing your neighbourhood, when grog is involved. I am just saying to the minister: give them an alternative.
Most of all – and this is something I have been talking to the Lhere Artepe elders in Alice Springs about - you need to educate them. I know the minister may find that patronising. However, the elders in Alice Springs have said quite clearly that they believe people coming from remote areas should know how to behave when they come to their lands. They certainly need to get that message clearly across. They have talked about putting out announcements on CAAMA or doing advertisements on BRACS programs or even on Imparja. It is a good idea because, who tells you that when you come to town you cannot have a whooping good time and disturb a tenant and the neighbourhood? Who tells you that you should show some restraint when you visit people and upset their lifestyle? The best people to tell them are the elders of that town. That is why I would like the minister to look carefully at that suggestion and go ahead with it, because it is something that is good.
The minister talked about the renal cluster village, and that was one of the things I raised with him many months ago. He needs to keep the emphasis on seniors’ villages also. I do not want to talk about the past. It is okay and stand up and bag what has happened in the past but, yes, I was a Minister for Housing. I was very proud to open the new seniors’ village along Dick Ward Drive. Obviously, the seniors’ villages are one of the best options because we do not have retirement villages at affordable price for our seniors in town. One of the seniors that I really respect is involved heavily with the bowls club and came to see me the other day and she said: ‘I have had enough. I am leaving’. But if she had a unit in a complex where there were people of her own age that she could relate to then she would not be leaving town. We need to say, ‘Yes, it is good to see that at last we are getting renal patients looked after,’ because we did have renal patients who just left because of the humbug that it caused, but we also need now to look at seniors. Perhaps we also need to look at complexes for disability people because they also have trouble living in situations where there are multi-age groups, and that is one of the problems we have.
I want to talk about the HomeStart Scheme very briefly because it is great. We must encourage people to stay. However, the minister does not mention very much about first home buyers. All right, only two people in Alice Springs have picked up the HomeStart program. We all know why. The price of homes in Alice Springs is ridiculously high and land is not available. We are land locked. The minister should make sure in the developments that are going ahead that there is plenty of opportunity for young people to buy land at a reasonable price under the first home buyer’s scheme. It is essential that the minister for Lands pushes this to ensure that it happens. It is all very well to say that we are going to release all this land but we must make sure we have land available for those first home buyers. It is something I will keep pushing with the minister.
I wrote to the minister not long ago because it was suggested to him that when he was looking at reviewing the HomeStart loan scheme that he put in a ‘green’ loan component. Everyone is well aware of the emphasis on water and energy conservation that we have in Alice Springs. The ‘green’ loan component of any loan is one that is an incentive for people to make sure their home takes this account. Unfortunately, the reverse happened. The minister gave a white goods component in the loan which consumes energy, whereas the home loans energy efficiency package has been ignored. The minister did say that the department is still investigating the home energy efficiency features in relation to both rental properties and the home purchase schemes, and he said he will keep me informed. However, I might add that I have not heard anything further on that since April.
The home loan schemes that give a ‘green’ loan are quite popular in other states, and they do find that many people will take up this particular low interest loan. It is something the minister should not just ignore; it is something that is very vital for us. The minister also knows that I am very keen on a ‘water tank’ subsidy being introduced. There has been a water efficiency study done in Alice Springs and I am waiting for the other minister to get back to me on what he is going to do with it. How creative and innovative of this government if they were to introduce a water tank subsidy. Just as we say that we will give $1000 towards a solar hot water service to save energy, why don’t we say to new home builders that we will give them a subsidy if they install water tanks? I realise it may not be necessary in Darwin, but I am talking about Central Australia where water is a precious resource. It has come to my attention that most other states have a water subsidy except the Northern Territory, and that is crazy. All states and territories except South Australia and the Northern Territory offer rainwater tank rebates. If it is that easy to do in other states, in this dry part of the continent, why are we not offering rain water rebates? What I have suggested to the minister is that people who build their own home be entitled to a rainwater subsidy. Give it to them because you will save enough on the use of water to off-set that.
When you are building homes on remote communities, put in a rainwater tank. If you are building more government homes, put in a rainwater tank. Give people, as first home buyers, a water tank. There are some very great innovations going on at the moment. The Centre for Appropriate Technology in Alice Springs runs some very good programs. At the moment they are promoting what they call a rainwater harvesting system. It is at Mutitjulu. They have put in tanks with the houses to capture rainwater. Some people say that rainwater tanks get contaminated and you will probably get sick from them. I have had a rainwater tank ever since I moved into my house well over 20 years ago and I have not been contaminated yet. The technology has been designed to suit the environment of Central Australia and it is really pleasing to see that Mutitjulu community has taken this initiative and has this vigorous rainwater harvesting program. Apparently the people have identified this. They felt strongly that they have a right to collect and drink water that falls on their traditional land. They also say that it tastes better than the salty bore water they often get.
There is a rainwater tank trial occurring in a home in Alice Springs. The rainwater goes into the tank which is linked to the hot water service. What that does is reduce the corrosion in the rainwater tank, in the shower, and by going through the hot water, it also kills any contamination or any germs that may be there. This would be a great initiative for the minister if he would take something like this on. He has missed the opportunity to put the ‘green’ loans component into HomeNorth. Let’s get a bit innovative. Just imagine if we did say to the people in Central Australia, or to IHANT, which is building lots of houses out there: ‘Put in rainwater tanks’.
Apparently, a study that has been done shows that over a period of time, the cost recovery is there. Even if the government gave the rainwater tanks to people, they would still save that money in the production of water. Remember at Alice Springs, as we go deeper and deeper to collect water, the cost is higher and higher. Alice Springs people are the second highest consumers of water in Australia and they probably do not pay the actual cost of producing that water. It is getting dearer and dearer as it goes deeper and deeper.
I am a little disappointed that I have not had a response from the minister yet about that because it would innovative. It would be great. I believe the member for Barkly said that there will be a trial in Borroloola, so there is obviously interest within Central Australia to look at water harvesting and energy efficiencies within our homes.
We know that this government has, along with other state and territory governments, agreed to an intergovernmental agreement on a national water initiative between the Commonwealth of Australia, governments of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and the ACT. That paper deals with urban water reforms and how government should work towards making sure that we have sensible use of our water. This government is already signatory to that. Perhaps this government needs to go one step further and think about putting some innovation into this suggestion that I have.
I know that we also have an Alice Springs water efficiency study and we have had some positive feedback from it. We are waiting for government to adopt some of the measures in there. The Arid Lands Environment Centre is running this trial in an Alice Springs house and they are keen to get some of these trials into the public housing sector. It is a simple thing, but it would be popular with people who are much more acutely aware of the need for conservation of our water and our energy resources, particularly in Central Australia where water is so precious.
I say to the minister, although your statement sounds all very nice, I still think there are some things you should be doing. If you are not going to do the ‘green’ home loan, seriously think about doing something innovative by looking at rainwater tanks in public housing. Start thinking seriously about how you are going to address the antisocial behaviour that occurs in public housing. I get a little bit weary of the people who say to me, ‘What are we going to do?’ I know the police get a little bit weary of having to go down the same streets. It is not nice to be harassing people. There is almost a feeling out there that this minister will not make the hard decisions when it comes to problems caused by indigenous people. That may seem a bit hard, but perhaps the Chief Minister should seriously think about giving public housing to another minister. They are hard decisions that you have to make. We have to be honest, and you have even intimated in your speech that many of the problems we have in public housing stem from visitors from remote communities who seem to think they can cause problems for their own people without any retribution.
The minister must understand that he has to get that message clearly out to the people concerned. He must make sure that it is not just public housing tenants he cares about, but it is also their neighbours. He must make sure that when people go into the homes they understand their responsibility as a tenant, and also the responsibility they have to the people who live around them.
I thank the people in Housing in Alice Springs. They have been very tolerant. They have been very cooperative at addressing some of our problems. I believe they are overworked. I do not believe that there are enough of them to cope with the huge tenancy work they have to do. Some of them, as people have said, are inexperienced. Some, I am sure, must go home frustrated because they hear the same story over and over again. There needs to be a management program for them to give them assistance. The minister did say he was going to put some additional staff in the Alice Springs office, and perhaps he can tell us whether that has occurred because I am not aware of it at the moment. Certainly there is a need for assistance for housing department personnel to be able to do their job well. Tenancy management in a public housing situation is far more difficult than it is in the private industry, and it is very time consuming and, as the minister says, there are a large number of them.
Mrs AAGAARD (Nightcliff): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to speak on Home Territory 2010, Moving the Territory Ahead. Housing, or shelter, is considered a basic human right. It is an extremely important area and, might I add, it is also a very difficult area and one which requires considerable planning.
I do not think that any kind of housing situations throughout Australia have been perfect. Some of the issues that have been raised by members in the House today are seen by governments all around Australia, including in the Northern Territory, but also around the world. It is not just about, in the case of people speaking tonight, public tenants but about people and, when they are living in close proximity, the kinds of things that arise.
This statement looks at both an urban and a bush response to housing needs across the Territory. It considers matters such as affordability of public and private housing home ownership, particularly home ownership for low to moderate income earners, and offers a considered plan for public housing over the next few years. The minister also outlines a plan for safe, secure and affordable housing for all Territorians, and especially for those on low income and those with special needs.
It is of concern that the current situation in the Territory is that we have the lowest home ownership rate and the highest number of public housing tenants. The minister says that there are 55 800 dwellings in the Territory, of which 12% are public housing and 11% in indigenous communities. It is also very concerning that 6900 households in the Territory are dealing with housing stress, which means paying more than 30% of their gross income on housing. This seems to be more likely in the private rental market or the mortgage market.
In the bush, they are totally dependent on community housing or government employee housing, and this is a very serious situation. The member for Millner raised this. The Commonwealth really needs to look at this as a national problem. The Territory is putting considerably greater sums into housing in the bush, but it is not going to be something which we can address simply as a Territory government. We simply do not have the funding available, and are unlikely to have the funding available over the following decades to meet the extreme need in bush communities. As somebody who has travelled around bush communities, sometimes the housing just makes you want to weep. I congratulate the minister that he is looking at a national policy in this area.
In an urban setting, the minister outlined many difficulties facing people hoping to enter the housing market to purchase a home today. Some of us who were fortunate enough to buy houses - maybe bought our houses some considerable time ago - have benefited from the increase in the value of those homes and, in fact, have become wealthy as a result of that. Sadly, this is not available to many young people today, or to those people who are on low and moderate incomes. One of the most difficult situations is young people who are studying at universities and who will have quite huge HECS debts, sometimes ranging from $30 000 to $80 000, which they have to pay off at the same time as they may be considering entering the housing market. They will be starting off on relatively low incomes, and this is a situation which is very concerning for the Territory and also for Australia as a whole.
Therefore, the HomeNorth scheme which has been introduced, particularly for low income earners, is going to be something which really helps to increase home ownership in the Northern Territory. For young people it is just not the same as it was in the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s when there was a boom in home ownership, and to own a house was something which everybody desired, and it was reasonably easy to buy a home in Australia at that time. Now it is not that easy. The new program, whereby you can have a very low deposit - as low as 2% - and the house can be up to $240 000 in value will see a dramatic increase in home ownership in the Northern Territory, which will add to people’s enjoyment of the lifestyle of the Northern Territory and also improve their entire lifestyle for their life span.
Since the minister introduced this scheme in June, I have had a large number of inquiries from people both in public housing and in private rental accommodation who are, for the first time, considering the possibility of owning a home. I am looking forward to being invited to their new homes. I am not sure that they are going to be able to afford to live in Rapid Creek or Nightcliff, unfortunately, where houses, as the member for Casuarina said, have gone up exponentially in their value. However, these people, for the first time, will be able to buy units, flats and townhouses, and we know this is going to be excellent for them.
There has been much said tonight about the quality landlord strategy which looks at the good neighbour policy for public tenants. I have a very large group of public units in my electorate - the John Stokes Square - and there are 75 residents at that tenancy. I also have large numbers of private units and flats, particularly along Aralia Street and Casuarina Drive in my electorate. I probably get the same number of complaints from private people as I do from public ones. I find quite disturbing the suggestion that, somehow, public tenants are more of a nuisance than private tenants. In fact, I think it is completely the opposite. I think that these are just normal people and some just happen to be public tenants, and some are private tenants, and you receive the same number of complaints regardless of whether they are public tenants or not. It is simply that it appears that the government is responsible if they are public tenants but perhaps nobody is responsible if they are private tenants.
In relation to John Stokes Square, I would have to say that I have had many complaints over the past three years about John Stokes Square. I have been working with Housing over that period to look at strategies to make the place more secure. I thank the minister for many of those things that have been introduced over that three year period. Certainly there have changes to simple areas like closing a gate so that itinerants could not just wander into the centre. That actually stopped a huge number of problems. It seems so simple but it had never been done. There is now a very good security guard who comes in every hour and checks to make sure there are no problems at John Stokes Square. I would have to say that during that time the people at John Stokes Square have become a lot happier about living there. Of course, there are always going to be problems, and I do not actually think that it is going to be possible to solve every kind of problem for groups of people, but it has really improved in that area.
As other members have mentioned, there is also the problem of itinerants coming into public housing areas. I am very interested in the scheme whereby signs can go on people’s doors or at the entrance to public housing areas to suggest who might and who might not be able to go into that area. I will be investigating that further with the minister because I think that would be particularly useful for the people of John Stokes Square.
I would just like to put on the record that the people of John Stokes Square are fabulous. I meet there quite regularly and I would not like them to think that I thought less of them those people who lived in private accommodation whether that is people who had bought their own home or people who are renting elsewhere. These are very valuable people. They are people who have worked hard most of their lives. Many of them are sick or elderly, some of them are disabled, and they are very special people.
The minister mentions in his statement a move to the renal cluster village pilot scheme. This certainly seems like a very exciting scheme and, with the increase in kidney disease in the Northern Territory, it is well overdue and will truly benefit some very unwell people. One of the major problems with people having to seek dialysis is that whole situation of having to have accommodation when they come to a centre and the difficulty of that, and also the difficulty of having to move from that accommodation to the place they are having the dialysis. This can be very difficult. Certainly in Darwin, some people are fortunate enough, they have been able to stay close by. In Nightcliff, they can stay at the hostel there and be able to travel to the renal dialysis unit on Dick Ward Drive. Other patients have had to find housing and they have had to go as far away as Palmerston. This has caused a great deal of difficulty for those patients and it takes up so much of their time. I certainly welcome that and it is an excellent initiative.
The urban renewal program, which is $45m over five years to upgrade public housing to a standard commensurate with newly constructed housing, is fantastic. For the first time in public houses there is going to be the provision of security screening, improvements such as driveways, fencing, sheds and smoke detectors. Previously, these needed to be paid for by tenants who, of course, are low income earners and was quite difficult for them to purchase. I congratulate the minister on that initiative.
In this brochure that the minister has handed out today, I notice that page two there is a photograph of Bev and Noel Thorpe. I was very excited when I saw this because Bev and Noel came to see me. I have known them for some years and they are great people. They have worked tirelessly for groups like SIDS and for the Hospital Auxiliary. They are very community-minded people. Suddenly, they found themselves having to permanently look after their three grandchildren.
Public Housing has been fantastic in this situation. They came to see me and Public Housing helped them move from the seniors’ village at Coconut Grove to a newly-renovated house in Karama. In talking to Bev and Noel, they say it is the best house they have ever lived in. It has been totally renovated and I am looking forward to visiting them there. They are very happy and I thank the Housing Commission their involvement.
I congratulate the minister and the department on the different types of housing available for people in the Territory. Of course this is not necessarily something new, but we are seeing the continuation of a really important program. The seniors’ village at Coconut Grove is outstanding. I believe at the one that is being built at Fannie Bay will be an excellent place for our very valued seniors. As you get older, you do not necessarily want a huge place with a gigantic garden and everything else to maintain. This is an excellent way for things to be going in the Territory.
It is not mentioned in the minister’s statement, but there have been, over the period of government, some excellent centres completed for housing for people with disabilities. There is one at Palmerston. I visited there, and I know that the residents are finding the accommodation excellent. It is a good way for the government to be moving in providing specialist accommodation for people with different needs.
I thank the minister and look forward to hearing an update on this strategy. I know the minister is moving us forward in the best possible way for the Territory.
Ms CARTER (Port Darwin): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I was disappointed this afternoon with regards to the opening of the minister’s statement. It was a shame that he had to make such party political comments in what should have been a statement of looking forward and positively towards things. It is disappointing to see that happen, but it is a tactic being used more frequently by this minister. It reduces the minister’s credibility, which, in many ways, with the Department of Housing has been very good. I have had some very good results working with the minister over the past few years. So the tone of the introduction was been disappointing.
To my mind it attacks the hard work of the staff of that department who have been there for more than three years. This is a real shame because public servants work hard in all circumstances and the inference from the statement that for many years public housing has been neglected is really disappointing to hear.
Public housing is very important. We do have a low rate of private ownership compared with the rest of the country. That is for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is the youthful make-up of the Territory population. Young people often take a little bit of time to get on their feet financially and to make a decision to commit to purchasing a home.
We also have a significant proportion of the community that cannot afford to purchase their own home. We also have a community that, by its nature for many years, has been quite transient. Many of us in this House came to the Territory with the view that we were only coming for a year or two before we head off on another adventure in our life. There would still be many Territorians who come up with that point of view who either leave after few years or who take quite some time to make the decision, that, ‘Oh, goodness, I have been here 10 years, maybe I should buy a home’. Territorians generally are not fast on the uptake of the purchase of a private home. That is why public housing has been very important in the Northern Territory over the years.
In my electorate of Port Darwin, I have a number of substantial government housing complexes. One of them is Tuckwell Court at the end of Barossa Street in Larrakeyah, which consists of approximately 45 units, housing senior Territorians. It is a great complex, located in an enviable position, and if you are lucky and pull the long straw, you score a one-bedroom unit overlooking the golf course with million dollar views. Another great complex is in Gardens Hill Crescent. That is a two-storey complex of about 30 units which, to a degree, tends to house senior Territorians. Another complex is in Barossa Street, Larrakeyah, and that is a complex of about 14 units and, once again, houses senior Territorians. It is a ground level complex, and is in very good condition and I know the tenants there are very pleased with it. Another complex is at Tomaris Court, on the corner of Daly Street and Smith Street, and I will speak about that in more detail in a moment.
Finally, and often forgotten, is an area which I know does not come specifically under the control of Territory Housing, but it is an interesting area of housing. It is called Railway Dam. It is, in fact, an Aboriginal transient camp supposedly, set up many years ago to house people who come into Darwin from remote communities. This is a camp that is in very poor condition. The last time I went doorknocking there, I was chased within the grounds by a pack of about five, what I would describe as, very obviously camp dogs, who had all the features of a camp dog that you would expect to see in the middle of nowhere, and yet it sits within a couple of kilometres of Darwin’s GPO. It would be very interesting to hear from one of the ministers, at some point in time in this House, what is planned for Railway Dam because, quite frankly, it is getting to a point where some decisions need to be made. It either stays or it goes. If it stays, it needs to have its housing substantially improved. It is in a very poor condition and I would like to see something done one way or the other by the Labor government.
I return to a complex known as Tomaris Court, which contains about 65 units in three-story blocks on the corner of Daly and Smith Streets in the CBD. When I was first elected, I had already doorknocked it several times and it was a great complex. So, in the year 2000, this was a fantastic complex. People of all races and nationalities lived there, some people worked, many did not work, but it was a great complex. It was neat, tidy and clean. I did not receive complaints about it. When I was first elected the view was that, because I was a Country Liberal Party person, it would be a place that I would not go into very often, because the inference was Territory Housing people more likely than not vote Labor.
I refused to follow that line of thinking, and I doorknock that complex twice a year, in the middle of the Dry and just before Christmas, and when I go around at Christmas I take little plum puddings, I scour the shelves at Woolies for months beforehand, and take little plum puddings around to the tenants there, and we have a great time as we …
Members interjecting.
Ms CARTER: … Christmas good cheer. It is a wonderful complex. However, over the last few years, it has deteriorated substantially.
Members interjecting.
Ms CARTER: The members for Johnston and Sanderson might find it highly amusing to laugh at the plight of people living in Territory Housing, as they giggle away here in the background, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker. It is a shame that they find that funny. I can assure you, the tenants of Tomaris Court know very well who to sheet home the blame to as they see their living standards deteriorate over the last few years, for some of them, to a level of abject misery. It picks up on the situation that has been mentioned here tonight by a number of members of parliament.
We are seeing an increase in the arrival into these complexes of people who cannot stop their family and community members from remote areas coming in and camping around their unit; joining the family members there so that you have large numbers of people living in small units and creating merry hell.
I have been working with the minister over the last couple of years in an effort to address this problem at Tomaris Court. There have been moments of success, and there have been times of failure; it comes and goes, as I know the minister and the department struggle to find ways of solving these problems. Mention has been made here tonight about the need to be concerned about the neighbours of Territory Housing tenants. The inference, of course, always is with regard to houses. One must also be very mindful of neighbours within unit complexes. It has been hugely sad for me, over the last few years, to see the distress that some of my constituents suffer. They have been living long-term at Tomaris Court; they are settled there. I am quite sure many of you can appreciate the enjoyment that someone of limited means would have being able to live within the CBD. Many of these people - and some of them are in their 50s and 60s have lived in the CBD all their lives – have seen what was a great complex only four years ago being turned into a hell hole from time to time, and it has been incredibly stressful. The tenants there are well aware that I have been working with the minister. I convey to them on a regular basis any updates from the department as to how things are going.
There have been some good moves. For example, I was able to lobby successfully to get the ‘no trespassing’ signs put up on the fences, and to have the minister and his department liaise with the police to figure out who does what because, at one time, it appeared that the department staff and the police were not sure who had a right to say to the itinerants who were camping in the grounds of Tomaris Court whether they could drink. The inference was that, because they were on public land behind the fence, it was not a place that the police could go in and demand that people tip out alcohol. It was quite difficult while that jurisdictional wrangling was going on, as to what actually could be done with regards to 20 or 30 itinerants from remote areas camped on the lawns and having a fabulous time, particularly around pension day, and driving the tenants of this Housing Commission complex crazy with distress.
Another thing that has worked well recently has been the arrival of Millennium Security. Up until recently, there was a security service being provided at Tomaris Court. However, apparently the officers involved did not get out of their cars, came at a regular time and, so, the drinkers came and went knowing full well when they would and would not be sprung. As soon as the security car had driven out, back they came into public view and had a great party. Millennium Security workers have actually taken the bold step of getting out of the car, going to meet the people, and working constructively with some of them in an effort to try to get them to understand how their poor behaviour is impacting on the people living in the complex. This has worked from time to time. It lapses from time to time, and I have certainly had complaints in the last month with regards to the behaviour of some of the tenants and the itinerants that camp there.
I know that there was a comment made by one of the other members of parliament with regards to the staff at the Department of Housing being overworked and stressed. I am also aware of this. I am not going to give up my source because I know what will happen to them. However, I have also had a staff person comment to me with regards to going into Tomaris Court approximately four or five months ago, and telling me that they - and I am not giving up the gender here as you can see – are stressed and frightened about going there and dealing with the itinerants and the tenants who display poor behaviour.
So, it is from time to time a situation for the staff there. I do extend to them my concerns that they do find themselves in this situation, that when they have had a complaint from a well-behaved, good tenant about poor behaviour, that when they have gone in there they have been abused. It is a sad day to see that those tenants, who behave poorly for some reason or other, still get to stay there. Quite frankly, many of us, if we were tenants of Territory Housing and we behaved in a way that some of these people behaved, you can guarantee we would be out quick smart. It is very distressing for people to know that there are two ways that you get dealt with depending on various things.
Mr Kiely interjecting.
Ms CARTER: You think about it. You know what I am talking about. You know full well what I am talking about.
Mr Kiely: Go on, say it then. You are making the allegation. Have the gumption to get up and say it in plain English. Don’t say it in code.
Ms CARTER: I will deal with it when I am in government, mate.
I just want to make a comment with regards to the member for Nightcliff’s views which I guess I am reflecting here as well. She made the comment that she would hate to think that people in the Territory Housing units thought she would treat them any different to people in private housing units. My electorate consists of a mix of public and private units. Up until a few years ago I, too, did not have complaints from people living in public housing units. In fact, people in private and people in public got on with their lives and everything was fine. It is only in the last couple of years that we have seen a steady decline at Tomaris Court, which is the only block that I am raising here as an issue. I have other blocks but there are no problems at all. Tomaris Court is where the problems lie. The problems started only a couple of years ago and, in my view, it is something that can be fixed because it only recently changed.
As I mentioned earlier, the minister has been disappointing in his statement. Obviously it was just irresistible for him to make this comment about houses that have not been painted for 20 years. But it is following a habit. I am going to table a letter, dated 26 July 2004, sent to tenants across the board in Territory Housing by the minister. It starts with:
Okay. Two points there. First of all this letter, I am quite sure, has already started to come back and bite the minister because I have had constituents who are tenants at Tomaris Court outraged by this letter because they know that full well when the CLP was in government they had a fantastic complex. They know that. They know that it has only deteriorated in the last couple of years. So this letter fairly got up their noses. I am aware of at least one gentleman who has contacted the minister’s office and made that point.
The next sentence was that he was aware some houses had not been painted for 20 years. I agree with the member for Brennan. Let’s see it. Let see these houses, plural, let’s see them, two of them at least that have not been painted for 20 years. If they exist and can be shown, then I stand corrected, but I will be interested to see them.
Then today we have tabled the 2010 strategy, a government publication which should be put out to people in a non-political sense. It is paid for by taxpayers. In this publication, the minister once again makes comment, and I quote:
Now we have many houses that have not been painted for 20 years. This is an appalling use of the minister’s position to have a go. I look forward to when we are in government and we can have a go at you lot.
To conclude, the minister is not always covered in glory. About three months ago, I was approached by a tenant from Tuckwell Court, the seniors’ complex in Beagle Street, Larrakeyah. He had become aware of a new tenant, a lady, who was moving in who was terribly distressed about the condition of the unit that she was going to go into. There were two issues. One was the state of the lino in the unit and the other was the condition of the toilet in which the water level in the bowl and below was black. No matter what she did, she could not get rid of this blackness in the toilet.
Mr Kiely interjecting.
Ms CARTER: Pardon?
Mr Kiely: I said that would have been an offence to you.
Ms CARTER: It would have been an offence to me. You, obviously, would be quite comfortable with that sort of situation, and jolly good to you. If that is your standard of living good luck to you.
This lady was very distressed. She had a new unit and she was excited about moving into the CBD. She was a senior lady and she did not have very good lino and this toilet. We approached the minister’s office, particularly with regards to the toilet and we were given advice that things would be sorted out. Within a week or so, I was advised that the workmen were in there. That was great. As it turned out, whereas the lino was one colour, brown or beige, the bits that were dodgy in the lounge room were replaced with blue lino so that within small area, you had one colour and another colour in bits and pieces. Well, all right, so maybe you can live with that.
When the lady went into the toilet, she was so excited because she saw there was a new toilet seat and across the new toilet seat was one of those hygienically sealed strips that you see when you go into motels. When she lifted the lid of the bowl, lo! and behold, the black toilet still existed. Obviously, the workers concerned thought that was highly entertaining, and that was all that was changed. It was only through another approach to the minister that the toilet bowl has been fixed. I congratulate and thank the minister for that, but – goodness me! – what an effort to get something done.
It is disappointing, the way the minister has spoiled the statement by making it political. I have tried to work well with the minister and he has, on many occasions, done the right thing with these problems and I know they are difficult things. I extend my support to the staff because I know they have a very difficult job. The unnecessary introduction in tonight’s statement, and this letter that went out, is a shame. I seek level to table it.
Leave granted.
Ms CARTER: Then there is the tone in some of the sentences in this. I do not think it is necessary or constructive but I guess the minister is in a position where he can do it.
Mr KIELY (Sanderson): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I compliment the minister on this strategy to 2010. I add my contribution on behalf of the people of Sanderson.
I would like to give you a profile of the electorate that I represent because we have quite a mix in housing standards. Northlakes has a middle to high socioeconomic level. There are great houses there, well kept with beautiful lawns. It is an immaculate, private housing development on a golf course with the golf course as the central theme. The only public housing in that complex is Defence Service housing. That is owned by the government, so I guess you could classify that as public housing. But there is no Territory housing in there.
Across McMillans Road are the suburbs of Malak, Anula and Wulagi. They are reconstruction suburbs after the cyclone. There is a dominance of certain types of houses there: Barclays, Orlitz, Grollos, PDCs, a couple of C19’s, and then you have your basic, ground level, three-bedroom brick veneer Territory Housing houses. Over the years since the cyclone, when these suburbs were established, which is where I will be mainly talking about tonight, there is great housing stock which is owned by Territory Housing. It was not actually put there to house low income earners.
We have great housing stock. The CLP opposition do not like us going back all those years. I will go back there, and I will compliment them for working hand in hand with the federal government and the Darwin Reconstruction Commission, in getting all that public housing created through those suburbs. There was a sameness to all this housing. There are blocks of Barclays and Grollos all over the place; there was a sameness. These houses had to be put up with a sense of urgency to meet the housing demand, and predominantly they were owned by the Northern Territory government and leased out, as I said, not necessarily to low income earners, but to Territory public servants. I believe you have to appreciate where all this housing stock came from in the start. I believe that, at that time, those houses actually might have been managed by the departments hand in hand with whatever Territory Housing of the day was called.
Over time, people moved in and out of these houses. They were all rented accommodation, so no-one was really investing any great amounts of money out of their own pocket into these places. I am talking now about your transient worker; your two, three, five-year person who may have came up here and then moved out of the place. So you get not much happening with the yard, and not much happening with the house.
There were your long-term people, who were in there and committed, and they started mapping out how they wanted their house to be. They were still happy to rent, and great tenants, who brought up their kids, and there were many families around that area who are of that nature. As time went by, they had the opportunity to purchase their houses. Over time, the housing stock started to be utilised by low income earners, people who, through circumstance, were not in a position to be able to buy, and could not afford to rent on the private rental market. You must remember that over the years we have not had very much rental stock until quite recent times, and the private rental stock was terribly expensive. These people had no hope of paying private rental or market rates, and they were living in Territory Housing.
When I was a candidate back in 2000 and 2001, walking around, doorknocking, I would go to many of these long-term low-income places. I could see all the houses in my area pretty well. When I went into these houses, they were in an appalling condition. The tenants were telling me stories of how they would be phoning up and be placed on a waiting list to get repairs done. Only the most urgent of minor repairs, such as if a pipe had burst, would they get anything done. But as far as the maintenance that was required to maintain this housing stock such as painting; putting down proper finishes in the yard like a driveway; fencing - all of them had pig wire fences; planting trees or establishing lawns was just not there. The floor furnishings were that standard grey public service tile that you get in so many houses - which is still there - and the old hopper windows. It was all like that. These people just could not get anything done by the housing agency at that time.
Dr Burns: Because there was no money.
Mr KIELY: That is it. They were not complaining. They were not complaining about the people they were dealing with at the counter or the clerk in the background. They would contact Territory Housing and Territory Housing would just say, ‘There is money. That is it. There is no money for that sort of work’. That is how it was. People accepted that because they would go there year after year asking for something – nothing! They would not get anywhere. What was the use? They would go to the local member – nothing! Nothing was getting done so they stopped complaining. They were happy to have someone who had the potential sit in their house with them and talk to them.
They kept their houses clean. Just because people are on low incomes – whether black or white - does not mean they live in pigsties. People are houseproud, leastways the ones that I can talk about; the ones I visit in my electorate. They are houseproud and, on the meagre incomes that they have and within their means, they try to keep it right. These people do not have access to flash lawnmowers, garden edgers, paint brushes, excess paint, or all these sorts of things. When you are struggling, day in, day out, to feed you family, a lawnmower and a can of paint are things that are far away from your thoughts. They did best - and they still do their best - with what they have.
I went into one house and the person was a subcontractor. This guy was talking to me and he was just about in tears, saying he was small subbie, a tiler, who could do all this maintenance work but, because there was no maintenance money around, even though he needed work, there was no money coming out for him, as a contractor, to get any work, and he had had it. He did not have money to get his car registered, and he was worrying about his family. I paint that picture of how it was before we came to government. One of the things that I did was write to every public housing person in my electorate and said that, should the Labor government get in, I would do all within my power, with the help of my colleagues, to see what we could do for them. The culmination of Home Territory 2001, the urban renewal project and the HomeNorth loan is the fulfilment of that promise that I gave to all those people.
The members for Brennan and Port Darwin were saying to us: ‘You come in here and are so unfair. You say the CLP did not paint any house for 20 years. Give me proof; show me. Show me what it is like’. If these members like, I will talk to the people in these houses and they can come around and I can show them bathrooms in these houses where the sinks have separated from the walls; where the tiles had never been done properly; where things have not been painted. I have here a copy of my newsletter that went out in July. It has: ‘Good News on the Home Front. HomeNorth paves the way with a new loan schedule for first home buyers. Public Housing receives much needed repairs and maintenance funding’. For the members for Port Darwin and Brennan, who wanted proof of what houses had not been done, here it is on the front page; a picture of a house being fixed up, which had not been painted for 20 years - no one went near it.
Dr Burns: Shame. Table it.
Mr KIELY: Here it is. I will table this. I will table it, if they wanted proof. There are still houses in the electorate of Sanderson, in the same condition, that are now on the list to be fixed up. It takes time; we are rolling around to do it. This house here - do you know where this is? This house was in a terrible condition. The people in there were battling but they did their best to maintain it. Something like $40 000 or $50 000 had to be spent on this house.
The member for Millner made the point that things take time. There is not enough money in this world to go bang! and get it all done. Therefore, we still have houses to this day within my own electorate, and the electorates of Karama, Brennan, Blain, and in Greatorex, Barkly and Katherine, in this same condition. These houses did not get to this state in three years. I am amazed at the temerity of those members on the other side who say it is unfair to blame the CLP. Well, who else can we blame?
This is not tenant neglect. This goes beyond fair wear and tear. This goes to landlord neglect and that is an indictment of the CLP. I will table this document. As I said, I will talk to a couple of tenants in my electorate, and if the members for Brennan and Port Darwin who have been shielded so much - I will get permission I am sure from these tenants - and I will take them out there. Then we will see them stand up in the House and say, ‘Thanks member for Sanderson, we were not aware but we have had a road to Damascus epiphany and now we are converted’. If that is what it takes then I am prepared to do it. I seek leave to table this document.
Leave granted.
Mr KIELY: In my newsletter I also say that:
We have quite substantial housing stock but we are getting to it. My congratulations to the minister for getting this through Cabinet, but I would suggest to you that it would have been a pretty easy call. The Minister for Housing is a great bloke but something like this would have had the full support of all Cabinet members. We all know and appreciate the need for improving the standard of housing stock.
It is not all altruism. Not only has this program improved the housing stock within the Territory, it has given us a way of injecting cash down onto the street level, down to those subcontractors like the one I mentioned before. It has been able to get them work, get them going again and these are the benefits. I am not surprised that the CLP could not see that because of their blinkered view that people in social housing, and I think the term was ‘low lives’ - that is right, ‘low lives’ was used by the member for Brennan - they are low lives and therefore do not deserve a hand up. I do not subscribe to that. We, on this side, do not subscribe to that. The majority, the vast majority of Territorians do not subscribe to that.
These people in social housing are battling for a quid. What do they expect? Do they expect that they are going to be painting the house? Does anyone have any idea of how much it costs to do renovations, or up-keep of a house? It is shocking, it costs a fortune and they do not have the money. They expect the department as the landlord, the government as the landlord, to come and do it, just as anyone’s landlord in the Territory is governed the Residential Tenancies Act and this program is about making sure that we act as good landlords. I stated in my newsletter:
What is so sinful about that? Should we say ‘Sorry, you are a low income earner and therefore you do not deserve decent housing? Let’s put a stigma on you’. I do not think so. I do not think that is the way to go about the things in life. We are supposed to be a fair and just society no matter what side of the political fence we are on.
Let me point out right here and now that the contributions from the CLP opposition in this matter are appalling. I am shocked and dismayed that people in politics should talk in such code and talk about people in public housing. They are using code all the time, talking about Aboriginal people in houses. Well, I have news for you. I get around my area and we have Aboriginal, Chinese, and Anglo. It is not just Aboriginal people in public housing. It is not just people in public housing who make noise. Go to a rented property next door to a group house and see what you think. It would be full of young fellas, probably white, who are making a hell of a noise and giving the neighbours curry. It happens all over the place.
I would like to talk about my own street. In my street, there are 10 houses and of them, seven are privately owned and three are publicly owned. One of the houses is straight across the road from me and has an Aboriginal family in it, a single mother. She has visitors coming in from the bush and they sit around out the front sometimes and, yes, it is pretty crowded. Sometimes there is a bit of noise. What is the big deal? If things get out of hand there are mechanisms in place.
There will be houses where there will be visitors who are unruly, make noise and are unwelcome. That is a shame, but that is an individual shame. You get the same thing happening in the Chinese and the Anglo community and to tar it all up and say: ‘No, it is only blackfellas getting visitors and they need to post names up on the wall so that they are the only ones there’, is discriminatory. It sickens me that people should come in here and promote that as a way to do things. If authorities can say how many people can come and visit, that is not the society I want in the Territory. That is not the society any of us should aspire to. You sign the leasing agreement. Crickey! It is not rocket science.
I wish the CLP would stop thinking that only Aboriginal people, noisy ones at that, are those who are in Territory Housing. That is not the case. Territory Housing is there for everyone. We are doing our best to make it a great asset for the community. We are doing our best to make sure that people can find a way out of public housing and get into the private area. That is where the HomeNorth scheme comes in. It is under the minister’s guidance and he is doing a great job. I commend the HomeNorth scheme. Many people in my area think it is wonderful. I have had a single parent who is a school teacher and, as a university student, could not own a house. She is now a neophyte, first year out. She has talked to the HomeNorth people and I believe she is buying a house. That is what it is all about: getting people on low incomes set up so that in future years their equity in the house will go up, they are not a burden on the taxpayer, as the CLP seems to think that anyone in public housing is.
Ms Carter: Who introduce the HomeNorth scheme?
Mr KIELY: This is another point; the CLP is quick to say: ‘You cannot come here and blame us for all this bad housing. How can you dare do that?’, but the minute there is anything good – and I will give the CLP credit for getting the scheme going - they want to put their hand up and claim it. They will claim that, but they will not claim their years of neglect and the way that they treated the people. You cannot have it both ways, member for Port Darwin. You cannot have it both ways. Either put your hand up and own up to everything or sit there and keep quite about it all. Do not be selective. Do not be selective in the past because it just does not wash.
I will tell you what: in my three years in this House, I have heard no questions from the members for Blain or Brennan about housing stock. In Estimates, nothing. All I ever hear is them complaining about bad tenants, get the tenants out of there. Never have they shown any care for these people in our society to try to get them ahead. I will be happy to go to Blain or Brennan and doorknock around the public houses and talk to these people because they are not represented, particularly by the Leader of the Opposition or the would-be Leader of the Opposition again, old Lazarus over here, who is going to make his second coming.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I will wind up. I am pretty cranked up about the contributions from the other side, which verge on racism. I commend the minister. I do not believe the minister’s message in Home Territory 2010 is political. He says it straight. It does not mention political parties. My congratulations to the staff who put this together and congratulations to all those out at Territory Housing who support these people. It is a tough job but they are doing it well.
Mr AH KIT (Housing): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, in closing this debate, I thank the members for Casuarina, Sanderson, Nightcliff, Millner, Karama, Nelson and Braitling for their contributions. There were some good points from members opposite in regards to the speakers from Katherine, Greatorex, Brennan, Port Darwin, and Macdonnell. I will come back to some of those comments. I want to pick them up in this closing debate because there are a few issues that I wish to take up with them.
There has been a history of neglect of public housing dwellings under the previous government. That is a fact. Whilst members opposite argue and beg to differ, then so be it. Firstly, the member for Katherine would have you believe that the repairs and maintenance programs under the former government was effective. However, for at least the past ten years, the repairs and maintenance program for public housing has been for unforeseen maintenance and vacates only. There has been no systematic or preventative repairs and maintenance done for many years.
It is also important to mention that Housing 2010 and the launch of that, and the ministerial statement today is moving forward from the former government’s Housing 2003. However, we want to make sure that there is a clear vision for where we will take Housing in the Territory in the next six years to 2010. I feel that there has been an irresponsible government in the past, where they have lagged behind the Commonwealth/State Housing Agreement and really dragged the chain. That is something I am endeavouring, along with my government, to make amends and move it forward. I think they realised that in late 2000, or up until mid-2001, when they started to make some changes to bring about a better policy. However, for the 10 or 15 years prior to that they were lagging quite seriously behind conditions that were put in place under the Commonwealth/State Housing Agreement.
I have seen for myself public housing dwellings that have not been painted for over 20 years, with paint peeling off the walls, lino peeled up, stoves not replaced, and rotten benches throughout the kitchen and bathroom of many houses. There was a whole litany of under-resourcing. The previous government failed and neglected the tenants in their care.
I would also like to apologise to the House and interested stakeholders for the member for Katherine’s ill-informed and brief comments. I believe we were all shocked to hear the shadow minister, and I use the term loosely, say that we do not adequately cater for our seniors. One of the few things the former mob got right when they were in government, and this was mentioned and touched upon by the member for Brennan, was the seniors’ villages they constructed. The member for Katherine really does not have any understanding that her party in power had begun to do some very good things for seniors’ villages.
The member for Katherine may not realise that there is a significant project currently underway for senior Territorians in Fannie Bay. The Fannie Bay Seniors Village is being built at a cost of $7.7m, which will provide 40 ground level two-bedroom units. And just to remind the shadow minister, we also have the Leanyer Seniors Village, Tambling Terrace Seniors Village, the Gillen Seniors Village in Alice Springs, and the Coconut Grove Seniors Village. I am sure the member for Greatorex will recall the Coconut Grove Seniors Village, because he was kicked out of it by a resident last year. I am pleased to inform the member for Katherine that, through our comprehensive stock planning process, we have identified the redevelopment of several large complexes across the Territory, including the Bernard Street complex in Katherine. At a cost of $1.5m, the Bernard Street redevelopment and reconfiguration will improve the living space for the complex, reducing the number of units from 54 to 43, and creating a community centre in the complex. I believe that that is going to be well received by the Katherine community.
It reminds me, also, of the attacks that rained down on me when the members for Araluen and Greatorex took issue with me as the Minister for Housing in regards to the Cawood Court complex regarding the wrong decisions and the wrong developers chosen. We do not hear much from them anymore, but we see that there has been an excellent job undertaken by the project developers. All those units have been sold and, actually they have also been on-sold since then, and some people are making a couple of dollars out of it. Good luck to them. Certainly, the Cawood Court complex fits in really well with the environment and has lifted the value of housing in the Gillen area of Alice Springs.
May I also point out that my office - and this in regards to the member for Katherine - is always available to organise a briefing. In fact, the member for Katherine had a briefing in my office last sittings on housing issues, and I am not aware of any other approaches she has made. She said in her contribution this morning that she finds it very hard to get a briefing from my office. Well, I have offered - and I will continue to offer - members opposite, and Independent members of this Chamber, briefings on issues that are within my portfolio area. I have put my staff on notice - especially my chief of staff - that we need to accommodate their requests as long as they are within reason and they apply through the proper processes. Protocol dictates that, if you wish to have a briefing, phone my office, write to me, tell my office what those issues are, and then we will arrange a briefing. It is as simple as that.
However, we will not do it in the manner in which the member for Katherine would like it to be done. I give you an example. This morning, the member for Katherine said: ‘I find it very hard to get a briefing from the Minister for Housing’s office’. I asked my staff to check with the department; she had her electorate officer to ring this morning seeking a briefing. She has suddenly realised this morning that this was coming on as a statement and she was the shadow minister, and that she would use that in her contribution to the debate. Very sad, very lazy.
Dr Burns: Opportunistic.
Mr AH KIT: Very opportunistic, yes. She really needs to do better than that. I find in some of her comments in the Katherine Times, where she is pitching to her so-called audience, that she makes mileage out of saying these sorts of things: ‘Very hard to get briefings from ministers in the Martin Labor government’. Well, she should come clean and organise briefings through the proper protocols, so she can understand what her responsibilities are for the portfolio areas she has as a shadow minister.
I welcome the comments of the member for Macdonnell regarding private housing ownership and the introduction of private capital to our remote communities. At last, a small sign of a small amount of intelligence opposite. In fact, I can inform him we are working with the land councils on issues surrounding this very issue. As the member opposite would have seen, if he has read the policy document properly - and I refer him to pages 12, 13 and 14 of Home Territory 2010 – it is clear in the Home Territory strategy that we want home ownership in the bush. Page 14 states: ‘Develop initiatives that encourage indigenous Territorians to purchase their own home’.
Mr Elferink: Halleluiah.
Mr AH KIT: Well look, it is here. Do you want to argue about it?
Mr Elferink: I am saying congratulations.
Mr AH KIT: How clear does it have to be? This does not …
Mr Elferink: But it is not very clear.
Mr AH KIT: This does not apply only to indigenous people in cities and townships. It is for the bush also. And so if you go to the objectives on page 12, objective 1: A sustainable social housing system, and half way down the page: Sustainable remote indigenous housing, and it says under the Focus Area:
ensure indigenous people remain central in the planning and provision of housing services in remote communities;
investigate the pooling of Indigenous Essential Services funding with remote housing program funding.
Under the second dot point of the Focus ‘Building capacity of the community housing sector’, is ‘Through IHANT build the capacity of indigenous community housing organisations’. On page 13, it says under objective three, Focus Area, ‘Encourage choice across housing tenures’, and the second and third dot points state:
explore potential extension of housing models for remote communities;
investigate land tenure options for remote communities.
Page 14 under objective three, Opportunities to access and maintain home ownership, the strategy is:
develop initiatives that encourage indigenous Territorians to purchase their own home.
It is there and spelled out. If the member for Macdonnell is congratulating us for having that in the document, then fine.
We understand that this is not going to happen overnight. We need to talk to land owners, we need to talk to land councils. We need to encourage them to think seriously about allowing land for housing development. I would like to see it similar to what I have planned for government employee housing. We know that if we are able to build houses out there and accommodate government employees, which is their entitlement as public servants, then that would take the housing pressure off ATSIS, ATSIC, or whoever is going to be delivering houses now that ATSIC is on its knees and ATSIS is still in place, along with the ATSIC regional councils for the next 10 or 11 months. We will have to await the outcome of the federal election to understand that the future role of indigenous housing and who has carriage.
I believe something like HomeNorth should be extended to the bush. My department has been instructed; it is in here. We are looking at ways we can do that. It may be that the land owners wish to do something similar to Lhere Artepe. They may wish to do something similar to Larrakia with the Darla developments in regards to becoming an entrepreneur and making land available and developing serviced land lots for which people could qualify. We know in communities that there would be up to 20 or 30 families that would appreciate contemplating a HomeNorth loan. HomeNorth loans should not be specific to the cities and towns. We are looking at the extension into the bush. Then governments would have a responsibility at looking at providing the power/water/sewerage infrastructure. It could be another suburb of that particular community.
That is the process we need to work through. But I certainly think if we are able to deliver on that two, three, or four years down the track and we get the Commonwealth’s support on this, it would be a big plus in trying to catch up with the housing needs that we have in the Northern Territory. I remind members it was $850m unmet indigenous housing needs in the Territory; something like 5000 houses that we would have to build to accommodate people in remote parts of the Northern Territory.
It is early days yet, but the real problem is there is no private market. That, clearly, is a disincentive to private capital at the outset. Nevertheless, we are pursuing possible leads for the long term in this area. As members opposite said, it will inevitably be a very slow process. The strategy is not the only approach that government is taking on this important issue. The Indigenous Economic Development Task Force is also working on this issue. However, it does not obviate the real and immediate shortfall in general housing funding on our communities.
The existing housing stock is simply nowhere near adequate. So I find it somewhat weird that the member for Macdonnell is suggesting that there is over-servicing in the area of housing provision in remote communities when we know that overcrowding is shockingly high. I encourage the member for Macdonnell to have a chat with me or put in writing how he arrives at that position.
I have argued strongly to improve housing conditions in the bush and I am pleased to inform the members opposite that an additional $23m will be delivered through IHANT this financial year.
The other point that I would like to pick up from the member for Macdonnell, and he may need to point it out to me, is that he had said, I believe, that I had complained of the over-representation of indigenous Territorians in social housing. I do not know how he arrived at that. This has never been the case. I am offended by such a provocative statement. The member for Araluen has for sometime has been seeking information on how many indigenous people live in public housing in her electorate. She wrote to me on a couple of occasions. As I have explained to her, either you qualify for public housing or you do not. Race is not a qualification and the day it becomes so by some government in the Territory, it will be a sad day.
I take this opportunity to comment on several public comments made by the member for Blain in the Alice Springs News. I will table this for the perusal of members, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker. He made comments like:
This is a completely irresponsible and reckless position to have. Less than 1% of our tenants have any formal complaints made against them. That means 99% of our public housing tenants are good tenants. They look after their houses, pay their rents and, for the most part, lead peaceful lives.
The CLP would have you believe that all public housing tenants are drug dealers, criminals, debt evaders or indigenous people. They seem to be unaware, or perhaps deliberately ignorant, that Territory Housing has some constraints, the same constraints that apply to private landlords. I cannot evict people whose kids are playing in the front yard or on the street, as a member for Brennan suggested. That would be illegal for Territory Housing to do, just as it would illegal for a private landlord.
Mr HENDERSON: Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I move an extension of time of 10 minutes to allow my colleague to conclude his reply.
Motion agreed to.
Mr AH KIT: Thank you. If the member for Brennan tables that, fine. Cornwallis Circuit has been brought to the department’s attention. I understand the complaints. I am not supportive of that type of behaviour. If he wishes for me get the department to provide a briefing or a news flash on it, I will do that and I will pass it on as soon as possible. But it is very similar to the quite stupid suggestion in the Question Time by the member for Macdonnell who stated that the gates have gone missing at Wirrina flats. I obtained some information on that. The gates have not gone missing; they have been locked and kept open. For security purposes, we tried a situation at Wirrina similar to what is done in private flats. It did not work as people kept jamming it. It created more problems for us than what it was worth, so the department is reviewing that.
I get a distinct feeling that the members opposite, especially, expect the Minister for Housing to be right across every broken louvre in public housing, every gate that has gone missing, and every light bulb that has blown. Where does it stop? For goodness’ sake, I ask them to have a bit of common sense and work with me. I am quite happy to get back to them if they have genuine complaints to raise with me. But, if they want to be ridiculous about which light bulb in Fourth Street in Katherine went off at 2 o’clock in the morning at a public housing complex, well, they need to start to mature and make sensible contributions to this Chamber.
Territory Housing is serious about being a quality landlord, and serious about the management of its debt. We have a sound debt management program which is achieving positive results. For example, in 1996, under the CLP government, the percentage of tenants in arrears was 37.86%. The rent arrears as of June 2004 was 23.24%, an improvement of 14.5%. If we use those figures, and I am quite happy to provide them to the shadow minister for Housing, and you have a look at what the member for Blain has said in his letter to the editor - and I will come back to that very shortly - you would be throwing a lot more people out of public housing, according to him. We have a situation where they, and especially the member for Brennan, jump and down, whinge and whine, but they do not offer any solutions.
I would really like them to put their heads together and come forward with some very good ideas regarding solutions. If they want to be knockers, that is fine, but if they are not going to offer up any solutions, then they are not helping the Territory to move forward.
I have here Terry Mills, the Opposition Leader, making the following comments:
This is a beauty:
Well, if we believed that, they want to start having a look around for which shady tree they want to be camping under, because these residents out there in public housing, black, white or brindle, I am led to understand, are on the roll and will vote.
Making those sorts of statements as the Leader of the Opposition does not help public housing tenants, and does not help recognising that they are, in some cases, people who are battlers, people who have come to the Territory to turn their lives around and to make a new start for themselves and their families, or people who have not been able to get the education some of us have been able to obtain and therefore have been able to do really well. But they are eligible for public housing. This government recognises that. We subsidise public housing in many cases, as we are all aware, but we are more in touch and more humane in the way we treat our public housing tenants and people who are making application for public housing.
The Leader of the Opposition blames the Martin Labor government for a complete lack on interest in Territory housing. What nonsense! Under the Martin Labor government, we have overhauled the HomeNorth program and, since its introduction on 1 July 2004, assisted 48 Territory families into home ownership with loans approved to the value of $10m. We have also implemented a $45m urban renewal program to improve the standards of our public housing throughout the Territory. There has been a significant investment into government employee housing to bring new and improved housing for key workers in the bush. We will soon have a comprehensive security screening and smoke alarm installation in all public housing dwellings. We will introduce a range of strategies to improve the way we do our business, including the quality landlord strategy and comprehensive frontline staff training.
I meet, as much as possible, with public servants in Housing. I have the utmost admiration, especially for those Housing staff who are on the front line - the tenancy managers and all the other staff who go with it. They have a very difficult job. I provide support, and I know my CEO provides as much support as he possibly can. We recognise that their job is not an easy one and we encourage them to continue to work studiously because they, I believe, get some form of satisfaction from undertaking that type of strenuous work. All I hear from members opposite is that they are bludgers; they do not do their job properly; they are too soft. I believe that is an insult to those workers, and they should be a fairly sensitive in understanding tenancy managers and housing staff and how hard they work to do their job properly and accommodate varying interests and varying degrees of hardship being experienced by tenants of public housing.
I thank the member for Braitling for her comments regarding the green loans scheme. I am pleased to say that the department is currently considering this option. We are keen to encourage environmentally sustainable construction, as commented on page 15 of the strategy, which states: ‘Any new dwellings constructed for public and indigenous housing are environmentally sustainable’. I do not believe that this has been a missed opportunity.
I thank the member for Port Darwin for pointing out the issues that were raised in the past with the abject misery of Tomaris Court – hell hole. Territory Housing has taken significant action to address the noise and nuisance difficulties at Tomaris Court: fencing and signage has been improved; tenancy staff and community patrols regularly visit the complex; Territory Housing continues to work closely with the police; and Territory Housing has given permission to the police to enter onto the common ground of the complex and move on unwanted drinkers. Tenants at the complex have also been informed that drinking in the common areas will not be tolerated. I am satisfied that Territory Housing has taken prompt and serious action, and that the living environment at Tomaris Court has improved.
Finally, I take this opportunity to thank all staff and the many workers in community housing organisations. They have a difficult job and they do that difficult job well. I thank them for their efforts and ongoing hard work.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, we are a government with a vision for housing. The previous government was tired; their ideas stale and antiquated. Nothing has changed. I commend the Home Territory 2010 strategy to the House.
Motion agreed to; statement noted.
Dr BURNS (Lands and Planning): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I move that the Assembly do now adjourn.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, on 22 July I attended an informal dinner for the Australian Ports Association or AAPMA for their biennual conference at the Aviation Heritage Museum. I was captivated by the Darwin High School Band which performed at this dinner. I was so impressed that I found out a lot more about them.
The Darwin High School Stage Band under the direction of Brian Manning from Northern Territory DEET Music School is a group of approximately 20 students who have been performing together for about three years. The style of music they play has a distinct jazz feel to it, with many famous tunes adapted to suit the ‘big band’ style. Their repertoire is wide and varied and includes traditional jazz pieces as well as songs adapted for their instrumentation such as ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’, ‘String of Pearls’, ‘New York, New York’, ‘Birdland’, ‘Jungle Boogie’, ‘Here there, everywhere’, ‘My Girl’, ‘Sitting on the dock of the bay’ - that is an old favourite of mine - ‘Mercy, Mercy, Mercy’, ‘Lady Marmalade’, ‘Chameleon’, ‘Smoke on the Water’, ‘Mission Impossible’, ‘Born to be Wild’ - I like that one - ‘Oye Como Va’, ‘Sesame Street’, ‘Mas Que Nada’ and ‘A Night in Tunisia’.
The students come from across all the year levels at Darwin High and rehearse weekly for 1 hours. I would just like to go through the instruments and some of the players: trumpets: Matthew White, Robert Jackson, Joshua Blaikie, Alexander Me, Samantha Leung, and Alexander Vatskalis; saxophones: David Bruce, Clancy O’Donnell, Vanessa Lassemillante, Nathan Lewis, and Joanna Wells; trombones: Cedric Dos Santos, Shaun Pearson, and Matthew Holt; electric bass: Matthew Fong; piano: Jennifer Proft; and drums and percussion: Cameron Jackson, Dylan Bennett, and Jeremy Ho.
The Darwin High School Stage Band has enjoyed a great deal of success since it was formed. Aside from being invited to perform at a number of DEET and community functions they are currently the holders of the School Jazz Band and Open Jazz Band Section of the North Australian Eisteddfod. It was a real pleasure to hear these young people play with so much enthusiasm. The Darwin Aviation Museum was a great venue. There were guests from interstate and overseas and nearly everyone commented on what a great outfit they were and just how professional they are. I commend these young people and their teachers for all the great work that they do.
But there is more, because from apart from the Stage Band there is another large performing ensemble at Darwin High and which is regularly asked to perform at school and community functions, and that is the Darwin High School Concert Band under the direction of Janine Matheson from Darwin High School. It performs a wide range of music from television themes, movie themes, songs, contemporary arrangements, and new arrangements of more classical music. The students in this band, numbering approximately 60, are mainly in Years 10, 11 and 12 although some of the more advanced students from Years 8 and 9 also play.
The Concert Band is the holder of the A A Riley Shield for the North Australian Eisteddfod Secondary Schools Band Section and regularly performs at a variety of functions. The instrumentation of this band is different to the stage band as it includes the clarinets which give it a whole new sound. The very committed and highly skilled students in these bands are about to embark on their very first interstate tour in September where they will perform at secondary and primary schools as well as civic venues in Sydney, Wodonga and Melbourne. The Stage Band is also part of this tour. The Concert Band rehearses for 1 hours each week. Once again, we have young people learning music, committed to music, and playing very well and going interstate. I wish them well.
As well as the Stage Band and the Concert Band there is also the Darwin High School Wind Symphony under the direction of Alana Bryett from Darwin High School. To ensure that the band program continues to flourish at Darwin High a junior band was formed two years ago as a means of training and developing the younger students’ skill in a performing ensemble. The natural progression for these students is to progress to the Concert Band. Instrumentation of the wind symphony is same as the Concert Band and consists of Years 8 and 9 students with some of the older students assisting during rehearsals. After many hours of rehearsals and work on the fundamentals of playing in a large performing ensemble, this group of young talent gave an inspiring performance at this year’s North Australian Eisteddfod, gaining a highly commended in the secondary schools section.
I commend Darwin High School and all the bands at Darwin High School, the teachers who are training them, but particularly the young people who show such enthusiasm and love of music.
On 31 July, I attended the Bus Roadeo. Imagine yourself aboard a bus in peak hour traffic on the Stuart Highway. It is the end of a working day and everyone is rushing to get home. Suddenly, the car in front slams on the breaks. A collision looks unavoidable, but in the twinkling of an eye, your bus driver deftly taps his brakes and veers out of harms way. Tactical skills such as these are a key component of bus driver training. Once a year, drivers gather to test their abilities at the Northern Territory Bus Roadeo competition. The best performers then have the chance to compete in the National Bus Roadeo, which has been held annually since 1990. In 2001, it was held at Casuarina Square.
This year’s NT Bus Roadeo was the fifth since 1999, with the finals held at the Darwin Bus Services’ Armidale Street premises, as I said, on Saturday, 31 July. Darwin Bus Service driver Dave Magree took out the competition, with the very low score of 285, followed by fellow Darwin Bus Service driver Carolyn Brumby, with a score of 340. Both drivers will represent the Northern Territory at the upcoming National Bus Roadeo to be held in Brisbane on Sunday, 24 October. Hopes are high that the Territory will place well in the competition, which is open to spectators and expected to attract up to 16 competitors from around Australia.
What is a Bus Roadeo? As the name implies, it is a competition in which bus drivers compete on a course with up to 12 obstacles designed to test drivers to the limit. The obstacles include routine tasks such as right-hand turns and stopping, as well as more hair rasing challenges including the ‘Diminishing Shoot’, ‘Serpentine’ and ‘The Wall’, which is a braking test. The Roadeo course aims to reflect actual driving conditions and situations encountered by bus drivers in their day-to-day work. Skills tested include vehicle control, passenger comfort, traffic regulations, dress standards, driver safety and efficiency within a competitive time frame. The competition is run on a system whereby points are accrued as faults are incurred over two rounds. In other words, the lower the score, the better the outcome. To ensure a level playing field, the one bus is used by all drivers.
Participating drivers and organisations report real benefits from the roadeo series, ranging from improved driver skills and staff motivation through to community education and marketing. The events also provide an environment for team building between government and private bus operators.
It was my pleasure during the roadeo to jump behind the controls of a bus and go through the course. Whilst I did not do it at the same speed as the professional bus drivers, it was a real eye opener to me. I have said before that I have driven trucks, but I have not driven a vehicle where the wheels are actually behind me. It is an interesting course. You go through a bit of a wiggle-waggle between obstacles and if you hit some of the plastic poles, you lose points. You go around a round-a-bout, and it might sound easy, but when you have such a large vehicle you have to very careful where you place your wheels. As well as that, you have to speed towards a wall and stop in time. It is a false wall so you do not crash through it; there are bricks painted on it. Of course, I took it very easy and stopped with plenty of space, but the precision of bus drivers comes down to millimetres. That is how they measure and differentiate between the different bus drivers and their skills.
You also have to stop at a bus stop and let the people off. One of the judges in the bus is in a wheelchair, and if you stop too suddenly or accelerate too quickly or go around a corner too quickly, and they move around in their wheelchair, they will take deduct points.
I had a go and that is about what it was and when I got off the bus at the end all the drivers cheered because I had a go, not that I did all that well.
Mr Wood: Do they still have the mirrors on the bus?
Dr BURNS: Yes, they have mirrors and they also have security cameras.
Mr Wood: No, after you finished driving, were there still mirrors?
Dr BURNS: Yes, there were mirrors! It was a fantastic thing. I have a list of the drivers who competed. These are in order from first to ninth: Dave Magree from Darwin Bus Service had the lowest score; followed by Carolyn Brumby, Darwin Bus Service; Sam Chungue, Darwin Bus Service; Rosinia Couturaud, Darwin Bus Service; David Alm, Darwin Bus Service, Aaron Blash from Buslink, followed by Andrew Martin, from Buslink, Mick Kerrod from Darwin Bus Service, and then Jim Gallacher from Darwin Bus Services. I commend all the helpers there and everyone had a great time. It was a lot of fun. Amongst the army of helpers were Geoff Baker, manager of Darwin Bus Service, Gary Weh, Guido Merlo, Brett Hunter, John Nash, John East, Jean Baker, Ben Johnson, Helen Coulter, Jan Post, Joel Couturaud, Peter Fowler, Gary Chapman, Aaron Nash, Bruce Action, Judith Action, Stephanie Alm and Jasmine Alm. Thanks to all those who helped.
They were also having a reunion that night of bus drivers, and there was the history of buses in Darwin which was very interesting. They are a great group. I commended the bus drivers because they do a very hard job. They are dealing with the public all the time and, as we know, the public can be very discourteous. From time to time, we have negative reports about bus drivers but, in the main, 99% of the time, bus drivers do a fantastic job. They are concerned about the safety of their passengers. They are concerned about punctuality of the bus service, and the quality and standard of the bus service. Once again, I commend the drivers from both Darwin Bus Service and Buslink.
At the end of last term, I was pleased to provide Quiet Achiever book vouchers to Sean Hartley and Remy Fowler of Jingili Primary School, and at Moil Primary School, to Gunalini Packiakumar in Year 5, and to Brendan Downes and Jarod Luis of Year 1, who shared a voucher. At Wagaman Primary School, Thomas Hinz in Transition and Clayton Heit in Year 7 were both noted for their consistency of approach to learning, and the quiet and determined manner in which they seek to do well.
Other achievers around the schools in the Johnston electorate were David Kruse, who has been participating in the Australian Football U13 national competition in Adelaide; Callum Maclachlan’s selection in the Under 16s Northern Territory Basketball Representative Team which played in Perth in July; Liam Maclachlan, who was selected in the School Sport Northern Territory Basketball Team in August, and Under 14s Northern Territory Basketball Representative Team in September; Liam and Madeleine Birch were selected to represent the Northern Territory in Cross Country Running in August in Canberra, and I certainly wish them well; Stephan Dippel, whom I have also complimented personally, was selected to represent the Northern Territory in the Under 15 Rugby League Carnival held in Adelaide in June; Tellie Geranis was selected to play soccer for the City Cluster team later this year in Gove; and Leonello Harrison, who has been selected to play for the Northern Territory Under 13 Australia Rules Football team in Adelaide in August.
Also compliments to some Territory Young Scientists from Moil Primary School who received awards for their effort and terrific work. These were: Iona Watson, Rachel Quong, Sau-ching Leung, Mitchell Aldridge, Chloe Wallent, Reina Shean, Lucy Anderson, Indi Mansfield, Alys Shanahan, Nikki Kastellorizios, Jonathon Dyer, Isabel Bruekers, Eliza Jongue, Maryann Lu, Natalie Freak and all of the 5-7 Kellam Class.
The 2004 Australasian Schools English Competition saw a Moil Primary School student awarded the State Medal for achieving the highest mark in Year 7 in the Northern Territory and South Australia. A special congratulations to Iona Watson for a fantastic result. High distinctions were also awarded to Iona, Marion Caraher, Gareth Dickens, Thomas Pisel, Briana Harding and Mollie Harding.
To all those students from the schools in the electorate who have won prizes, or been selected in representative teams, all the best and congratulations, and just a word of encouragement for those still waiting for their prize and still trying to get representative duties for the Northern Territory, hang in there, train hard, apply yourself and I am sure you will get there.
Ms CARTER (Port Darwin): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I was pleased to hear the member for Johnston speak tonight about the Darwin High School band. It is, indeed, a great band. However, I was attending the Darwin High School school council meeting earlier this month, and it was disappointing to hear the troubles the Northern Territory School of Music is currently facing, because it is with the great assistance of this school of music that the Darwin High School band achieves the success that it does.
Recently, the Northern Territory music school has relocated. Part of the deal of relocating was that the government would reimburse its removal costs. Unfortunately, to date, those costs have not been reimbursed by the government. The end result is that the School of Music is having to contemplate reducing some of its services to groups such as the Darwin High School band, and to Darwin High School. Therefore, I hope the minister, in his keenness to support the Darwin High School band, will be able to liaise with his ministerial colleagues to hurry up the cheque to pay the money for the promised reimbursement of removal costs.
On another matter, today in the Chamber during Question Time, we pursued an issue with regard to Total Recreation. I am going to speak on that tonight. Over the last month or so, I have been doorknocking my electorate. It actually surprised me that a number of constituents raised with me the issue of Total Recreation. Quite frankly, up until only recently, I was not aware of the scope of the efforts and the support that Total Recreation provides to Territorians. It has been a very interesting learning experience for me.
Total Recreation was established 11 years ago in the Northern Territory, and it provides a service to people with a disability to enable them to interact more fully with the community via activities such as sport like bowling and basketball, and recreation such as artistic performances, shopping, dining out, and tours - all the things you and I take for granted in life. Funding for Total Recreation is provided, primarily, from the Department of Health and Community Services.
The amount of funding provided and the levels given vary depending on your source of information. However, around $200 000 a year appears to be provided by the Department of Health and Community of Services. I could be corrected on this, because I have been given different amounts by difference sources. The Department of Sport and Recreation provides about $58 000 a year. Other sources of funding for Total Recreation come from their own fundraising, which they find difficult given their limited staffing and the high workload that they have. They do some of their fundraising. Clients also have to contribute financially to the activities they become involved in. Total Recreation has five dedicated staff, four of whom are full-time, and they provide a seven-day-a-work service, which is a great thing to be doing, particularly as a number of staff, even though they have tertiary qualifications in sport and recreation, are paid what I would describe as fairly low, at about $35 000 a year. Yet, they are still able to provide a seven-day-a-week service to their clients. I suspect the reason they do that is because of the personal dedication they have towards the people with disabilities whom they assist.
Over the last few years, the numbers of people in our community who wish to use a service like Total Recreation has increased. I suspect we have more people with a disability, proportionately, in our community now, and so there has been an increased pressure on Total Recreation just in numbers. Over the last few years, Sport and Recreation funding has been cut from $69 000 a year, which it was a few years ago, down to $53 000 a year. Because their funding is so tight, at approximately $250 000 a year, the loss of $16 000 has had an impact. Also, part of the funding that is provided by the Department of Health and Community Services is tied funding. It is $40 000 a year that has to be used specifically on eight seriously disabled clients, so there is very little flexibility within the funding once you add in some of the costs that the agency faces.
In order to deal with this, Total Recreation over the last few years has actually had to contract its client base by stipulating that instead of clients being aged from seven years to whatever, they have had to reduce it to only accepting clients who are nine years old or older, and then recently they have had to reduce that further to only accepting clients who are eleven years of age or older. It has been very disappointing for the staff essentially to not be able to provide a service to younger children, children of the primary school age. As I said, the demand for services is also increasing with the numbers of people with a disability living in our community. Of course they would see the success of Total Recreation and celebrate, for example, the success of the blind lawn bowlers, and the member for Johnson recently added his support to that here in the Chamber.
We are all aware of the good work that Total Recreation does and even people with a disability, I believe, would be seeing that and thinking, ‘I would like to get involve with that, too’, which has added to the increased demand for services.
What Total Recreation needs is an increase in their core funding to cover things like administration, wages, and rent, not to have specific grants that are tied to a specific things - although that is great and you do need that - but the increase in funding they need needs to be flexible to cover their admin costs.
Total Recreation is a wonderful organisation. I do commend the staff and its supporters for the work that it does. Today in Question Time we had a number of Total Recreation staff and clients and carers here in the Chamber, and it was great to see them here. It certainly fired all of us up and we had a fairly heated Question Time. I found it a bit hard to follow from time to time what was actually being said. But I certainly got the impression that the Minister for Sport and Recreation and his department seemed to give a commitment to reinstate a payment of $11 000 a year which had been cut. The Minister for Family and Community Services gave a commitment to meet with delegates from Total Recreation and their clients and their carers to discuss their needs.
As I say, what is required is at least an extra $40 000 a year of untied funding. I realise that after Question Time today the Minister for Family and Community Services held an impromptu meeting with the people from Total Recreation and that was great to see. I certainly hope that as a result of that meeting there has been something decided that is going to help Total Recreation maintain and hopefully increase the services which it provides to the people of the Northern Territory. I hope both ministers have been able to come to the party with that. If that is the case, I congratulate them for it.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I concur with the remarks made by the member for Port Darwin about Total Recreation. I think she summed it up very well.
I would like to cover a few diverse issues tonight. One is about a singer in the rural area who will be competing tonight in Australian Idol. I do not know how many people she has had to compete against but she is down to the last 30 competitors. According to what I have here from the Litchfield Times she beat over 50 000 people to reach the final 30. Christie Green is a great singer. She is only a young lady. She used to sing at Taminmin High School; that is where I first heard her to sing. Her mother, Robyn Green, is a famous singer around Darwin, especially gospel-type singing. I gather Christie likes R&B, gospel and soul music. She has a wonderful voice and you would be amazed at the range and clarity of her singing.
Unfortunately, Australian Idol is on tonight on Channel 10. The problem is we cannot see it in the Northern Territory. Those of you who know about Australian Idol to advance further you need to have a lot of people vote for you. We cannot see her singing, except on Imparja or SKY Channel, unfortunately it is going to be very hard for Christie to advance further into the finals. What we are hoping is that people will see a young lady from the Northern Territory, an Aboriginal lady from the Northern Territory, who has so much talent and lives so far away from the mainstream music industry, that they may say: ‘We will support her regardless of whether we support someone from our own state’.
I am hoping tonight that we will hear something. I was talking to Christie’s mother this afternoon. Unfortunately, Robyn’s father died this week, which has made it a bit hard, because Robyn and Christie are in Sydney and the father died while they were there. I rang Channel 9 and asked them if they could at least broadcast the results of Australian Idol because we will not see it otherwise. Hopefully, they will do that tonight so we can find out how she went. She is a great talent and I hope she can make it to the top because she will do well. She comes from a great family.
Now for a little plug for a book that we have in the rural area: The Rural Business Guide was brought out by Nicola Allsop. It is her second attempt. It is a professional little book that this lady has attempted to publish for the second year. She has done it to try to promote rural business. Naturally, it is a venture for her as well. She is hoping to make some income out of it, but if anyone wants to know anything about businesses in the rural area, this is a great little book. If anyone wants to see me about getting some copies, I can help you out. It is professionally done. I had a phone call from Wayne Zerbe today who said he is amazed at how professional it is. Perhaps the Palmerston Regional Business Association may be promoting it as well. Well done, Nicola.
We had the Mango Ball not so long ago at Berry Springs, and I did mention that that was a success in itself. $3000 was raised from that Ball and it went to our local St John Ambulance. The Mango Ball was a fantastic night. A lot of money was raised on the night and a lot of money was raised by selling raffle tickets. People like Cheryl Owens, Lyn Berryman, Jinx Smith and a number of others who belong to the Mango Ball Committee, recently presented Greg Payne, from the local St John Ambulance Brigade, with a cheque for $3000 for them to buy more equipment. That is a great story and it shows you people who enjoy their primary industry as well as helping the community, and it was a great effort.
I should mention that some Japanese students arrived here today. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend. They are part of an exchange program with Taminmin High, and I was disappointed that I was not able to be here. I congratulate Taminmin High School on the work they have done in developing relationships between the rural area and Japan. It certainly reaps benefits for both sides, and much of the thanks and praise should go to Kim Rowe, the Principal of Taminmin High.
I have said before that Taminmin High is a good school. At times, in the media, it receives some bad publicity that is not always warranted. There are times when it should have far more credit for what it does. Good stories include Christie Green, the exchange students from Japan, and their work in VET courses and primary industry courses. All those things are great. The have a new choir under Tanya Ham. It is a terrific choir. Unfortunately, they have suffered from the cuts to the Northern Territory Music School. I might be raising that again tomorrow. The member for Port Darwin also raised it. I believe there is a solution to it brewing, but I will have to hear from the minister a little more about that.
The last thing I would like to say tonight relates to the issue of the animals at Tipperary. We had a censure debate yesterday, and I just remind people of what I said last night, and I am quoting from Hansard.
I am grateful that I was given the opportunity for a briefing on the whole saga. If it was not the whole saga, it was certainly a fair bit of it, because the briefing went for an hour and a quarter. It was a very detailed briefing. It certainly gave me another viewpoint on the whole situation. I am not going to say what was said in that meeting, except to say that I think that there is another side to this story. I am not saying that may not have been mistakes made, or that there may have been things that could have been done better. However, I would ask the government, and I realise that there is a case before the court before the minister, to come out and explain to the Territory public exactly what process occurred. One way for that to occur would be to ask the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, under Standing Order 21A, which says:
And if I go to (d):
This would be a great opportunity for the government to say, ‘This is what we did’, and allow the Public Accounts Committee to question the public servants who were involved, to find out what process they took to come to the stage of charging the owner of the animals with breaches of the act. Those public servants normally cannot speak in this Chamber, but they would be under privilege, they could give the details that I heard yesterday at the briefing, and it would allow both opposition and members of the government to question what happened. If the government does not have anything to hide - and I do not say that in a negative sense; I am just saying that if you want things to be out in the open so the public understands it, because there has been a lot of publicity in the newspaper about it and I heard another point of view last night, and I think that point of view really needs to be out in the public arena for debate. When I say the ‘public arena’, the Public Accounts Committee would be the ideal place for it to occur.
I am saying to the government, ‘Would you please look at this option?’ I could move a motion at the next private members’ day that such and such a thing happened, but I think it would hasten the process if the government would do it. We do have these committees. They are not just there for the opposition to try to score points off, and to get members of the government up before it. They are there so that the parliament as a whole can seriously analyse issues that are of concern to the public and to the parliament. I believe there is a real opportunity for the government to say that it believes in open and accountable government. We know there are some issues. There are issues of taxpayer funds being used here. There are issues of what the chronology of the process was and why it occurred.
I understand there are some matters before the court, but I do not think all those matters, necessarily, will stop this committee hearing exactly what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. I ask the government to seriously consider putting this matter before a parliamentary Public Accounts Committee.
There is the other issue of the minister’s statements that he has a court case ongoing. Perhaps one can look at those statements in light of what I heard yesterday and, maybe, have a slightly different opinion. However, to some extent, when it comes to the minister making a statement, he has to take some of the rap - whether it is good or bad - for what he says. I am not sure that would come into the inquiry. It may come into an inquiry, but I imagine, because the minister has a court case pending, he may not be able to speak on that matter. However, I certainly think, leaving that aside for the time being, there is plenty of room for an inquiry through the Public Accounts Committee. That would enable all members of parliament to hear exactly what happened and make their own judgment; to question the public servants and the minister. That would make for a far more transparent and open process to find out exactly what did happen.
Mr KIELY (Sanderson): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I would like to talk about a great new community that is emerging in our northern suburbs and throughout Darwin - and throughout the Territory for that matter. That is the African community. The Africa Australia Friendship Association meets in my office on a monthly basis. I had the pleasure of going to one of their functions.
The Africa Australia Friendship Association was established and incorporated in 2000. It started with a small membership base. The association’s membership now exceeds 100, involving people who have come from countries in the African continent such as Sudan, South Africa, Ethiopia, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Tanzania and Gambia. You can see that there is a wealth of countries represented.
The association’s main purpose is to provide a social and cultural support group to its culturally diverse members, as well as assist new African arrivals to the Northern Territory. To achieve its aims, the association provides a forum for the promotion of Africans, and undertakes cultural functions, sports and educational activities. I praise the association for working together as one group to maintain their cultural and linguistic heritage, and for encouraging active participation amongst its members. Although a relatively new association, it demonstrates a strong sense of purpose, cooperation and commitment to its social and cultural goals.
This year, a dinner dance was held on 10 July 2004 at the Portuguese/Timorese Club in Marrara. This is a social event that enhances and understands appreciation of each others cultures in a relaxed, informal way. I had the pleasure of representing minister Vatskalis at this function, and it was great. It was a very vibrant function and quite well attended. I saw quite a number of people whom I know assist the new arriving Africans into our community, particularly the teachers from the Intensive English Unit at Anula Primary School. They were there helping out. There were people my wife, Marie, works with. It was a fabulous all-round do.
Jeff Gaskell, whose wife is part of the committee, whom I had the pleasure of working with and now works at Charles Darwin University, I believe, was MC, and he did a fabulous job. He has a wonderful couple of girls and they are quite talented. It is a great all-round family which is really extending out the welcoming hand to the new arrivals. It is wonderful to see in this place of ours that we still have that spirit of inclusiveness, while people are still able to maintain their strong cultural identity.
It is events like this that highlight the culture and diversity that makes the Territory such a great place in which we live. We see it at all our different cultural events that we all attend - the Filipinos particularly and the Greek cultural events which everyone says are just fantastic, although they have come in for a bit of a caning by some non-tolerant members of our Chamber here. However, that is the way it is. It is we Territorians who have the rare opportunity to participate in many great events such as this that people in other places can only dream of.
The Territory is truly a multicultural society. It is this society that the Northern Territory government really does help support and we will continue to support activities and associations aimed at benefiting not only the Darwin African community but enriching our whole community. We do this through different forms of sponsorship and assistance to the ethnic communities. Funding under the Ethnic Affairs Sponsorship program, I am pleased to advise the House tonight, has increased from last year’s $697 000 to $770 000 for 2004-05.
These sponsorship funds are aimed at assisting ethnic organisations such as the Africa Australia Friendship Association to undertake innovative projects, and to maintain and promote cultural and linguistic diversity in the Northern Territory. In fact, the Territory government, through the Department of Ethnic Affairs, helped out at that function with a grant of $1900; money well spent, I thought, to help maintain the African cultures - and I use the word cultures - within the community.
Functions such as this and such associations as this cannot function without a strong committed committee. I would like to put forward the House’s gratitude and thanks to Mr Charles Pitia the president; Ron Smith, the vice president; Casmel Taziwa, treasurer; Mack Chawala, secretary; Barh R Nyondy, assistant secretary; James Justo, student representative; Bekele Mekonnen-Rabo, a member of the committee; Mille Mogga, another member; and Frederica Gaskell, the publicity officer.
There are also many associations and organisations around town that help the Africa Association. The main needs of new African migrants when they came into our community is the capacity to learn the social and welfare systems in the areas of health, youth, employment, police and law services. There are plenty of organisations that are mainly funded by DMIA, the Department of Migration and Indigenous Affairs, to support in these settlements. These are Anglicare Refugee Migrant Settlement Services which looks after migrants and refugees from non-English speaking backgrounds; the Melaleuca Refugee Centre, which assists with the initial settlement of refugee families only for the first six months and thereafter the Anglicare settlement services take over; the Multicultural Council of the NT which will have a new service in probably six months to assist migrants from the Horn of Africa, countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia.
The Africa Australia Friendship Association is very keen to provide settlement to its new migrants and has been involved using volunteers within their communities. The Africa Australia Friendship Association started almost three years ago, as I have said, and have achieved a lot in promoting cultural heritage and they do this through food, fashion, artefacts, traditional music and dancing, and through their annual dinner dances. Some of their achievements have been the Cultural Connect Band which performed during the first dinner dance and was picked by the local artist who promoted them nationally. They were among the first ten groups who were nominated nationally to showcase their rap music. Other performances that have occurred through volunteer work have been the African drama, Refugee Life, which was attended by 300 community members. The Anglicare Refugee Migrant Settlement Services Program has been involved in working closely with the Africa Association in developing other youth programs in the areas of youth leadership skills and development.
I congratulate those groups which help the Africa Australia Friendship Association; they are doing a great job. It is wonderful to have this new and emerging community which will only further enrich the lifestyle of the Territory. It should not be forgotten that the old peoples of the Northern Territory and the new peoples of the Northern Territory are what makes it the place that we want it to be. I do not hold with the views that any one group is better than any other group. We are all in this together and it is incumbent on all of us, particularly those of us in this House who have welcomed these communities and look to progressing our society.
Ms CARNEY (Araluen): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I wanted to talk tonight about a matter that has consumed much time from the Attorney-General’s office and, in particular, his press secretary. I am referring to the release of files of two public servants for use in a personal injuries proceeding. Members will recall that, during the Estimates Committee, I asked the Attorney-General certain questions about why these files were released, apparently in breached of the Information Act. The Attorney-General refused to answer my questions.
I also asked the Treasurer as minister for public employment and, to his credit, the Treasurer spoke to me afterwards. The Commissioner for Public Employment, Mr Kirwan, and the minister and I spoke during a break during the Estimates Committee. The minister asked Mr Kirwan to get back to me about this matter. Mr Kirwan said that he did not know anything about it. This was notwithstanding the fact that Mr Kirwan had received two letters from the plaintiff’s lawyers Morgan Buckley – one dated 6 April, the other dated 13 April; both faxed and both marked in bold, specifically: ‘For the attention of John Kirwan, the Commissioner for Public Employment’. I showed Mr Kirwan those letters; he had no knowledge of them. That is curious to say the least.
I did not receive anything from Mr Kirwan, nor did I hear from the minister’s office, although I had an expectation that I would hear from Mr Kirwan. After raising these important matters during Estimates and not receiving any answers or hearing anything from anyone, there was a media release. Essentially, what I was saying was there was an aroma of skulduggery about the release of these files for use in legal proceedings. I knew then that I was onto something because there was a flurry of media releases from the minister’s office. You always know when you are on a good thing, when you get two or three media releases issued from the government. You can smell that you are onto something.
Indeed I was. I knew I was, because what happened in this case was quite improper. I will come back to that shortly.
I should say at this juncture that the plaintiff is a constituent of mine. One of the public servants is her husband, who is also a constituent of mine. I raised this matter not only on their behalf, but also because there are some very serious issues involved in this case. We will be hearing more of it in due course. I say again, there is an aroma of skulduggery about what happened in this case and the Territory’s public servants should be very concerned indeed.
In one of the three media releases issued, the Attorney-General, instead of dealing with the issues and seeking to provide what amounted to an intellectually and practically satisfying result, went off half–cocked and said that I had a vested interest in the case because I acted for the plaintiff. He alleged that it was outrageous that I had not disclosed that. The Attorney-General is quite wrong; there was no vested interest. It was the case that, prior to entering politics, I did act for the plaintiff, and have not done so since entering politics.
There is no vested interest when a member of parliament puts things to a government minister about pretty much anything but, in particular, on behalf of two constituents. I might say I never acted for the husband of the plaintiff. The husband of the plaintiff was one of two public servants who had his personnel files obtained without proper regard to the law. There was flurry of media releases; they were just too hysterical for words, and even journalist talked to me about that. Perhaps the minister’s office can learn to settle itself down a bit, because no one took any notice.
The minister then, in one of his many media releases, said that he welcomed a finding made by the Information Commissioner about the release of these files. That was misleading. It was untruthful, because there was never a finding made. I actually spoke to the Information Commissioner on 14 July. I took contemporaneous notes of my conversation, and he said: ‘I certainly didn’t make a finding’. Why it was that the Attorney-General, the Territory’s first law officer, issued a media release and then did radio, and said, with confidence, that the Information Commissioner had made a finding in this matter is a cause of great concern. The Attorney-General was skating on very thin ice at the beginning but the ice was getting thinner. The Attorney-General misled Territorians when he said there was a finding. There was not a finding at all made by the Information Commissioner.
The Attorney-General then proceeded to do a number of somersaults, it seems to me. He just could not quite make up his mind as to which way he was going to go, but what he was resolute about was not answering the very serious questions that I raised on behalf of these two public servants.
I have a copy here of the transcript of proceedings in the Supreme Court, dated 8 April 2004. I will start with page 1. I will then turn to the final page of this transcript. The plaintiff and the public servants were represented by a Mr Meldrum QC, a silk from Melbourne. This 100 or so pages of transcript is about how it was that these files were obtained and were provided to the Supreme Court. For the sake of non-lawyers I should include an additional bit. The files were obtained without the issue of subpoena. In other words, there was no lawful basis upon which the files of these public servants could be obtained. They were apparently obtained by request. Someone rang someone up and simply asked for those people’s files. That is not what is meant to happen, and there are all sorts of rules and regulations to protect people’s personal information, and all of them, apparently, were breached.
The files having being delivered by someone to the Supreme Court, the plaintiff’s lawyers were able to look at those files. What happened though, was that, after the files were obtained, the defendant’s lawyers - the Northern Territory government’s lawyers - instructed by the Attorney-General and/or his delegate, sought to issue a subpoena in relation to the files. In other words, they got the information improperly, then they issued a subpoena in order to give their actions some form of legitimacy. Mr Meldrum, on page one of the transcript, says:
Throughout the application to set aside the subpoena, Mr Meldrum made a number of submissions about how the release of the files was, ‘a breach of the law’, and, ‘a reckless disregard for the law’. But the issue was, always, the plaintiff’s solicitors were applying to set aside the subpoena. Around one hundred pages of legal argument took place. Then her Honour, Justice Thomas, concludes and makes a decision at page 98 of the transcript, the final page, and she says:
The fact is that the Supreme Court was never required to rule on whether the files were obtained improperly. The Supreme Court, Her Honour Justice Thomas, was only required to rule on whether the subpoenas were an abuse of process. For a number of reasons, she found they were not. However, the issue as to how these files were obtained and whether they breached the Information Act or, indeed, the Public Sector Employment and Management Act has not been resolved. Arguably, this matter should go before a court, specifically for this purpose.
Why this whole incident smells is that the Attorney-General went to, I would say, hell and back to ensure that the people involved - my constituents and another person - did not get an answer as to why their files were obtained. The Attorney-General did not tell Territorians that he instructs his solicitors and/or his delegate. Therefore, the buck stops with him. Who did request these files? I have had some correspondence with the Information Commissioner and he has advised me that he does not know how these files were obtained, or who obtained them.
All of this is pretty slippery. Notwithstanding things like the Information Act brought in by this government, when the Attorney-General stood in this place and assured people of the Northern Territory that nothing would be obtained improperly, everything would be right and their rights would be protected, this is just one incident of two people’s files being obtained. It is on the nose, and it just should not happen. However, what is most disturbing is that the Attorney-General just does not get it; he apparently does not think that this is very serious. The fact that he issued three, almost hysterical, media releases on one day indicates to me that he is on a loser and will do almost anything to ensure that I back off. I will not back off. The Attorney-General will be hearing much more of this.
I note with interest that my letter dated 9 July to the Attorney-General remains unanswered. I wrote to him and said that the reason I had been asked to do so is that my constitutents are not satisfied with the response the Attorney-General has made to date. What I can say, also, is that the Information Commissioner, in his letter to me of 16 July, says that he proposes to meet with officers of the Department of Justice and the Office of the Commisioner for Public Employment to ascertain the extent of existing rules, policies and guidelines related to the use or disclosure of personal information in litigation, and to discuss whether additional measures are necessary.
This is not simply the member for Araluen having a lot to say about this issue. The fact that the Information Commissioner acknowledges that there is something in this suggests to me that the Attorney-General really is ducking for cover. He has done himself a disservice in the way he has responded to my correspondence and public calls. For a bloke who probably regards himself as a bit of a straight arrow, his conduct has been disgraceful. It has been absolutely appalling. As the Territory’s first law officer, he has an obligation to ensure that the laws he introduces, the laws that govern all of us in the Northern Territory, work properly. If they do not, he needs to come in here and say there is a part of this act that we need to fix.
It is not okay for these two public servants in question, or indeed any public servant in the Northern Territory, to have their files obtained simply upon request - no subpoena - without their consent. No one knows how they got them, but we do know that the government lawyers were instructed by the Attorney-General and/or his delegate, and suddenly these files landed in the laps of the government lawyers. That is not appropriate for any government; it is outrageous. I repeat that there is an aroma of skulduggery about this matter. I would like the Attorney-General to answer my letter of 9 July truthfully and no doubt we can discuss this on another occasion.
Ms MARTIN (Chief Minister): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, in the middle of all the exciting exhibitions and events taking place in Darwin this month, and there certainly are - the Darwin Festival is terrific and I am looking forward tomorrow night to going to Jonas Salt and on Saturday night to Tin Hotel, two wonderful local productions headlined for the Darwin Festival - I would also like to draw attention to a fantastic exhibition I went to at the Charles Darwin University gallery. It opened on 14 August and is there for a week. It is from the Nauiyu Community at Daly River.
The exhibition was curated by Merrepen Arts coordinator, Kate Podger, featuring painting, print making and glass from 15 artists. The artists included Patricia Marfurra, Anne Carmel, Marita Sambono, Christina Yambeing, Gracie Kumbi, Aaron McTaggart, Mercia Wawul, Molly Yawulminy, Louise Pandella, Benigna Ngulfundi, Malcolm Wilson, Larissa Miler, Karen Warloo, Wendy Longmirr and Olivia Marranya.
At the exhibition I caught up with Charles Darwin University’s Vice Chancellor, Helen Garnett, and we both agreed that the exhibition was a wonderful opportunity to buy some excellent artworks from the Daly. There was good support for the exhibition from staff and the community, Russell Lilford from VET and the staff from the School of Creative Arts and Humanities including Marina Baker and Judith Ahern. We were joined by Professor Ann McGrath from the Australian National University together with Sonia Smallacombe, head of the School of Australian and Indigenous Knowledge Systems at CDU. Sonia has been involve with a joint ANU, CDU and Yale University project culminating with a visit to the Territory to visit Nitmiluk and Kakadu. Professor McGrath said that the organisation by Sonia from CDU had been exceptional, and the event an opportunity for much useful professional and collegiate discussion.
It was a wonderful exhibition and it is always good to hear about exciting initiatives at CDU. The opening also offered me the chance to have a chat with some very old friends, Doreen and Jack McTaggart, long time Territorians and proud grandparents of Aaron McTaggart who was exhibiting at this exhibition. It was good because one of the last times I was at Merrepen, down at the Daly, I had the opportunity to purchase one of Aaron’s beautiful prints and they are quite extraordinarily beautiful.
There is a very strong tradition of print making in the Daly area, also canvas, textiles and now they have added to that. They have a kiln and they are doing glass and this exhibition has some of their first early glassmaking at it. If this is early glass, what they can do is going to be extraordinary. They have only had two firings, but beautiful glass wear and certainly a very creative community. It was a wonderful afternoon all around. Congratulations to Kate and the artists for an excellent exhibition and it was terrifically curated.
On 6 July, I attended a picnic in Damoe-Ra Park in celebration of the historical contribution made by women in the Territory. The picnic was an event marking the opening of the Tribute Pathway, and the public celebration of the Tribute to Northern Territory Women. I initiated the Tribute to Northern Territory Women on International Women’s Day in 2002 to give Territorians the opportunity to recognise, celebrate and commemorate the achievements of outstanding Territory women and their contribution to the economic, social and cultural life of Territorians. Over 200 people attended to witness the opening of the commemorative pathway. Among the crowd were several of the Tribute recipients and their families including 2003 recipient Cynthia Molina and 2004 recipients Joyce Chin, Fele Mann and Norma Grant. Damoe-Ra Park is a fitting venue for the Tribute Pathway as it was chosen in 1992 as the site to commemorate, in perpetuity, the significant role women have played in the Territory.
Territory women artists designed and installed the commemorative pathways. The 2003 mosaic was designed and inlaid by Sharon Brissoni-Bevan, which is complemented by a border painted by Larrakia artist, June Mills. The 2004 pathway, featuring a pebble mosaic, was designed and constructed by Techy Masero. The remarkable artworks are an ideal way to honour and remember these women. Both June and Techy attended the picnic.
Picnickers were welcomed to the park by Mnage a Trios, a string trio, followed by Welcome to Country by Yvonne Odegaard and didgeridoo playing by Eddie Kitching. I then opened the pathway after which the Juniper Tree Dance Company performed a dance Lake Surprise based on the story by Warlpiri woman, Janet Long Nakamarra. The dance was choreographed by Gary Lang who is a member of the Larakia Tribe. A series of banners were displayed at the picnic featuring the tribute recipients. These art works were designed by Dunnart and First Class in Graphic Design. The banners, along with a collection of commemorative posters, tour with the Community Cabinet and will be on display in libraries across the Territory to ensure that all Territorians have access to these women’s fascinating stories.
The images and stories will also be available as a permanent web installation at the National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame in Alice Springs and on the Office of Women’s Policy web site. This web site is devoted to commemorating these extraordinary women and to give depth to histories of each recipient. It will feature information and photographs of important events in these women’s lives as well as oral history audio files and will be a vital historical and educational resource.
Too often, the contributions that women make are undervalued and unacknowledged. This makes events such as the Tribute and the picnic, which value and acknowledge women of the Territory both past and present, a vital part of our history. The tribute and the women who are being honoured will be a source of inspiration and encouragement for future generations.
I also wish to speak tonight on three Central Australian events and attractions that I attended over the last couple of months.
The Beanie Festival: of the many quirky, quality events that Alice Spring’s people specialise in, the Alice Springs Beanie Festival has to be one of the most surprising. Visitors probably do not know what to expect and, certainly for my first Beanie Festival, I did not, but I am sure they are surprised at the quality of the entries, the huge attendance and support from the community and the excited buzz that emanates from the doors of Araluen while the event is on.
Beanies of all different shapes are for sale, but the real focus is on the exhibition. It really has to be one of the best textile exhibitions in this country, with sculptures - made out of beanies, of course - that inspire, challenge and even make you laugh outright. There were beanies topped with animals and flowers, beanies of Leunig characters, beanies made of natural materials and beanies so delicate that they really would suit a princess in the traditional manner. The Leunig beanie was fantastic; it was a traditional beanie with a Leunig character knitted and stuffed on top of it. It cost about $300 so it was a serious effort. I do not think it really meant to be worn but as an object d’art, it would have been just superb. I was going to ring Michael Leunig and say: ‘Michael, there is something in Alice Springs you need to buy’.
Some of the assorted statistics: 2834 beanies were on display made by 260 people, including interstate and some from New Zealand, Japan and the USA; over $50 000 worth of beanies were sold in four days; and over 3400 visitors went through the festival doors in those four days. I attended with a visitor from interstate who decided that this Beanie Festival was the best thing he had ever seen and he was buying beanies for daughters, his wife and people he thought might like them. He probably made a substantial contribution to that $50 000 over the four days. Mind you, I made a contribution as well!
The Beanie Festival has been written up in Vogue USA and Vouge Japan, Australian craft magazines, Lonely Planet, Explore Australia, Qantas and Virgin inflight publications, many interstate newspapers and weekend shows and on the Today show.
However, maybe one of the best stories about the Beanie Festival is hidden behind the scenes. Festival volunteers spend months prior to the festival working at communities teaching women how to make beanies and encouraging them to put in entries. One concrete result of this is the creative output of the Ernabella women, who have now exhibited in Sydney, Adelaide and even in Japan as a result of Beanie Festival funding and support.
The Beanie Festival is totally run by volunteers, too many of them to mention by name, but I certainly thank them all. Having done my first Beanie Festival this year after hearing about it for years, it really is the most extraordinary experience. You cannot believe how many beanies are on sale. When you think about the numbers, nearly 3000, there is a beanie for everyone. One of the beanies I purchased was made by a French nun at Yuendumu. It had beautiful bead work and was a combination of knitted bits and beads. It is quite beautiful and cost me all of $20. You can get a bargain and you can spend a lot of money on a beanie.
I would like next to talk about another extraordinary Alice event, and that is the Voyages Camel Cup. About 6000 visited this year’s Camel Cup organised by the combined Lions Clubs of Alice Springs. This event goes beyond the quirky to being quite mad, but still within the professionalism and quality one comes to expect from events in the Centre. The event recipe starts with the unpredictable, moody camel, and then adds to the mix riders who have to be a little crazy, and vocal, happy and involved spectators. It does make for a great day.
I am pleased to announce that the Chief Minister’s Cup was won by a particularly beautiful camel called Othello, owned by Camels Australia and ridden by Neil. He was closely followed by Longreach and Crikey. This event is experiencing something of a resurgence in interest, partly due to the excellent sponsorship and support given by Voyages Hotels and Resorts. Indeed, this year, almost $20 000 was raised for charity from the event, which is an outstanding result.
This is much more than a local community event. It has become one of the icon events on the tourist calendar, and gives one more reason why the industry can promote Alice Springs as a fun place for an outback holiday. In fact, I met a group of people and it happens that I went to school with one of them. Her husband wanted to meet up with his three brothers who lived in different parts of the world. They all decided, having just seen some advertising about the Camel Cup, to meet in Central Australia, and they were having the best time. There was one from Europe, one from America, one from Sydney, and they were all there in Alice Springs. It was lovely to see my old friend, Jenny, having the best time at the Camel Cup.
It was again organised this year by some extremely hard working volunteers. About 12 people are on the committee, and some of them put in more than a full time effort into ensuring this event is a success. Our thanks to them and to the newly amalgamated Lions Club of Alice Springs for a job well done.
Finally, after walking on two sections of the Larapinta Trail, west of Alice Springs, I am more determined than ever that the West MacDonnell Ranges National Park will become one of the great tourist icons of the region. The trail has to be one of the most beautiful walking trails in the world – wonderful scenery, complemented by birdlife, wildflowers and an occasional glimpse of our normally nocturnal animal life.
My two sisters and I walked Section 10, which is about 15 km from Ormiston Gorge to Glen Helen, and then Section 12, which is up Mt Sonder, that is 16 km there and back, but much of it quite vertical. So, of a trail of about 230 km, we did about 30 km, but a wonderful 30 km. We did not rough it. We stayed at Glen Helen Resort - thank you Dave and Sue Churchett. It was a terrific time to stay there. I met a number of people along the walk who were doing the whole walk, so they had everything they needed on their back. It probably takes you about 15 or 16 days to do the whole walk, but there are businesses in Alice Springs who will drop your food off at various designated points, so you do not have to carry all your food with you. You can find various ways of experiencing the Larapinta Trail – a day walk, a fortnight walk, or you can do it in luxury with established camp sites, and certainly do it without anything more than a day pack on your back. Mind you, those who were carrying the full gear, by midday they looked a little sad occasionally when you ran into them. I think just tired, and their legs were tired.
The Larapinta Trail will never be walked by huge numbers of people, but it is critical as a hook to ensuring the rest of the world knows how spectacular the ranges are. Just as most people do not walk the whole Cradle Mountain Track in Tasmania, they visit the start and do day walks and strolls in the region.
Similarly, the Mereenie Loop sealing, which includes both the Glen Helen Loop, which is Namatjira Drive, as well as Larapinta Drive, means that this part of the Ranges will become even more accessible and popular, and much easier to market on the international stage. I would say to anyone who is feeling a bit weary with the world, as occasionally we do, that if you want to go somewhere where you can see forever, on that classic clear day, then the top of Mt Sonder is the place to do it. It is beautiful. It is quite extraordinary. You can see Gosses Bluff. I am sure on the very clearest of days you could probably imagine you could see Uluru, it is a bit far. It is just the most extraordinary view, and a really energising view, of a beautiful area of Central Australia, and that added achievement that you have walked a long way and reached the top of Mt Sonder.
The Larapinta Trail is one of the world’s best, and I am certainly very keen, as Tourism Minister, to publicise it.
Motion agreed to; the Assembly adjourned.
MINISTERIAL REPORTS
Correctional Services
Correctional Services
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General): Madam Speaker, today I report on a new era in Territory Correctional Services. Internationally respected and highly experience prison official, Mr Jens Tolstrup, has now taken up his post as the new Director of Northern Territory Correctional Services. With over four decades of experience in his home country, Denmark, Mr Tolstrup has also worked as a consultant to correctional services in South Africa and Azerbaijan. He has chosen to make his new home in the Northern Territory, and I welcome him and his family.
Jens’ expertise lies in two areas vital to the current reform of Territory Correctional Services: staff training and professional development, and the introduction of programs to reduce the number of inmates who re-offend once released.
Mr Tolstrup has recently toured Alice Springs and Darwin correctional centres, and met with prison officers, program staff and Community Corrections Officers in each area. I am pleased to hear that he not only intends to regularly visit Alice Springs, but plans to travel to remote communities, and to those centres where probation and parole and remote Community Correction Officers are living and working.
The review cannot be implemented by just one person. This government is committed to an inclusive process, working with prison officers and their associations, and groups outside our correctional system, such as legal services and Aboriginal and community organisations, to bring forward these reforms. Members of the Prison Officers Association, prison management and non-custodial staff are meeting every fortnight to work through the recommendations. Subcommittees have been established around priority areas: training; recruitment and retention; facilities upgrade; prison industries; and prison case management.
Members of the implementation committee, from both Darwin and Alice Springs, travelled to Western Australia to see first-hand correctional centres in which similar reforms have been made. I have had nothing but positive feedback from everyone who participated in this trip. Western Australian officials generously provided information and answered questions on a broad range of issues, ranging from recruitment and orientation to case management and delivery of programs to indigenous inmates.
This government is serious about supporting and reforming our prison system. That is why we have provided $18.5m over four years to implement the recommendations of the Correctional Services review, and another $8m to upgrade facilities. By implementing the review recommendations, this government is continuing to attack the causes of crime and build safer Territory communities.
Ms CARNEY (Araluen): Madam Speaker, I thank the Attorney-General for his statement. On behalf of the opposition, I wish Mr Tolstrup well. He certainly has a job ahead of him. Both the Attorney-General and I know that some members of the Prison Officers Association have some concerns about Mr Tolstrup. I do not think it is appropriate for me to detail those concerns in the Chamber, but I do wish him well.
One of the issues that he will need to give consideration to is what to do with the extremely high rate of indigenous prisoners. Significantly higher, I might say, under the Northern Territory branch of the Australian Labor Party than it was under the CLP. There are many ironies in politics, I suppose, but one for me is that had the rate of indigenous prisoners been at this rate under the CLP we would have heard a number of people, many of whom would have been from the left wing side of the legal profession, screaming from the rooftops. Alas, we can hear nothing. I urge the Attorney-General to make this a significant priority area. In the context of the comments made by the Attorney-General welcoming Mr Tolstrup and wishing him well, I share with him in those sentiments.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General): Madam Speaker, I welcome the positive response from the opposition shadow minister. On the matter of imprisonment rates, we are certainly aware of the high rates of imprisonment. We are not going to back off. We have property crime down by catching repeat offenders. We hope to get people who are guilty of crimes of violence in prison where they belong. Equally, I believe the best way to bring the prison rates down is to stop those levels of offences in the first place and that is what these reforms are addressing.
Volunteer Bushfire Brigades
Dr BURNS (Lands and Planning): Madam Speaker, I report to the House today on important work done by volunteer bush fire brigades. The volunteer brigades are established where regional bushfire council committees clearly identifies a need based on population and fire risk profiles. These regions have one or more volunteer brigades each with their own gazetted area.
There are currently 21 volunteer bushfire brigades within the Northern Territory; 450 trained personnel, and about 350 active current participants. These volunteer brigades do a fantastic amount of work - over 10 000 hours of active fire fighting duty - and they also participate in training, fundraising and other support activities. They are independent incorporated bodies, they operate under the Bushfires Act, and they have their own constitution. It is important to point out that the Bushfires Act does not include responsibility for the brigades in terms of managing structural building fires or other emergency incidents. Generally speaking, these volunteer brigades are very active where there are emergencies, and the Katherine and Daly River region floods are just two examples.
Most members might be aware that a review is about to be undertaken to determine responsibilities for fighting fires in our rural areas, where there is increased population density, increased risk of fire, damage to people and property. That is being undertaken with the NT Fire and Emergency Services and we are looking at better integration and better coverage appropriate for those particular areas.
The government, through the Department of Infrastructure, Planning and Environment, supports the volunteer brigades with vehicles, operational funding and other grants. Currently, the brigades have 52 grass fire units; three of them have new vehicles provided this year. These are the four wheel drive fire tender vehicles that most of us would have seen in our time in the Territory. There are also 14 large fire trucks.
However, I have noticed just going back over the funding figures for years over the last ten years there has been a steady decrease in the amount of funding given to the volunteer brigades. I received representations when I first became minister about that, and I have set about to try to redress that situation.
This government has given a significant boost of funding and resources available to our volunteer brigades. I will detail some of those:
$150 000 for personal protective equipment including fire retarding overalls, helmets, boots, gloves and smoke goggles. That was a representation that was put to me at my first meeting with the volunteer brigades. I am proud to say that we were able to meet those concerns;
$150 000 for the purchase of three new grass fire units allocated to Beatrice Hill, Douglas Daly and the Milne Volunteer Bush Fire Brigades;
an additional $200 000 to be provided each year for brigade operational grants. I know that was welcomed by the volunteer brigades; and
an additional $60 000 to be provided each year towards a vehicle replacement program.
I did inspect a number of the vehicles at a number of the facilities. It is obvious that some of the vehicles are becoming aged and the volunteer brigades felt that they were falling behind in their vehicle replacement program.
As a government, we very keen to support these people who a fantastic job in our community. They give up their time. It is hot, dirty and dangerous work. As a government, we can point to the fact that we increased support for these wonderful people and the job that they do in our community.
Mr BALDWIN (Daly): Madam Speaker, I sincerely thank the minister for that information and for taking such a fresh approach to the Bush Fires Council and all the volunteers who work in that organisation. As the minister said, there is a great effort by a lot of people over a very wide area in some extreme situations at times.
I have raised the issues that you now seem to be addressing in this House a number of times, and I congratulate you for that. The previous minister seemed to ignore the whole situation even though the executive of the Bush Fires Council was making itself heard loud and clear by all of us apart from your government. However, I congratulate you on the work you are doing.
This is the cheapest organisation that you can have in the Northern Territory to look after the safety of property and people, and it deserves close attention. I can say on behalf of the former government that we always maintained attention to that organisation and had a proud relationship with them.
On the funding side, not only the vehicles and all the rest of it, but there is the need for you to turn your attention to some of the infrastructure funding that is needed in terms of buildings. I would ask have a look at that. It is a sad fact that the Edith Farms Volunteer Bush Fire Brigade will be, this Saturday week, opening a building that they have built themselves with federal funding because they could not get any funding from your government. I will be looking to see if you are invited to that opening. It is unfortunate that your government could not come through with the funding, but I am happy to say the federal government has and Nigel Scullion will be opening that building. I congratulate the Edith Farms Bush Fire Brigade for their efforts.
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Visitors
Visitors
Madam SPEAKER: Honourable members, I advise you of the presence in the Gallery of Years 8, 9 and 10 students from Taminmin High School and Kamitonda Junior High School. Kamitonda High is a semi-rural school approximately three hours south of Osaka, Japan. Taminmin and Kamitonda students have been participating in a student exchange program for six years. On behalf of all honourable members, I extend a warm welcome to our students and the teachers accompanying them.
Members: Hear, hear!
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Mining and Petroleum Supply Seminar
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to report on a Mining Supply Seminar that I opened in Alice Springs last week. For the fifth year, my department has organised this mining and petroleum supply seminar which is designed to generate more mining supply business opportunity for local Northern Territory businesses.
The mining and petroleum sectors are of enormous importance to the Northern Territory’s economy. In terms of output, mining is the largest industry in the Territory and was almost 22% of gross state product in 2003-04 compared with 4.6% nationally. The value of mineral production, including processing, is forecast to increase by 6.8% to $1.4bn in 2004-05. The mining industry employs some 3500 people and spends $400m to $500m per year in the Territory. This does not count the impact of indirect multiplier expenditure and employment.
Although the oil and gas sectors are not yet producing at that level, the gap will continue to close and projects such the LNG plant and construction of the pipeline are providing direct opportunities for local industry. Over and above this, there are several major developments planned, or proposed, such as the $1.5bn Alcan expansion at Gove, for which the final board sign-off is expected next month; the $0.5m Blacktip gas development proposed to replace imported fuel oil for Alcan; the $0.5bn Trans Territory pipeline connecting Blacktip to Gove; and ongoing development at Newmont’s Tanami operations. There are also a number of smaller but very significant planned and proposed developments, such as the Olympia Resources project at Harts Range; tailings processing at Tennant Creek, and the Bootu Creek manganese project.
Ongoing exploration is paramount to the continuation and growth of the mining industry in the Territory and, in particular, Central Australia. This is illustrated by exploration activity for gold, including substantial drilling continuing in the Tanami and Arunta regions by Newmont, Tanami Gold and Barrick Gold; Goldsearch/Independence Gold commenced exploration sampling in the Docker River area; Giants Reef reported discovery of the Malbec prospect within the Chariot corridor at Tennant Creek; drilling and sampling for diamonds in the Georgina Basin by Elkedra Diamonds continued; and interest in potential nickel resources is high with numerous prospects in the Newhaven/Kintore region and at Barrow Creek and surrounding areas. These are being investigated by Mithril Resources, Discovery Nickel and others.
A key government objective is to ensure that the Territory does everything it can to achieve a realistic maximum share of the spend and employment associated with all these resource projects. This means helping local business win business; attracting new business and capability where appropriate; and maximising direct local employment by the proponents and supporting this with training initiatives.
Opportunities are not necessarily presented to local industry as a matter of course. They have to be actively pursued and competed for. Last week’s seminar in Alice Springs is just part of the government’s commitment to work with industry, at both the operator/developer level and the supplier level to maximise local outcomes.
Just as importantly, the Northern Territory government, through various agencies such as the Indigenous Mining Enterprise Task Force, actively encourages resource development companies to provide opportunities of employment for indigenous Australians.
Government also provides direct assistance to local businesses through the various business growth programs and upskill workshops available through the Department of Business, Industry and Resource Development. Through these programs, it is our aim to provide opportunities which will enable business to compete on a professional level for the provision of goods and services to the resource development companies.
The Territory government is proud to provide the mining and petroleum supply seminar on an annual basis. Each year, participation is increasing and this year’s attendance was up from around 80 last year to over 100. It offered participants an excellent opportunity to learn first-hand how they can start up or increase opportunities for their business.
Finally, my department will be following up with all the participants over the coming months to measure the results of the seminar. Anecdotal evidence indicates that past seminars have led to increased business, but I want to ensure that we have an objective measure of the outcomes.
Mr DUNHAM (Drysdale): Charlatans, Madam Speaker, charlatans. These people got rid of exploration retention certificates. These certificates were to maximise local participation. You use words like, ‘We will do everything we can to encourage local participation’, well you are not.
Members interjecting.
Mr DUNHAM: Why don’t you have some tax incentives to net them off royalties? Why don’t you put Mines back to its rightful place of being a stand-alone department instead of being tucked away in some department that nobody knows where it is? Why do you attack the public servants in the Mines department for their independence in pursuing matters relating to mining incidents? They have a very proud record. Why don’t you stand up against the unions and say that this is an unfair attack on the public servants of this department?
Do not stand up here and give me all these platitudes about how it is 22% of GDP. We know that, and we know it is important. If you really want to run mining seminars for supply people, why don’t you run them for local people? Why don’t you tell local people that there is an advantage, that if they set up here, and if they are local and provide locally, that they will be given an exploration exemption certificate? What a great idea.
Mr Henderson: We will issue exploration licences and get some exploration happening.
Mr DUNHAM: You scrapped it. So do not tell me your bona fides. You have turned the Mines department into a branch, you have scrapped exploration exemption certificates ...
Mr Henderson: And we are issuing exploration licences.
Mr DUNHAM: You are issuing exploration licences. Well, let us have a look at it …
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Mr DUNHAM: You have them piled up. The reason that was fixed was because of the Native Title Tribunal - nothing to do with you! So, do not go claiming credit. If you really want to debate that, instead of having these little tiny statements where I get two seconds to stand up and talk about it, let us have a debate. Let us have a debate about mining. It is 22% of GDP. It is an important industry, but it is not served well by having these little mini-statements full of platitudes and patting yourself on the back.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): It is not unexpected, Madam Speaker; that it is all doom and gloom for the CLP. The reality is they talk about things and we actually do things - 700 exploration licences. We have opened the Territory to exploration licences. There are going to be four drills working in Tennant Creek in the next few months exploring for gold. Tanami Gold is going to explore for gold. Newmont is going to explore for gold. Newmont is opening up the Tanami …
Members interjecting.
Mr VATSKALIS: I have made it clear that the department of Mines could continue to do the investigations in the mine sites, but what we have to do is make sure that the department of Mines is not seen as acting for the mining companies; it has to be an independent branch, and a department that actually caters for all Territorians. We are not going to let Mines get away with anything they want like they did in the past.
Foster Carers in the Northern Territory
Ms SCRYMGOUR (Family and Community Services): Madam Speaker, today I express the gratitude and respect that the Martin Labor government has for foster carers in the Northern Territory. I do not want to sound too over-the-top but, really, they are the unsung heroes.
Foster carers play a vital role in supporting and caring for children who need time away from their families. Often, these children have great needs and demanding behaviours and, as a result of their family circumstances and the crisis of separation from their parents, when a child is not able to live with their natural family it becomes clear just how important it is that we have our voluntary foster carers. It is the generosity and commitment of foster carers that provide so many kids in need with love and support 365 days a year.
The role of foster carers does not go unnoticed by this government. They have an extraordinary challenging task, but I know most foster carers find it very rewarding. This government has increased foster care payments by 8%. This is an average weekly increase of $10 to help meet the needs of children and families. Payments are now consistent with those being received by foster carers across Australia.
My department also provides support and advice to foster carers who are encountering difficulties. The support of foster carers is consistent with our Building Healthier Communities strategy; that is, to give kids a good start in life and to strengthen families and communities. As minister, I have met with the Foster Carers Association and will continue to do so on a regular basis to ensure that I am very aware of their needs and issues.
I congratulate the association on their recent incorporation. The successes of this association are only possible due to the tireless work of the volunteers. I would like to acknowledge the work of the committee, Judy Hansen, Julian Barry, Kerry Wetherall, Kristina Kent, Kevin Smith, Rose Campbell, Brody Parsons and Kate Race.
The production of the first comprehensive Northern Territory foster care handbook will help all of us deliver the best results for children in care. Next year, the Northern Territory will be host to the 2005 National Foster Carers Conference. I am very happy to say that we have provided $50 000 to the Northern Territory Foster Carers Association to assist hosting this event. This conference will not only provide a unique opportunity to create bonds and networks across the country, but also to showcase the Territory and to demonstrate to the rest of Australia our hospitality and the unique challenges we face. The government has also provided the Northern Territory Foster Carers Association with several special grants, including funding to employ a part-time Development and Resource Officer.
As I mentioned earlier, my department provides support to foster carers. It also works the other way. Foster carers provide an excellent contribution by helping to train staff in the department and providing insight into substitute care for the department’s officers. To date, this training has been provided free of charge, but it is right to formally recognise this work, and the government has decided to provide payment to foster carers when they help train child protection workers. The details of this policy will be worked out in consultation with the association.
In recognition of the role of foster carers and their families, a reception was held at Parliament House on 11 August. It was a delight to enjoy this function with many of the carers and children. The older children dressed up for this function, and the younger children stole centre stage - reminding me of the need for short speeches. The function was an opportunity for some of the foster carers to meet with each other for the first time. Perhaps the people we have to thank most are the children who, I guess, have to share their parents and their childhood with foster children who come into the family. It must cause some problems, but I think they also find it a rewarding experience.
Madam Speaker, this government applauds the role of foster carers and their families in assisting to build healthier communities.
Ms CARTER (Port Darwin): Madam Speaker, I welcome the minister’s report. It is certainly an area that requires increased assistance, there’s no two ways about that. I have met with a number of agencies with regards to this and it appears that there is an increasing need for foster carers in our community. Of course, it is something that very few people do actually volunteer to do and it is a very difficult thing to have to do.
I certainly applaud and support the foster carers in our community. As we all know, the children that they take into their families are often children with challenging behaviours, and parents are already busy enough with their children. It is fantastic that people in the community are prepared to open their homes up to children who are having difficulties, who are coming from families that have been struggling. It is certainly something that the opposition supports. I thank the minister for her report here this morning.
CRIMINAL CODE AMENDMENT (MONEY LAUNDERING) BILL
(Serial 244)
(Serial 244)
Bill presented and read a first time.
Dr TOYNE (Justice and Attorney-General): Madam Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a second time.
This bill is part of a national initiative to stem money laundering and organised crime networks. At the Leaders’ Summit on Terrorism and Multi-jurisdictional Crime in April 2002, the Chief Minister, along with other leaders, resolved to reform the laws relating to money laundering including a possible reference of power to the Commonwealth, if necessary, for effective offences. The Joint Working Group on National Investigation Powers was tasked with facilitating the implementation of their resolution and has recommended a framework for money laundering offences that will create an effective national response to money laundering. The offences are to be inserted in the Criminal Code by this bill, following the Joint Working Group’s recommendations, and have the support of all other state and territory Attorneys-General.
Money laundering is undertaken for a number of reasons. Firstly, because the proceeds of crime provide a direct link to the offence itself. Money laundering allows criminals to distance themselves from the criminal activity that generated the profits, making prosecution for substantive offence more difficult. It also removes the likelihood of the profits being confiscated if the criminal is caught by removing the link between the profits and the offence. Money laundering assists criminals to enjoy the benefits of the profits without drawing attention to themselves. It allows criminals to reinvest those profits in legitimate business and, perhaps most significantly, in future criminal activity.
There are three stages to laundering money. The first step is that the money launderer introduces illegal profits into the financial system. Large amounts of cash may be split into less conspicuous, smaller amounts and then deposited directly into a bank account, or used to buy a series of financial instruments such as cheques or money orders that are then collected and deposited into accounts at other locations. Once the funds have been placed into the financial system, the launderer can then engage in a series of conversions or movements to distance them from their original source. For example, funds might be channelled through the purchase of investment instruments or by wiring money through a series of accounts at various banks, perhaps disguising the transfers as payments for goods and services. Once these stages are complete, the money launderer then proceeds to have the funds re-enter the legitimate economy, for example, by investment in real estate or business ventures.
The problem of money laundering is one with enormous and far reaching impact. If effective laws are not created to check money laundering activities, not only will large amounts of criminal assets be protected from confiscation, but of greater significance, those assets become capable of investment in further criminal activity. In the context of global terrorist activities, effective money laundering laws may be seen as a key measure in preventing the sponsorship of terrorist groups and activities.
The bill creates an offence dealing with the proceeds of crime. The offence arises where a person who deals with money or other property that is the proceeds of crime either knew or had the belief or suspicion or should have reasonable grounds for a suspicion that the money or property was the proceeds of a crime.
The bill also creates an offence of dealing with property that is being used or is intended to be used in the commission of, or to facilitate the commission of, a crime but which cannot be proved to have been derived from crime. This offence fills a gap in existing money laundering laws in Australia. In 1999 in its report Confiscation that Counts: a review of the Proceeds of Crime Act 1987, the Australian Law Reform Commission found that a significant case could be made out for reforms that would extend money laundering offences to a wider range of activity in order to catch people who receive, possess, conceal or dispose of any money or other property in preparation for the commission of an offence.
Without an offence of this nature, a person who is detected dealing with property or money to set up an offence cannot be prosecuted. Like the money laundering offence, this offence applies where a person who deals with money or other property either knew or had a belief or suspicion, or should have had reasonable grounds for a suspicion, that the money or property was being used or intended to be used for the commission of or to facilitate the commission of an offence.
In order to ensure that laws cover cross-jurisdictional criminal activity, ‘offence’ has been defined in the bill to include offences against a law of the Commonwealth or another state or territory, or a foreign state if those offences would be an offence if committed in the Territory.
Both offences rely on proof that the money or other property was either derived from or used in the commission of some offence. The bill does not require, however, that the prosecution need to prove the specific offence concerned. It is enough if facts can be proved that constitute one or more offences. For example, if a person is apprehended in possession of a large amount of money that they admit to be the proceeds of a drug deal but refuse to provide the specifics of the transaction, it may not be possible to prove the actual offence that took place or who was involved in it. Alternatively, in some cases it may be clear that the money has been derived from one or more offences but it is not possible to say from which of the offences it was obtained.
The bill clarifies that this degree of specificity is not required. These offences are not intended to capture innocent persons who may have innocently owned or handled property that was later used in a crime. It is intended to prevent the activities of people who finance or otherwise facilitate the commission of crimes. In order to safeguard against any inappropriate use of the new laws and to ensure that they are directed at the intended targets, the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions is required before a prosecution for any of these offences can be commenced.
This bill reflects the government’s commitment to ensure an effective national regime to prevent money laundering. Madam Speaker, I commend the bill to honourable members.
Debate adjourned.
POLICE ADMINISTRATION AMENDMENT (FORENSIC PROCEDURES) BILL
(Serial 241)
(Serial 241)
Bill presented and read a first time.
Mr HENDERSON (Police, Fire and Emergency Services): Madam Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a second time.
It is universally accepted that DNA identification has become one of the most valuable tools for police investigating crime and identifying people. It is well known that the Territory has the most effective and uncomplicated DNA legislation for law enforcement in Australia. It is the envy of other jurisdictions. We have successfully resisted Commonwealth pressure to ‘re-model’ the legislation in a way that other jurisdictions may now be discovering makes it very hard to use in the fight against crime.
Nonetheless, further benefits of DNA identification can be realised by further enhancing Territory DNA legislation. This government is also committed to ensuring that DNA is used appropriately, transparently and accountably and that personal privacy is protected, but without in any way weakening or limiting its use as a tool for identifying criminal suspects and clearing innocent people of suspicion.
I believe that the Police Administration Amendment Bill 2004 combines and balances all these important features. Now that we have arrangements for the exchange of DNA information in place, or soon to be in place with most Australian jurisdictions, and we are now in the position to upload DNA profiles onto the national DNA database operated by CrimTrac, there is a final step to be taken for DNA identification to be used regularly for cross-border criminal investigations. This is to legislate for our Northern Territory police to take DNA samples for other police forces and vice versa.
This legislation introduces the concepts of reciprocal registration and enforcement of forensic procedure orders and approvals. The new section 147E in the Police Administration Act will mirror corresponding legislation from Queensland and South Australia. So, if a superintendent of Northern Territory Police gives approval for a DNA sample to be taken from a criminal suspect in, say, Queensland, this approval, or order, can be registered with the Commissioner of Queensland Police and arrangements can be made for one of his officers to obtain the sample and send it back to the Northern Territory Forensic Science Centre. If the suspect’s DNA does not match the DNA sample from the crime scene here in the Territory, then the suspect can be excluded from police inquiries, so avoiding the need for extradition proceedings.
We hear a great deal about DNA identification for the purposes of criminal investigation, but it is also an invaluable means of identifying deceased people and human remains. However, the Police Administration Act does not permit access to the NT DNA database, unless it is for the investigation of a crime. Now, there are some disasters, both natural and man made, such as fires and explosions, where the victim is so disfigured or dismembered that normal means of identification, such as dental records and fingerprints, cannot be used. In these circumstances, DNA identification is used to identify the victims and assign body parts for the purpose of burial. In these circumstances, we may need to use the DNA database to help identify these victims. These amendments will permit this use and also on the rare occasions where access to the DNA database could help police and relatives find a missing person.
We also do not yet have the legal capacity to exchange DNA information with overseas police forces, neither to identify people suspected of committing crimes in the Northern Territory who have gone abroad, nor to assist identify our own people who may be victims of a disaster overseas, such as the Bali bombing.
Although in practice this information would probably be exchanged through the Australian Federal Police and Interpol, this government insists that the Territory retains control of this information and remains accountable for how it is used and by whom. Our current arrangements for exchange of DNA information do not contemplate the transmission of information to third parties. These amendments allow me, as Minister for Police, Fire and Emergency Services, to prescribe overseas jurisdictions with which I may enter an arrangement for the exchange of DNA information should the need arise. I, and the Commissioner of Police, will still retain the ability to enter arrangements with other jurisdictions for exchange of DNA information.
On the matter of accountability, Northern Territory Police staff have worked with the Information Commissioner to ensure that arrangements for the exchange of DNA information meet the standards we require to protect Territorians’ personal information and to ensure the public retains confidence in the whole process.
One area which we do see as important to tighten is what appears to be a drafting error in the original legislation. The legislation was intended to protect people who were not suspects but who had given DNA samples to help police in an investigation. We call them ‘volunteers’. The legislation prevents this information being used in evidence, except for the case in which it was given, and for other very serious crimes, such as rape and murder, attracting a penalty of 14 years or more imprisonment. However, it does not expressly prevent it being used in other investigations.
In practice, the Forensic Science Centre and police have followed the spirit of the legislation and have not released or otherwise used volunteers’ DNA information, except for these very serious cases. However, in my view, it is now time to correct this drafting error, ensure that the act accurately reflects the intention of parliament, which is what this amendment will do. This protection will extend to persons who volunteer forensic information for any purpose, whether to assist in a criminal investigation as a victim of crime, or to help locate a missing person or identify human remains.
Returning to the concept of accountability, the concerns of some people - and I suggest that they are not always well directed or fully informed - are that DNA samples taken by police could be analysed to extract personal information such as predictive health information. This information would be of no use to police for investigating crime. I am advised that human DNA which is analysed by police forensic scientists, is loosely termed ‘uncoded’ or ‘junk DNA’ and, if it codes for any physical or other feature, scientists do not know what that might be. The DNA profile that is extracted from analysis of this uncoded DNA is no more than a number. It is a long number and a unique number to that person but, as far as scientists know, it contains less information than the number on our driver’s licence. Therefore, to that extent, security and accountability surrounding DNA profiles held by police is far better than applied by other institutions holding more informative personal data.
However, whilst I can assure members that the Northern Territory forensic science laboratory has the highest standards of sample and information security, the government also believes there is always a need for transparency and accountability for what takes place in the laboratory. I believe that the Northern Territory is the first Australian jurisdiction to legislate in this area.
These amendments will require me, as the responsible minister, to approve and prescribe any new applications used by the Forensic Science Centre for DNA analysis. That means I, and the public, can continue to be confident of what information is being extracted from our personal DNA samples.
Madam Speaker, I commend the bill to honourable members.
Debate adjourned.
PETROLEUM AMENDMENT BILL
(Serial 233)
(Serial 233)
Continued from 20 May 2004.
Mr DUNHAM (Drysdale): I shall be brief, Madam Speaker, on the basis that these are straightforward amendments; they arise from a National Competition Principle agreement, and they were the second tranche of the amendments that were signalled in that agreement. The first tranche of some eight out of 14 have already been debated and gone through this House and these, likewise, are non-contentious, serve the industry well, and are straightforward. We would, therefore, support them.
I do note that the best interests of the Territory are foremost with the unlikely circumstance of two parties making application for the same piece of land. I guess it takes you back to the old gold rush era where two people would make the same application for the same piece of land. The department will pursue its normal course of looking at the merits of those two and, in the event that they are equally meritorious, will go for the earliest lodgement. So, it really does take you back to gold rush days.
All of the amendments, I know, are supported by industry and by the opposition, and further comment merely serves to take up the time of the House.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Madam Speaker, I thank the member for his contribution. He mentioned the amendments are due to the NCP. They are pretty reasonable amendments, and they provide some transparency and fair process to people who want to come to the Territory for mineral exploration and to start a new mine. We were very supportive of these amendments.
Mining is very vital to the Territory, as I said in my ministerial report. Despite some difference of opinion between us and the opposition, we will continue to support the mining industry in the Territory, not only by processing more applications for exploration licences, but by also having a look at the merits of the applications, especially when there is a competition between two applicants applying for the same piece of land.
It is my personal endeavour to have mines opening in the Territory. I do not believe mining is a dirty business. I believe mining can be a very good business, and some of the mines that operate in the Territory are exemplary businesses and they benefit not only their shareholders, but also the Territory, providing jobs and job opportunities not only for mainstream mine workers, but also for indigenous Australians. During the introduction of the Tanami Exploration Agreement Ratification Bill, I said that Newmont employed up to 20% of the work force from indigenous people in the area.
I am very happy to hear that the opposition is supporting these amendments. They will be incorporated in the act, providing a fair process for an open and transparent process, and also giving the right of appeal that did not exist until now.
Motion agreed to; bill read a second time.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy)(by leave): Madam Speaker, I move that the bill be now read a third time.
Motion agreed to; bill read a third time.
MINISTERIAL STATEMENT
Home Territory 2010
Home Territory 2010
Mr AH KIT (Housing): Madam Speaker, I wish to provide the House with a ministerial statement on Home Territory 2010 – Moving the Territory Ahead. Before I move into the statement I table the Home Territory 2010 strategy for members’ information and interest and, no doubt, support.
There is a sense in which coming to be the Housing Minister completes a circle in my life. As I mentioned in this House before, I grew up in the old Parap Camp at Stuart Park. Then our family rented a Housing Commission home in Rapid Creek which had to accommodate 12 children. On a couple of occasions I have lived in Housing Commission industry housing. Since becoming a minister I have met with many Territory Housing tenants throughout the Territory. I have been impressed by the care they take with their homes and simultaneously appalled at the decades of neglect that has affected much Territory Housing and government employee housing. As I remarked before, it is not unusual to come across such housing that has not been painted for 20 years. As well, through my working life, I have witnessed the poverty of indigenous housing out bush where occupancy is regularly 15, 16 and sometimes 17 people per house. I know what poor housing is like. It is why I care about all public housing tenants; it is why I have been determined to increase the resources available to remote area housing.
It is why I have encouraged my department to develop Home Territory 2010 to bring social housing into focus as a major plank in this government’s commitment to social justice. In this, I must commend those members of staff who have worked long and hard on this project. The aim of Home Territory 2010 is to ensure safe, secure and affordable housing for all Territorians now and into the future, in particular, Territorians on low incomes or with special needs.
Home Territory 2010 provides exciting and challenging new directions for the Territory which includes:
a vision to grow and expand the affordable housing sector in the Northern Territory;
increasing the supply and range of affordable housing options across public rental, private rental and community housing in both urban and remote communities;
assisting low to moderate income earners into home ownership;
increasing the level of support for special needs groups in our community through flexible service provision and improved service delivery;
improving the way we do our business through partnerships across public and private sectors, effective communication and improved long-term strategic planning with industry; and
developing a pathway for our current and future tenants which supports clients in working towards sustainable, independent living.
The strategy recognises that to improve housing affordability and to help households in housing stress is a complex issue requiring a whole-of-government, whole-of-community approach. It acknowledges that a range of factors affect the supply and access of affordable housing including policy, market trends, local supply, funding systems, private investment, and the cost of building. Currently, half of the low income households in the Territory are experiencing housing stress.
Whilst comprehensive data on the total housing need is not available, the 1999 national housing survey identified that over 6900 urban Territory households are struggling to meet their requirements for daily living. The real need, including remote communities, is far higher. Public housing remains the primary choice for low income earners with 36% of the group living in public housing. However, the public housing system is unable to cope with the strain of demand. Viable and appropriate affordable options must be provided to help those Territorians most in need.
Data from the National Housing Survey reveals key segments of the community most challenged by housing affordability, and they are indigenous Territorians, lone persons, single persons with dependant children, and couples with dependant children. On the other hand, housing underpins economic growth and sustainable development and is an important catalyst for population growth and stability. Housing has a vital role in helping to build and maintain viable communities across the Northern Territory, including those in regional and remote areas.
The challenge is to have the provision of housing matching and complementing the growth and sustainability of the private housing sector as well as the building and construction industry. Government remains a critical provider of low cost housing in the Territory. Based on 2001 Australian Bureau of Statistic data, there are 55 800 dwellings in the Territory of which we are looking a public housing at 12% and community/indigenous housing at 11%.
We have proportionally the largest segment of public housing stock in Australia; over twice the national average of 5%. This is in part a remnant of the historical investment in housing by government post-Cyclone Tracy, but a reflection also of our relatively undeveloped economy. Social housing comprising public and community housing is a very large provider of housing, targeting low income earning Territorians, particularly in the very large community housing sector in the bush.
Many Territorians are doing it tough. As I mentioned, currently there is minimum of 6900 house holds in the Northern Territory in housing stress, which is defined as paying more than 30% of their gross income on housing. The majority of these households are in private rental or paying off their mortgage. Tenants in private rental are four times more likely to experience housing stress than if they lived in public housing where the tenant pays a subsidised rent based on a percentage of their total gross income.
However, in the bush there is no private market and therefore a complete dependence on community housing or government employee housing as the only housing choices. The stark tragedy of this is that there is an estimated $850m short fall of housing stock in the bush. This has resulted in substantial homelessness and gross over-crowding, with all the related social and health problems that result.
At current expenditures of around $40m a year, we are barely keeping up with demand. At this rate, it will take over 20 years to meet unmet needs by which time the population will have virtually doubled. It is for this reason the Northern Territory is the lead agency among the states and territories in developing major new policy in this area. I am pleased to say we will be producing this policy at the next Housing Ministerial Council next month in either Canberra or Melbourne.
Social housing is facing a number of significant challenges at this time including market failure in remote communities resulting in a complete dependence on social housing clients with increasingly complex needs, diminishing resources, ageing stock and limited private sector and investment.
During the last decade in the larger urban centres throughout Australia, a number of major changes affecting housing affordability have occurred. Average housing prices relative to income have almost doubled. The proportion of first home owners has fallen by approximately 30%. Average monthly payments on new loans have increased by 50%. The proportion of low rent has fallen by 15% and opportunities to access public housing have fallen by 20%.
Whilst the Northern Territory housing market has not seen the volatility of the other states and territories in Australia, there is a growing segment of our community under housing stress. Housing affordability is crucial to social and economic stability and future growth. Affordability is not a single problem but a series of interconnected problems affecting rental and home ownership markets and social housing provision. There are clear social and economic benefits to assist tenants to remain outside of the social housing system or, indeed, move out of it. Whilst in the short term the tenant may be financially better off through failing to access home ownership in particular, the tenant is considerably financially disadvantaged in the long term.
Research has shown that home ownership improves the economic wellbeing of a family, and improves stability with associated improvements in education and employment. Whilst the ability to purchase housing remains affordable by national standards in the Territory, we have the lowest take-up of home ownership in any jurisdiction. We have the highest proportion of renters, both public and private, at 45%, which is considerably higher than the national rate of 27%.
In regards to our vision, the aim of Home Territory 2010 is to provide access to safe, secure and affordable housing for Territorians most in need. It provides a long-term strategic approach to affordable housing, recognising that, for this to be achieved, coordination between housing tenures must be improved, and that a whole-of-government/whole-of-community approach must be taken. There are four key objectives. First, a sustainable social housing system; second, improving the way we do our business; third, a range of effective and responsive housing models that meet a diverse range of housing needs; and, finally, a housing market that underpins economic growth, regional vitality, safety and security.
I now wish to outline the key initiatives of Home Territory 2010. In regards to HomeNorth, through the recently revamped HomeNorth products delivered by Housing Business Services, government has improved access to home ownership for low income earners. While some home purchasers may be affected by housing stress, the HomeNorth products offer greater flexibility in times of financial hardship than the private market. This includes the ability for Housing Business Services to purchase a share, or additional share of the dwelling from the client, thereby reducing their financial commitment. The low deposit regime, as well as other assistance mechanisms, has improved affordability.
In regards to renal cluster village pilots, over the next six years, Territory Housing will develop medium-sized cluster villages to accommodate clients receiving renal treatment in each urban centre in the Northern Territory. This will only be achieved through working in partnership with Health, Aboriginal Hostels and relevant community organisations.
With the Equality Landlord Strategy, Territory Housing will apply best practice as a landlord. This means we must ensure properties are well maintained by us, as well as tenants. We must respond to complaints and we must communicate well with our tenants. An important element of this is to work to ensure that tenants are able to enjoy their privacy and, to this end, we have also developed a Good Neighbour Policy. Territory Housing views complaints of noise and nuisance seriously, and will offer advice and take necessary action in relation to all complaints against public housing tenants, irrespective of whether the complaint is made by another public housing tenant or private householders.
Territory Housing can only act in accordance with the Residential Tenancy Act but, in some cases, other agencies have the power to deal with complaints and therefore these complaints may need to be referred to police, community mediation providers, or other support services. Territory Housing staff will listen to complaints and will provide advice to help resolve the problems quickly. Territory Housing staff can advise about the process needed to be followed, and can provide a referral service to the other community-based agencies such as police and the Community Justice Centre, your local council, the Legal Aid Commission, the Anti-Discrimination Commission and many others.
In some of our unit complexes, clear signage has been erected identifying what is expected of visitors at our complexes, and for tenants who want to restrict access of other people who may cause disturbances. In some of our larger complexes a security presence has been installed giving tenants and surrounding neighbours the ability to directly contact the security firm to respond to specific incidents. In addition, we have local arrangements with police to move on itinerants and to tip out alcohol found on unauthorised people within our complexes. Local arrangements have also been made with Night Patrol to target hot spots. We can also assist tenants to place signs on doors of their houses to restrict access to people who may cause a disturbance.
With our urban renewal, we have already commenced a program in our public housing throughout the Territory involving up to $45m over five years. This aims to bring all of our public housing to a standard commensurate with newly-constructed housing, as well as improving the living conditions of thousands of Territorians. It is providing a major boost to small contractors in all Territory centres. Included in this is the provision of security screening; improvements such as driveways, fencing and sheds, and smoke detectors. We are improving the way we work with industry, including the private rental industry and the building and construction industries. To this end, we are developing mechanisms to consult the private sector, with an emphasis on partnerships with the sector, to increase private investment in public housing.
We are a big contributor of resources and a big employer of indigenous Territorians, but we need to do more. Initiatives such as the Indigenous Housing Authority of the Northern Territory’s community housing management program will improve service delivery on the ground. In regards to jobs, the central remote model developed through IHANT has seen good results, which we are expanding into the Miwatj and north-west regions in the coming year. Additional work opportunities are being developed through the Indigenous Essential Services Program through Power and Water. This develops employment opportunities on remote communities, and eight of the 72 communities are contracted to provide essential service officers, representing over $3m being invested per annum into local indigenous employment.
In conclusion, the overall aim of Home Territory 2010 is to assist Territorians most in need to access housing most suitable to their needs. As people progress through different life cycle stages, and their family structures and financial situations change, so do their housing needs and preferences. In the Territory, lone people and single parents with dependent children are highly represented in public housing comprising 26% and 37% of our client base respectively. Whilst disproportionately high compared to national averages - 22% and 10% respectively - this is consistent with other jurisdictions. Couples, lone people, and couples with dependent children generally aged between 25 to 55 years, have the greatest representation in the private rental market - 25%, 22% and 17% respectively. This is reflective of the life cycle which, on average, is highly mobile, has below average income, and has a high proportion of household members who are studying.
Home ownership is often linked with the formation and growth of families; couples and couples with children make up over 60% of home owners. On the other hand, lone persons represent 18% of home owners, many of them in the later life cycle stages. As we move through the life cycle, our housing needs change and a choice of affordable housing across tenures is essential. A more flexible approach is required rather that the one-size-fits-all models. Home Territory 2010 aims to increase the supply of, and access to, affordable housing across the Territory to improve the way that public and indigenous housing delivers its business to assist home ownership and build the capacity of the private industry and community sectors.
Public housing will continue to provide a safety net targeted to those most in need. However, it cannot be expected to meet all housing needs in urban centres. Indigenous housing delivered through the Indigenous Housing Authority of the Northern Territory will continue to assist with the housing needs of indigenous Territorians but cannot meet the enormous need in our remote communities.
Whilst both housing tenures remain crucial components of the social housing process, more must be done to build the range and supply of affordable housing in the Territory. Through Home Territory, a long-term strategic approach to affordable housing has been undertaken. This government believes that the provision of safe, secure and affordable housing is a precursor to the health and wellbeing of our community. We recognise that we must engage the community by way of two way communication and consultation and employ a whole-of-government/ whole-of-community approach in providing affordable housing.
The period between now and 2010 will be critical to the Northern Territory in addressing the social housing needs of our Territory. I trust that members opposite and Independent members of this Chamber will support the initiatives I have outlined today. No one pretends that solutions, especially in the area of remote area housing, are soluble overnight. But with goodwill from all sides of politics we can move forward together. I commend this statement to the House.
Madam Speaker, I move that the Assembly take note of the statement.
Mrs MILLER (Katherine): Madam Speaker, I thank the Minister for Housing for his ministerial statement on Home Territory 2010. There are some really good aspects in this ministerial statement and they build on what has been happening for a very long time in housing. I agree that the aim of the policy is to ensure safe, secure and affordable housing for all Territorians. I believe it is a basic human right to be housed and well protected. Glancing through the statement I notice some of the areas you are improving on and adding to, and I find especially important the good neighbour policy. I really hope that that good neighbourhood policy is issued to all people who live in Territory Housing so that they are well aware of their responsibilities to their neighbours.
I have never lived in public housing, but I have certainly have had plenty to do with it long before I came into this House. The first five years that I lived in Katherine I worked for a construction and maintenance company which had the repairs and maintenance contract for Territory Housing. For those five years I was very aware of how much money was put into repairs and maintenance. I find it quite offensive that the minister should say that there has been years of neglect, because there was certainly no neglect when I was working in that particular area. In fact, in some instances, repairs and maintenance to buildings was repeated in the same buildings over and over in that five years.
The HomeNorth scheme is a great scheme, and the revamped HomeNorth product this year has allowed more people within the Territory to have the affordability to purchase their own home where they may not have had it before. I welcome that.
On the medium-sized cluster villages for the renal units, we are very aware that we have a huge problem with renal patients. Most of them come from outlying communities and are disadvantaged in being away from their families and their close knit communities. I wholly support the renal cluster pilots. The health and wellbeing of people accommodated in those villages will be much improved because they will be surrounded by their family and other people who are going through the same problem.
The urban renewal of $45m over five years is going to be very well received. Some of the Territory housing has been in place since the renewal after Cyclone Tracy and it is time many of those have maintenance. In Katherine, many of these buildings were renewed and had a lot of maintenance following the flood. Most of the homes in Katherine in my electorate were renewed following the flood of 1998, but it is also good to see that improvements are continuing with the addition of driveways and sheds, fencing, and smoke detectors. I notice that there are still some security screens being installed in those areas.
One of the things that I would like the minister not to forget is assisting older Territorians with housing. We lose many of our senior Territorians interstate because they do not have affordable, suitable housing. Experiences I have had with seniors reveal that they feel uncomfortable unless they are surrounded by people of their own age. I encourage the minister to look at establishing housing suitable for seniors. I would prefer to see that in cluster models as well - either that or similar to a seniors village. Please do not forget our seniors.
One of the interesting things that I have noticed about this brochure, minister, is that you have been noted to be the minister for provocation and nothing much has changed with this. One of your statements here is:
- As Minister for Housing, I was shocked to find, for example, that many houses haven’t been painted in 20 years.
Is that the sort of thing you put in for your public servants? That is disgusting. That is definitely not something that you put in a glossy brochure that sits on...
Members interjecting.
Mrs MILLER: In addition to that I have a letter here, minister, that you wrote to tenants. This is on Minister for Housing letterhead:
- Dear Tenant
The opposition neglected Territory Housing while they were in government. I have been shocked to find that some houses were not painted for 20 years. You deserve to be treated fairly and we aim to do just that.
How insulting is that? The evidence is here that we have looked after public housing for all of that time, and for you to issue a letter like that, minister, on Minister for Housing letterhead, is appalling, absolutely appalling.
Mr Henderson: This is the real honest John, not like the one in Canberra.
Dr Burns: He will take a lie detector test …
Mrs MILLER: I would like to see him take a lie detector test, too.
Mr Ah Kit: What did the member for Greatorex do? He was the Minister for Housing once.
A member: Yes, he does not want to talk about it.
Dr Burns: He used to get out and paint them on the weekend himself.
Mr Ah Kit: He sits there quietly working on his adjournment.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Mrs MILLER: That is all right, I do not mind them having their little bit of fun, it has woken them up.
Madam Speaker, as it is highlighted in this statement, we have the highest proportion of renters in the Territory, therefore it is a huge job of Territory Housing to meet that market. I have asked for a briefing with the minister’s department. It is very difficult to get a briefing with this minister’s department, but I can get one, I think, in about two weeks’ time in relation to the number of Territory Housing houses that are vacant within Katherine, and also how many there are vacant throughout the Territory. I know there are quite a few. So I would like to see …
Mr Ah Kit: You want to know how many Aboriginal people live in them too, like the member for Araluen?
Mrs MILLER: While we are on the subject of indigenous persons, one of the issues that I have with Territory Housing is that there does not seem to be a policy in place for the number of people who can come uninvited into homes, who come in from communities and try to live in the one home. What they do is place a terrible lot of pressure on to the families that are already there.
We have a situation – I will use Katherine as an example - where we have a very nice family with children living in Katherine East. They do get forced on them visitors who arrive unannounced and, of course, they do not like to ask them to go. As a result of these people living in the one house – a three bedroom house with four children and their parents – in addition to that, they have had quite a large number of other people uninvited in their home. I do not say that they have not invited them, but they should not be there. It has caused a huge problem not only for the family who is there, but the domestic violence and the violent language that comes from that house also disturbs the surrounding neighbours. The police have been there several times.
I would like to see the minister introduce a policy to educate the people who come from the remote communities so that they understand that they cannot all live in that same house. They cannot live in that same house and must have respect for the families that are there.
All in all, this ministerial statement on housing will follow on beautifully from what has been in the past and build on it. I thank the minister, generally, for what I consider a pretty good statement. It is nothing outstanding and nothing over the top, nothing new, but I do support it. I do support your statement, minister, and I look forward to seeing these wonderful remarkable improvements that you are talking about here.
Mr STIRLING (Treasurer): Madam Speaker, I welcome the statement by the minister. The provision of housing for all Territorians, of course, goes to the fundamental social infrastructure of the Territory itself, and it does go to questions of retention and recruitment. If we look at the question of government employee housing right across the Territory, particularly that provided in rural and remote communities, government owns a lot of property right through the Northern Territory. It is property that, in some quarters, has not been maintained as well as it ought to over the years, so the government has, in the past, allowed its asset base to be eroded. Once we have less than optimum conditions for employees who do do it tough in many rural and remote parts of the Northern Territory - we have a considerable proportion of our public sector working in those areas – it does make it harder to get people into those positions in the first place, and to retain them once we have them there.
There is always a huge challenge for government to maintain and improve, and it is only something that can be worked at over time. Government simply does not have the resources to shove hundreds of millions of dollars into a challenge like that overnight; it has to be programmed and worked through on a priority basis. That goes for all government infrastructure, housing included.
Housing for seniors at the older end of the market is a question along with housing for young people and the questions around affordability for people seeking to get into the housing market with their first purchase. They are all fundamental questions that go to the heart of lifting the lowest rate of home ownership in Australia that we currently have, up to somewhere and, hopefully, in the future, beyond the national average, so that we do get much more of a normalisation of the community.
Whilst the transience of the Territory population when I first came to the Territory in 1969-70 and through the 1980s, has reduced over time, there are still many people who come in and out of the Territory. In some cases, they return to families down south because of the perceived lack of family support and extended family available to them in the Northern Territory. However, sometimes it would be for the reason of housing. If you can get a person or a family to buy their house, it is a first step toward a more settled family unit and employee in the Northern Territory.
In relation to those areas, what this government has done with the rebates for the principal home purchaser of $1500 off the stamp duty and the increased threshold before stamp duty applies for those first home owners, are all moves that cost government. However, we trust that they do increase that affordability and possibility for people to get their first home.
The goals that the minister has laid out for the government over the next six years are the sorts of goals that we should be headed for, and that should receive support right across the board. The fundamental positon is, as far as we possibly can, giving all Territorians the right to safe, secure but, most importantly, affordable housing in the first instance. That is exactly what the minister said.
We have to grow the affordable housing sector out there in the community at large; we have to increase the range of housing options available to purchasers; and we have to continue to look at how we further assist low and moderate income earners into the housing market. That is very problematic because you get into those questions of how that low income earner gets to a point of actually having enough by way of deposit to satisfy the lenders out there that they are a safe risk in going into a housing mortgage. There is also improved business approach by government and pathwaying people through to independent living.
They are the six goals that the minister has laid out. He has put down the fundamental cornerstones to what should be the delivery of a socially just housing system in the Territory. We do not pretend, on this side of the House, that those goals will be easy to achieve, but they will be achieved. We are going to continue to work on them and take the steps to reach them.
Supply and access are fundamental keys to affordable housing. The statistics show that we have the most affordable housing market in Australia at the moment. We get a factor of 52.8. If you compare that to New South Wales sitting at 28, it is a huge mark-up in our favour. That is always a snapshot in time and it is not going to remain like that. We have recently seen housing prices move quite dramatically as the housing boom in the southern states has come off and investors start to look to what they perceive as soft markets to put money into whether it is Darwin, parts of the Northern Territory, or Western Australia. We were always, and I would think we always will be, counter-cyclical in terms of housing price movements in the Territory compared to other southern states. That factor of 52.8 for the Northern Territory compared to New South Wales at 28 is derived by dividing the mean weekly earnings by mean week loan repayments.
The question of housing affordability is also tied to a secure employment environment. However, it also goes further than that in terms of the opportunities - and again, challenges - certainly in the first place for government where is it putting money on the line to provide housing, to secure training and employment opportunities, and particularly, I guess, in those rural and remote communities where lack of a labour market and lack of employment opportunities is so stark.
If you look at IHANT and how that works with the Department of Community Development, Sport and Cultural Affairs as the program manager, one project springs that springs to mind is the Tangentyere project in Central Australia. I met some of these people. They have five remote communities with four apprentices and one builder trainer in each community building two houses per year. I met those trainees at a function in Alice Springs some weeks ago. Tangentyere brought those trainees in from their communities to a function for trainees and apprentices in Alice Springs. It was terrific to meet those trainees and talk to them about the work they are doing, how the training was being delivered, and how they were going on those housing projects.
Some years ago when the army was into delivery of housing project at Galiwinku on Elcho Island in my electorate, a similar thing was done where a group of trainees worked with the established army construction teams but then went on to build a house in their own right under supervision of local building instructor. It was a marvellous program. We got those trainees through to Certificate III in a couple of instances. The problem was that once the army went and the trainees had finished on that particular house they were building the sustainability had not been properly built into that program and we lost a lot of the benefit of it.
We needed then at a community level to have that team held as a core and added to by further trainees over time so that those all those questions of repairs and maintenance in the community and who does it would be resolved. You would have a local construction, local housing team of indigenous people from Galiwinku fully employed and looking after the community housing. But it did show what can be achieved. Tangentyere is showing what can be achieved if government constructs its contracts right and, where government is putting money on the line, provides for proper employment and training opportunities within those contracts.
Housing prices: as I said, the counter cyclical movement that we have in the Northern Territory compared to the southern states has moved steadily over the last couple of years and I think will continue to move perhaps even more rapidly over the next 12 months. The Real Estate Institute figures year on year in Darwin show that Darwin house prices rose 23.8% in the June quarter 2004 compared to the movement of the June quarter 2003. It should be remembered that this was in a climate in which national house prices were going ahead in an unrealistic and overheated housing market.
Whilst the Darwin rise has been steadier than what we have seen interstate, it has been significant. It is a steadier rise and probably far more sustainable into the future in the sense that I do not think that we will overcook and then fall back.
Unit prices in Darwin also increased year on year, with a 15.5% increase over the previous June quarter. The median house price now in Darwin stands at $255 000 and the median unit price is now $190 000. That again reaffirms the decisions this government took in lifting the threshold for first home owners before stamp duty cuts in. We did that in advance of a rising housing market so that the benefits to first home owners are pretty strong.
Across the Territory, there have been increases - with the exception of Tennant Creek and there are individual factors there because it is a small sample size - but our rate of growth has been much steadier and probably more manageable in those terms than interstate where we have seen quite ridiculous house movement prices. People who watch reality shows like Auction Squad can see some quite absurd prices in and around Sydney. BIS Shrapnel predicts that Territory house prices will continue to grow steadily over the period to 2007. That growth is expected to be around 21.6%, which would make the average price for a house in Darwin roughly $298 000 and, that, at a time, as I said, when the rest of Australia is starting to soften.
There is a further indicator of the health of the housing market and that is vacancy rates. Vacancy rates in part determine rental prices, but they certainly determine development of new and upgraded units and when that development will take place. Palmerston’s vacancy rate is down to 3.7% and when you get down that low, you are actually getting units rented that, in a more steady market, would not be making the line. That is a very low vacancy rate for Palmerston. Alice Springs is at about 5%; Darwin is 5.5%, and is Katherine 5.2%. Sue Shearer and David Loy from the Real Estate Institute of the Northern Territory had a meeting with me last week and we were discussing these figures that they had bought with them. Those vacancy rates now are low enough to generate and trigger new unit development and housing market demand across those centres. Of course, that will mean further construction activity and more jobs for Territorians.
The issue that becomes important in this climate is the whole question, where I started, of home affordability. Probably the best indicator of that are the figures published quarterly called the Housing Affordability Indicator. Each state and territory is given an indicator showing those levels of affordability. It is worked out by taking the mean weekly earnings, dividing it by the mean weekly loan repayments and, on those figures, we have the highest affordability of the nation; over 52 compared with New South Wales, 28; Tasmania, 38; and Queensland, 32. We are considerably ahead of our interstate counterparts in terms of that affordability. However, in a rising house market, our indicator, of course, is going to drop. As prices stabilise or drop interstate, their affordability will come up.
The indicator is already down a little from what it was showing that home affordability has contracted that little bit, but I am pleased to say that the take up of the Minister for Community Development’s new HomeNorth proposals announced last month have been pretty staggering. Where that really manifested itself was in the show circuit. I happened to pop past the stand and speak to the people at each of the shows. I did not get to Alice this year, but each of the others I did. They were very happy and optimistic people working those stands because they had a steady stream of people taking the application forms, discussing what was required, what they needed to put up in order to advance their application and, in some cases, taking completed applications on the spot there and then. I thought that really was a measure of just how successful the new HomeNorth proposals have been.
Madam Speaker, it is always going to be a central issue for government, particularly with our challenges of rural and remote communities in the mix as well. The whole question of housing goes to those fundamental questions of a stable and settled Territory, and being able to provide housing of a quality that people are happy with will go a long way to further stabilising the population of the Northern Territory, particularly retention factors in and around rural and remote areas.
I thank the minister for his statement. The goals show a clear way forward over the next six years. As ministers of this government, we will all be keeping our eye one it and assisting the minister wherever possible to make sure that these goals are met.
Dr LIM (Greatorex): Madam Speaker, reading through the statement, I thought the minister made quite a number of motherhood statements. In general, it is a positive statement about housing in the Territory, and how this government proposes to continue the good work that has been done over many decades under the previous governments, federal and Territory.
Mr Kiely: It is not motherhood on the ground.
Dr LIM: I hear the empty vessels across the Chamber rattling already before they even hear what I have to say.
Mr Kiely: Yes, you were a lazy and indifferent minister.
Dr LIM: It is interesting that, over the years, especially of recent years with Housing 2003, which obviously compared last year, but had no other program to replace it until late this year with the introduction of Home Territory 2010. Nobody can disagree that Housing 2003 was a very good project which brought a lot of good public housing to Territorians. It created many, many …
Mr Ah Kit: You were an incompetent minister.
Dr LIM: It created many and ...
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Dr LIM: … and very much wanted seniors villages, particularly in the Top End, and I was glad to see that this government agreed to build a small one in Alice Springs last year. These seniors villages have been much sought after by many pensioners in the Territory. The ones I have visited up here - Tambling Terrace, Leanyer Terrace and all those places - are very well set out, and lovely complexes …
Members interjecting.
Dr LIM: … with a secure environment that our senior Territorians all wanted to have. I hear the constant interjections across the Chamber, and it would be interesting to note that, in fact, the member for Wanguri was the one who stood very hard and fast, and fought very hard to prevent the Leanyer Village from being constructed. Right through the whole election campaign three or four years ago, he vehemently fought against it, and mislead the residents in that area. Today, the complex has been there for well over 12 months. It has demonstrated to the neighbourhood that it is a fantastic facility, and now this government has seen the light and will now continue new projects along the same line.
What - well, puzzles is not the right word, because the minister obviously did his foreword in a very political way - the member for Katherine read it out earlier, and I think it is worth reading out once more. Halfway through the foreword, the minister said:
- The next step is public housing and overcoming the shortage of public housing. As Minister for Housing, I was shocked to find, for example, that many houses have not been painted in 20 years.
This is an indictment of the minister, when he accuses the department, his own staff, of not maintaining the housing stock in the Territory for that many decades. It is an indictment.
When I was the Minister for Housing, I recall that I visited a house in the northern suburbs and, in fact, assisted, for a short while, with the start of the painting program. Yes, as part of the program we provided paint for people who wanted to do their own work. It is not because we would not paint the house for them but, because, if they were prepared to do it, they could actually get paint to do their own housing at an earlier stage. The houses were all geared to be refurbished, repaired and painted. If somebody was prepared to do it themselves, they got the paint and they could do their house painting earlier than if they waited for the government system to come to their turn. That was the system.
Houses were being repaired, were being painted. Remember the houses that were damaged by tenants? Millions upon millions of dollars was spent by Territory Housing over the years – including the last three years of this government – to repair houses damaged by the tenants. Tenants had to be evicted by Territory Housing so that those houses could be rescued. This is an expensive exercise which will continue to happen.
I believe the minister owes his department a very strong apology for writing comments such as that. The staff of Territory Housing work enormously hard, long hours sometimes, well beyond the call of duty, to ensure that their tenants are well cared for. For the government, in the words of the minister, to say, ‘You guys have done pretty badly, you have really ignored your tenants’, is a real insult. The minister will one day incur the wrath of his staff.
We all know what housing is like. As a general practitioner, in my previous profession, I used to visit many patients living in Territory Housing homes. I know what they looked like, the conditions that they lived in. It is something that is a two-way thing - the government provides facilities and as much assistance as they can …
Ms Lawrie: No, you did not, you did not do anything.
Dr LIM: … and the householder themselves need to also respond by putting some effort into it …
Ms Lawrie: Programs were not funded.
Dr LIM: The member for Karama continues to rattle on and I still cannot hear what she says. As I said previously she sounds like a cat, and she continues to sound like a cat.
Madam SPEAKER: Order!
Ms Lawrie: Programs were not funded.
Dr LIM: It is about time she stopped, because it does not help one bit at all.
Ms Lawrie: No funding against the repair program.
Madam SPEAKER: Member for Karama!
Ms Lawrie: He said he could not hear.
Madam SPEAKER: You are being provocative.
Dr LIM: The minister then went on to talk about data from the national housing survey and housing affordability. He grouped people into four lots: indigenous Territorians, lone people, single people with dependent children, and couples with dependent children. That means just about 80% to 85% of all Territorians. The only people he has not included in this are the double income, no kids category. When you talk about people requiring housing, obviously, in a jurisdiction such as ours, barely 50 years old, you have to understand that our housing stock is going to be definitely limited, and that people coming to live in the Territory would naturally, first of all, access government housing before they embark on purchasing their own. Therefore, you would anticipate that the public housing sector in the Territory would be higher.
The member for Katherine spoke earlier about the difficulty of maintaining homes, particularly where they are being occupied by Territorians who have come from the bush. It is a problem; we all know it and we see it every day. There is no denying that, sometimes, urban homes designed for four to six, maybe even seven people, are overcrowded with visiting relatives from the bush. In your own homes, you would not have 10 to 15 people living there. There has to be a system provided by government to protect the tenants of those homes. I remember in the last few months of my ministry we started to place on the front doors of homes rented to our bush indigenous people the names of people who were entitled to be in those homes.
That helped a lot because the tenant could show it to their relatives and say, ‘This is an official paper from Territory Housing that says these people whose names are on this list are the ones who are entitled to this home. Those names that are not on the list are not entitled to be here’. It helped because as we all know with indigenous relationships, there are family pressures, a sense of obligation and it allows the tenant to have an official document to support their request to their relatives not to misbehave, and to abide by the rules that are there. It assists and I see that the government has now improved on that basis by erecting signs, I believe, in homes to show people how to maintain and how to care for the homes. That is a good idea.
I also recall a program that was in existence during our term in government. We had an urban living program funded through ATSIC …
Ms Lawrie: Federal funding.
Dr LIM: … through the Northern Territory government, in combination …
Ms Lawrie: Axed.
Ms Carter: No, it is still going.
Dr LIM: Whenever a bush family came to town to live they could go and learn how to deal with a modern home.
Ms Lawrie: No.
Ms Carter: It is. I went to a thing recently.
Dr LIM: I pick up the interjection from the member for Port Darwin. That is a problem with the members opposite. They have some concept in their heads and they are not prepared to open up and see the value that Territory Housing has contributed to the wellbeing of all Territorians, urban as well as bush people.
The urban living program is indeed, was indeed, a very good program, and as the member for Port Darwin says has continued. It brought families in from the bush and showed them how to use a stove. I heard stories about people putting firewood inside the oven to cook with. I can understand that. My mother grew up using an open charcoal fire and when dad bought our first gas ring using a gas bottle into the home, she was terrified to use it because each time she tried to light the gas it would explode in her face. You have to learn how to use, what I would say is, modern technology. If you do not teach them, how do you expect them to care for their homes? Cleaning a house: how do you show somebody that a house needs to be cleaned? I believe continuing to promote the urban living program will ensure that people who are not used to a modern home can have the necessary skill to do so. I believe that is also important.
When the minister spoke about - I cannot remember what page it was now - but he spoke about having no private market in the bush. I quote his words: ‘However, in the bush there is no private market and therefore a complete dependency on community housing, or government employee housing as the only housing choice.’ I find it remarkable that a minister who claims to be the first indigenous Minister of Housing, who has lived out bush before, growing up in camps and all that, would have realised - and he used to work at the Northern Land Council, I understand – that the Lands Right Act, and the alienability of land out bush where Aboriginal ownership is determined, people cannot buy land.
You tell me, a group of people in the Northern Territory who own 51% of the land mass of the Territory - they own it. None of us can touch that land. That land is owned by a group of people and this group of people have 51% of the land mass. The whole of the Territory is 1.3m km2 so 51% is something like 700 000 km2 and they cannot buy the land or build a house and say, ‘This is my property’. They cannot do that. There is some mismatch there somewhere and somehow you, as government, need to progress this so that people who own all that land can have some financial benefit from that property. If I owned 51% of the Northern Territory, my God, imagine what I could do with it. You would be doing the right thing. You would be using the land to ensure that fair welfare is shared across the Territory. You should be using that not for political gain, but to ensure that people get a fair share of the resources of that land in a fair and equitable way.
The minister spoke about average housing prices and the affordability of homes to first home buyers. In the Top End, I see all this land available for Darwin residents and potential investors. In Alice Springs, we have been so hamstrung with land shortage that it is now beyond a joke.
Mr Vatskalis interjecting.
Dr LIM: The member for Casuarina interjects. He was the one who got up in Estimates last year, you will all recall, and said land will be released in Alice Springs early 2004. We are into late 2004 now, late 2004. The member for Stuart said: ‘I will put my house on the market if no land becomes available for sale by January 2004’.
Members interjecting.
Madam SPEAKER: Order! Government members!
Dr LIM: These are the people who make promises and end up breaking them. At the moment, there is still no land available. Buy me a residential block of land in Alice Springs for $100 000! That is the problem. We need to get land out. Darwin has lots of it. We do not have any in Alice Springs. This has been the cry by the real estate industry, by first home buyers in Alice Springs, by people who want to get into their own homes.
I come to HomeNorth and the scheme that the minister announced so loudly and proudly a few months ago. At first blush, it looked terrific. It looked really terrific; money is going to be made available by government so people on higher incomes can actually get into the scheme and they can reach a higher level of loans to buy the houses they want.
Over the last few weeks, I have received complaints in my office in Alice Springs. People have gone to TIO to be financially assessed as to whether they can; people who are earning up to $1100 a week have suddenly been knocked back. By the time they have their balance sheet worked out, they are told: ‘Sorry, you are buying a car on hire purchase. You do not have enough disposal income to buy a house’, or: ‘We can lend you up to $50 000’. What can anyone in Alice Springs buy with a $50 000 loan? You are just whistling in the wind. That is the problem. At first blush it looked terrific, and I congratulated the government for the Home North scheme, but it is all smoke and mirrors.
It is time this government looked at it again. The Treasurer needs to look at it closely. There are major issues, Madam Speaker. You are nodding your head. Obviously you have constituents going to your office complaining about the same issue. If members opposite have not heard it, then they have turned a deaf ear to their constituents. That is the problem. There are issues with HomeNorth. Minister, check it out, find out for yourself.
As regards training, house building trainees are something that we need desperately. The fact that the Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs has been so successful at it has been a great thing. However, this is, again, a racial thing, unfortunately, and there is no other way to escape it. Unless you are an Aboriginal person, you cannot be on a CDEP program. It is true that under the CDEP program, the Tangentyere Council could actually put these apprentices into building apprenticeships and traineeships. If you are a whitefella, sorry mate, you cannot have it.
I do not deny that Tangentyere Council is doing it very well, and good luck to them. I hope they keep doing it for the next few years. Here is the one opportunity where Aboriginal people can grasp these traineeships with both hands, get themselves skilled and become, in fact, the next middle class of the Territory. They can do that. I see many people now doing it in Alice Springs - Aboriginal people working in skilled jobs. That is the best thing they can do. The best welfare program we can have in the Territory is an employment program, people getting jobs, working gainfully; getting employed to do the things that we all do every day when we wake up in the morning. If we can do that, they will then have the income to be able to purchase their own homes, and if you can get the inalienability out of the Land Rights Act, you will truly see these people come to the fore, and I hope they do that.
Debate suspended.
MINISTERIAL STATEMENT
Home Territory 2010
Home Territory 2010
Continued from earlier this day.
Mr Acting DEPUTY SPEAKER: We are returning to our ministerial statement on housing.
Ms LAWRIE (Karama): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise this afternoon to congratulate the Minister for Housing on what are ground-breaking reforms of housing policy in the Territory, reforms that I believe will make a meaningful difference to the quality of people’s lives in our beloved Territory.
Home Territory 2010 sets the platform and the foundations to move the Territory ahead. It radically changes what has been the emphasis of housing policy in the Territory in the past, which was an emphasis on bricks and mortar, to one that provides an emphasis on people; people who need the shelter that the Territory government provides through significant funding.
It has been a body of work that I know the department and members of government have worked solidly on for some three years. The member for Greatorex made some flippant remarks about Housing 2003 which finished last year and asked why it has it taken so long. That demonstrates the shallowness of his ability to understand that if you are going to undertake significant reforms in any policy area, you cannot do it lightly. It is a significant body of work that has been done by departmental staff and members of government to produce what we see in the Chamber today. These are massive reforms to the whole emphasis of housing in the Territory.
There are in excess of 600 public housing properties in my electorate of Karama so it is an area that I have, by need to represent my constituency, to get across. When I was elected I realised very quickly that the CLP housing policy was one that was geared to evict any problem tenants. They neglected the housing stock. It was significantly run down. Residences in Karama and Malak were 20 years of age and I can say, through experience, you were flat out getting anything done. There were bathrooms that were cracked, water leaking, hot water services broken, and inadequate fencing. You could not get a driveway, for love nor money. There were no sheds. I inquired at one stage with Housing about the number of sheds available through the annual program, Territory-wide. The answer was six. With 6900 Territory Housing properties, you can do your own figures to work out how likely you were to be one of the lucky six to get a shed. Basically, you were whistling Dixie if you wanted to get any improvements done to your Territory Housing home.
That made a significant impact on families who were trying to make ends meet, trying to get ahead with their lives. We had scenarios of toddlers playing in the mud of driveways, because Territory Housing was simply not funded to provide driveways. We had parents worried about children getting out on to roads because, again, there was no funding for adequate fencing.
We had elderly couples who were struggling with places falling down around them, inadequate kitchens, bathrooms, tiles that were chipped or broken. The houses, the units, were in a significant state of disrepair, and as bad as I knew Karama and Malak public housing assets were, I understood Alice Springs was worse, and you are flat out even getting a house in the remote parts of the Territory. Maningrida was something like 200 houses short of need. That was the state of housing in the Territory that this government inherited.
We have not been idle in three years. We have been working up policy to radically reform and change that so that we can never revisit that state of neglect. Funding has been put in consecutive budgets to increase the Housing budget. Looking at the 1999-2000 Housing budget – a cursory glance at that – you will see $60m disappeared from that Housing budget. I felt sorry for the ministers for Housing under CLP regime, they were hamstrung because the funding was not there to support the significant need that we had in terms of housing costs in the Territory.
Home Territory 2010 is delivering a policy framework …
Ms Carter: Make sure it is not going to be like building the hospice, never to be seen.
Ms LAWRIE: I pick up on the interjection from the member for Port Darwin. Member for Port Darwin, you may not have an interest in housing, but many people do. If you want to talk about the hospice, I am happy to debate that with you anytime. We are funding it. Your government never did. You could not even get the commitment out of the CLP to do it.
Ms Carter: You are all talk and no action, you guys. Where is the hospice?
Mr ACTING DEPUTY SPEAKER: I remind members about the protocol of talking across the Chamber, thank you.
Ms LAWRIE: 2010 provides the housing focus that this government is putting in place to introduce the basic needs of housing tenants. They need safe, secure and affordable housing, and Home Territory 2010 rates up there amongst the best housing policy in Australia, and I do not say that lightly. I have spent years researching housing policy throughout Australia, recognising the need to radically reform our housing policy here in the Territory.
I congratulate the minister for the energy and the passion he has brought to reforming housing. In particular, I know he has done significant work in obtaining significant millions of additional dollars out of the Commonwealth to address the housing shortfall in our remote regional areas, which was of critical need. This does impact on urban constituencies like Karama and Malak, because we had many people coming in from the bush, simply because the housing was not there for them in the bush, and being placed in housing in urban constituencies. That trend is now significantly changing.
We have also had, in the time that I have been the member for Karama, housing policy really come to the modern norm and modern practice of about a 20% density of public housing as being the top upper limit of what you want to have in housing densities. In context, in 2001, the public housing densities in Karama and Malak were up around the 38%, so almost double what is internationally recognised as your upper limits of the housing density. I acknowledge the same situation existed in Palmerston and, to an extent they face similar issues as Karama and Malak because of the public housing densities in those areas.
What we have seen in the past three years is a proactive policy change within Housing, whereby they are reducing those densities. That is having an appreciable difference in each street and each court, where you see a reduction in public housing. How do they reduce public housing densities? By making homes affordable for the public housing tenants to then purchase. HomeNorth has been a fantastic watershed as a loans scheme to provide people with the 2% deposit, as opposed to 5%. It makes it affordable for people to increase ability to purchase. The scheme has been fantastic. I know residents in my area have been taking up that scheme. They love the $1500 interest-free loan for whitegoods and their service fees, and the ability to make homes affordable if they are low or middle income earners. This, coupled with decreasing public housing densities, is starting to reform and reshape the actual look and social fabric of some of our suburbs where we have had significant housing densities in the past.
This vision to grow and expand affordable housing in the Territory will be the quiet achiever of this government in this term of government. People will not start to see the benefits for some years now. I have started to see the benefits in my electorate because we did have high densities, but the spread of the emphasis on home affordability throughout the Territory will be one of the most significant achievements of government in terms of the social fabric of our society.
Assisting these low to moderate income earners into home ownership was very necessary. We all know that the major financial institutions cover the mortgage needs of the middle to higher income earners but, if you are in the low to middle bracket, you did not have a hope of getting in; you were deemed to be a financial risk for them.
Improving the way we create business partnerships has been important. I note the significant work the department and the minister has done working with the indigenous housing authority, IHANT, in bedding down Commonwealth agreements which have brought millions of dollars of additional housing funding into the Territory from the Commonwealth, helping us to create a strategic approach to meeting housing needs of indigenous Territorians, both in the urban and remote rural setting.
To look at the issues, we have had to pretty well build up from scratch in many areas. Data was often insufficient or completely lacking. Therefore, in looking at asset maintenance, where assets occur, the identified 6900 urban Territory households struggling to meet their requirements for daily living, there has been a massive amount of work done within the department to build up the data they need to identify where funding should be spent, and to go to Canberra and put in the big fight for Commonwealth/state housing agreement for a better slice of that housing funding pie.
I recognise that it has been a major change in housing policy to say, ‘Let us look at people rather than just the bricks and mortar’. As we all know, each family’s circumstance, and each adult person’s living circumstance, is slightly different. The needs of one person with a disability differ from the needs of another person with a disability. Therefore, if we can create housing policy that provides a fair and equitable framework for these differences to be managed, you are saying to people, ‘We value you as a person with your individual needs’.
It is now available through this change in housing policy for people to go in and argue their own circumstances, and where they fit within that policy. That will make an improvement in people’s confidence and their awareness of being able to manage their lives and their life circumstances. Shelter is such a fundamental in life, and housing availability affects whether you are moving ahead with your life or whether, in fact, you are struggling with your life. There is nothing worse than homelessness. Many of us who went through Cyclone Tracy understand the issue of homelessness. We understand just what it does to your whole-of-life circumstances. If you can bed down housing policy that reduces the risk and the incidence of homelessness, you are making fundamental improvements to people’s lives.
I note that we are spending in the vicinity of about $48m to undertake what this policy says is urban renewal. Urban renewal provides the structural improvement to the assets that this government has made a huge commitment to. It is no small amount of money, as we know. The Territory budget has enormous needs on it, whether you look at health or education. I believe that housing, in the past, has missed out being stacked up against those other needs, and under-funded.
The urban renewal funding means that the housing stock that has been so terribly run down is going to be improved over the next few years. We are already starting to see homes in our suburbs being renovated. We have people quoted within the minister’s publication. I know they are not constitutes in mine, but certainly the elderly couple who talk about the house they lived in for 20-odd years, are delighted with the renovation that they had. I will quote from Home Territory 2010 publication:
- ‘I’m on cloud nine, I can’t wait to get everything unpacked,’ enthused Ingrid as she tried out her brand new kitchen cupboards and showed off the shiny new television room with built-in robes, walls smelling of paint just out of the can.
As politicians we tend to all live in fairly reasonable homes. We do not have to rely on the whim of someone else in terms of the quality of our housing. It is certainly a significant difference to people’s lives to walk into a place that has drive way, a carport, a new kitchen, bathroom, painting, and tiling. That cannot be underestimated in terms of the turnaround it provides families and how they feel about their lives and their ability to step up to challenges in life.
I congratulate the minister and the department for going to enormous lengths to get in place the urban renewal program and the minister has gone into Cabinet and successfully won the fight for those millions of dollars that are needed to fund urban renewal through out the Territory.
The renal cluster village pilot is a fantastic initiative. Many of the constituents that I work with in Karama and Malak are renal patients who are dislocated from their communities. If we can achieve partnerships with Health, Aboriginal hostels and relevant community organisations to work with the renal community cluster and these pilots, that would be tremendous improvement to the social fabric of our suburbs. The past situation of just plonking people into these houses because they happen to be close to Royal Darwin Hospital where they happen to be given renal assistance, or they happen to close to the renal unit out at Nightcliff, and then leaving them pretty much on their own to fend for themselves, failed because it caused a breakdown in neighbourhood relationships. It is great to see strategies bedded into Home Territory 2010 to ensure that those circumstances are actually turned around and improved.
The quality landlord strategy bedded down into this policy is very much needed. There is a lot you can do if you are working in a strategic sense to look at quality neighbourhoods. Some of the things I have seen work in my constituency is working with NGOs such as Danila Dilba Social Wellbeing Service with problematic tenancies, and working with Anglicare or Amity in terms of their financial counselling with problematic tenancies. So families who struggle for a variety of reasons to behave in their tenancy rather than doing the quick fix solution of straight eviction and for many people this was a revolving door - 20-odd tenancies over some years which is an absolute indictment on a failure of a system - you are now bedding down tenancies and managing them through the able and qualified professional experience and expertise of the non-government sector.
Obviously critical to this is the local council, legal aid services, the Anti-Discrimination Commission, and the police. It is about saying what services exists, what services are appropriate, doing the appropriate referrals and tying those referrals to tenancy. I know the tenancy managers work very hard in managing the various tenancies but I encourage them to pursue this quality landlord strategy because it really will make for a reduction, I believe, in disturbances within the suburbs and better relationships between neighbours.
The Home Territory 2010 policy sets a framework for identifying the needs of people and meeting those needs within the issue of shelter which is a fundamental issue to people lives. We have a long way to go. We see in this statement significant unmet need in terms of housing needed, funding required for housing; I believe the Commonwealth has a lot further to go. We know they are still taking the Commonwealth/State Housing funding carve-up from census statistics that underestimate our population and our unmet need. I know the minister has a good rapport with his federal counterpart and has, through persistent requests, negotiations, and submissions, and a strong leadership role at the ministerial council, been able to secure additional Commonwealth funding above what they otherwise would have given us. I congratulate the minister for his achievements on federal funding.
I urge members opposite to talk to their colleagues about improving funding for housing from the Commonwealth. As a territory, we should be working with them and they should be able to justify their funding levels by recognising there are more current census statistics that should be looked at than the ones on which they currently rely.
Home Territory 2010 will deliver into the end of this decade fairer, more affordable housing for Territorians. Importantly, for many families living in the housing, it will be safer and more secure. There are pathways bedded within this policy framework to move people through their lifestyle changes, as the minister said, from their entry into public housing, one which is often an entry based on disadvantage and need, to improving their life circumstances, ultimately, to home affordability and purchase of that Territory Housing property.
I commend the minister for his vision and his passion to reform housing in the Territory. I commend the department. They know who they are, the officers who have worked closely through the three years to create this policy. They have done a fantastic job. Well done!
Mr ELFERINK (Macdonnell): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, the member for Karama missed out the times when the CLP used to grab virgins and tie them to railway tracks as we put our little top hat on and twirled our evil moustaches and cackled insanely as we ran off to allow the train to run over the virgins.
We have a large level of public housing in the Northern Territory and it was a stock that was built up after the destruction that was wreaked on this town, largely in the Darwin area, as a result of Cyclone Tracy. As a consequence, we had, as the minister pointed out, about 11% to 12% public housing in the stock, which is about twice the national average.
What I would like to touch on is a very small fraction of what the minister had to say because I agree that we need to find new ways to deal with public housing in the Northern Territory. The minister has pointed out that it is going to take $850m to get that stock up to the standard that he would like. This is not a new problem. In fact, it has been raised by former Housing ministers as far back as Steve Hatton. I think $850m is a touch on the conservative side; it would be close to $1bn required. We will take the $850m standard.
The approach by this government is the social approach. They call this their social housing policy. What the government is advocating is to spend money on building houses in towns and remote communities of Central Australia, and this is done through a series of programs. The federal government has, as the member for Karama quite correctly pointed out, come to the party on this. However, there might be other ways in which we can approach the housing issue in the Northern Territory.
One of the problems of housing, especially for indigenous people in the Northern Territory, is that they are over-represented in the public housing statistics. What the minister does not point out with any detail, and it is an important point, is that most of the Aboriginal people to whom he refers live remotely, which means that they live in land trusts and the land law that applies to land trusts is quite different from the law that applies in our towns. That is a very interesting point because for that reason, Aboriginal people, believe it or not, cannot own their own homes in their own communities on their own traditional lands. As the minister said, and I quote:
- However, in the bush there is no private market and therefore complete dependence on community housing or government employee housing is the only housing choice. The stark tragedy of this is that there is an estimated $850m shortfall of housing stock out in the bush.
If we are to believe that this is the correct methodology for building houses in our bush communities, let us reverse the argument and apply bush methodology to our towns and communities, such as Darwin, Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Katherine and the like. And what do we get? Well, if the government was to go through the old ATSIC roll and identify every Aboriginal person living in Darwin, and form something called the Darwin Land Council, and all of those properties were then invited to be converted to inalienable freehold rather than the normal freehold they have now, what would be the effect? I wonder if the minister would be happy to have his block of land - I think he lives in the Leanyer area - converted to inalienable freehold and become part of a land council which operates all of those blocks in Darwin? I would suggest that the minister would probably baulk at that, and with every good reason, because he understands the limitations that that particular title places on some homeowners.
I am not advocating this, but what I want the government to do is push a mental exercise upon members so that they consider this. Why is it that we would have a system of land law in this community which is different from home ownership in other communities? So, when you then have a government stuck with a situation where you have to build houses because people cannot actually build their own, because they are building it on a property that has some other interest in it, you are never going to be pushing people into a direction where home ownership is even attractive. One, because they just cannot own the homes, but, two, even if they choose to make those decisions and make their lives in their own communities, there is no way that they can step up to the plate.
The minister’s response to this is we will just build $850m-worth of homes, and we will have to go to the federal government for that. But the problem with that is that the federal government, and the minister well knows this, is not going to provide $850m for housing, and the Northern Territory government cannot even contemplate affording $850m for housing.
So here is a little mental exercise. Let us just make a small amendment to the Land Rights Act, and allow the Land Rights Act to change inasmuch as where it is possible, to buy a small patch, 800m2 of land in some communities. As I travel around communities, I see many people who have loans for cars. They are an asset which devalues in value, so the people who live in those communities are quite capable of getting loans. When I travel into some communities, I see some homes which are government stock, which are being very well looked after. They often have grass around them. If they do not have grass, you will see the dirt in front of the house is neatly raked into patterns. There are no piles of rubbish and those sorts of things, and more and more of these houses are starting to appear in communities.
The minister says we would like to get more private investment and private markets into the Northern Territory. Why can’t we look at these communities and see if we can find ways of creating or tapping into financial resources outside the areas of government? Let us say it is not even the purchase of the land itself, maybe it is the lease on the land which could be formed. So what happens is that you declare a small area inside a community boundary, you can have an allotment, maybe quarter acre blocks, and on that quarter acre block you are able to take out a lease, on which the lease itself becomes a valuable, tradeable commodity. That lease means that you can raise capital against it by going into a bank and raising a loan and that loan can be repaid at the normal rate.
Now, that lease is probably not going to be worth a great deal of money in itself, but once there is a house on it, and there is 90 years to run on a lease like that, that house then becomes something of value in the community itself. I wonder if an Aboriginal person, or otherwise, who owns a house on a leased property of which they have a 99 year lease, would be more inclined to look after that property, especially if they have a loan, than a person who simply has a house given to them and told: ‘Go for it, move in!’?
I believe that you would find that these houses would be better looked after. It has been my experience that, where I have seen loans taken out for cars by Aboriginal people in these communities, they become jealous guardians of that particular piece of property because they know that they have to repay those loans, and that is over the life of the vehicle. However, the difference between a car and a house is that a house is an appreciating asset.
If you go into a place like Hermannsburg at the moment, where there are many people who are capable of raising the funds that are necessary to purchase their own home - and let us say five people in the community of Hermannsburg go to the trouble of raising that capital, getting builders in, building the house, what would the effective value be on the properties that surrounded those particular houses? I would argue that, like in any area where you have increasing development, property values go up. Wouldn’t that be a remarkable situation, where you had people who lived on land trusts being able to raise capital to build their own homes, to then look after those own homes and increase the value of that property?
The extraordinary thing is that, if they actually built the house next door and had a rental property, they would start becoming taxpayers because they would have to pay things like capital gains tax like the rest of us do. They would start to fall into an economic system which is recognised universally, effectively, throughout the rest of the world. They become less isolated and more responsible for their property.
And guess what else? Here is a remarkable idea! The burden on government becomes less, so there will not be a requirement for the minister to go to Canberra and delve into the Treasurer’s budget and say: ‘I need to extract $850m out of your budgets collectively’. There will be increased economic vitality based on the fact that these houses still have to be built. All of a sudden, the training that we insist on doing in these communities will start to find an environment in which they matter, because the maintenance of these houses would have to go to local people who live in them and who live around them. All of a sudden, you could start to use this system of freeing up - even just within a small town boundary - people to be able to start to generate a little wealth.
One other thing that I would like to see happen in communities is that the government pursues what they are talking about in this Moving the Territory Ahead document and they do something else. Rather than just simply assisting indigenous people and showing them how to use a nail gun, how to put up a wall and those sorts of things - and they are truly useful - what about some business training? Wouldn’t it be wonderful if somebody living in Willowra, for argument’s sake, was able to run a business sufficiently well that they could pick up the local contract for painting the houses there? They would be able to contract, through the normal tender process, I would dare say, a lot cheaper than bringing painters in from Alice Springs. They could have a bit of business training. It would not take a great deal of work for that person to then find themselves wealthy enough to buy a paintbrush, rollers and some tins of paint, and they could actually start to pick up a few contracts around the community of Willowra. Once they started getting better at that, they could start vying for contracts elsewhere - Yuelamu perhaps, or Yuendumu or Ti Tree. In that method, you could actually be encouraging the growth of businesses.
I went through this exercise not so long ago with an Aboriginal person. This person travelled with me and he started asking questions about how to set up businesses and those sorts of things. The response was quite remarkable. I ended up driving him down Elders Street in Alice Springs and started telling him what happened in Elders Street and how businesses worked with money, and how it generated wealth, and that that guy over there was a plumber and that guy was an engineer. I place my thanks on the record to Ross Engineering for allowing me to take this chap into the workshop so he could see what happened in there. To Neil and Julie Ross, many thanks. This guy started to get an idea and he said: ‘Some of this stuff I can do. It is not particularly technical’. However, he did not have the business training.
It is all right to say Aboriginal people can pick up the jobs and the local council can employ them. Why don’t we take the extra step and let them employ themselves and pick up contracts from the councils, and encourage them to do so? The only down side for this poor fellow was when I explained how income tax worked, he was not too happy about that, he thought that was a bit of a rip off, and I can well understand why he felt that way because there is no shortage of business people who feel that way.
I have seen donkeys in the houses at Willowra because their housing stock has been built but no responsibility has been placed on the individual people who live in those houses to truly look after them. You can say to some of those people that they have a way of owning their own little patch of dirt over which they have complete control as individual people. Then you encourage those people through their own income sources to be able to build their own homes or look after their own homes that they have purchased. Imagine selling the existing housing stock? You ask yourself how well that they will look after them. Most people will look after them extremely well, and some people won’t, and that is going to be reflective of the rest of society because there are some people in Darwin and Alice Springs who do not look after their homes particularly well, but most people look after them extremely well.
What you would try to achieve by going down this path is stepping away from this welfare approach of governing people’s lives for them and actually giving them some governance over their own lives. To do that you have to create, in this case, a system of land law which would allow it. If I go to Aboriginal communities today, all too often I do not see people who are under-serviced; I see people who could not be more over-serviced. Their medical is looked after, schooling is laid on, there is a police station in nearly every community, with a few exceptions, road funding is looked after, they get an income every week or so, their overheads are very low and yet the results are very poor.
Why are those results poor? Because there is actually no ownership of anything. There is no ownership of your own home, there is no ownership of the governance issues in your own community - particularly those communities which do not have their own local government authority - there is no ownership of the community itself, and then there becomes disinterest.
If people own their own homes, and were capable of owning their homes in their own communities, I think that what the minister would find, and I am sure he would agree with me on this, is that the indigenous over-representation rates that he currently complains of would actually start to drift away. I am not talking about radical changes to the Land Rights Act. I am not talking about selling huge swathes of land. I am not even talking about selling the land. I am talking about selling leases in small patches around communities. That would be a starting point. I would bet London to a brick that at first it would be very slow, and then as time progressed and other people saw a handful of people succeeding in these communities, the idea would start to catch on.
I have seen over recent times banks prepared to make loans to Aboriginal people to buy cars, and over recent times, especially in some of the communities close to Alice Springs, the cars have been getting better and better. Why? Because the banks are becoming braver in lending money for cars. Why? Because Aboriginal people are rising to the plate in terms of their personal responsibility to those banks and their personal responsibility to pay that money back. What is the effect of that? When I see certain people driving around in very flash cars that they own and they pay for them themselves, the effect of that is a sense of pride. And those cars that I see which are privately owned in these communities are spotlessly clean, very well looked after and funded privately.
If there was a housing equivalent of that, it would take such a burden off the taxpayer, both Territory and federally. Enormous gains could be achieved, but it would take a small amount of bravery on the part of both the federal government and the land councils and any other participant to take that little step to find a way to make housing ownership possible in some of these remote communities.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I welcome the statement by the minister on this very important issue. I welcome the comments by the member for Macdonnell, some of which I might highlight in my own speech.
I come from, I would say, a fairly affluent area of the Northern Territory where the cost of housing is now becoming quite high. Recently, a block of land not far from my place in Howard Springs sold for $180 000. It is a five-acre block with absolutely nothing on it except the bush and electricity passing by. That is a fairly outstanding cost just to buy a block of land these days. When you consider how much it costs to put a house on there, obviously people who can afford to do that would have a fairly high income.
My concerns are more about those people who are disadvantaged, who generally are the ones who cannot buy their own house. There is no doubt that Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory are the most disadvantaged when it comes to housing. On a visit to Port Keats last year, it was shown that 90 houses were needed just to catch up with demand. There are more houses required just to cope with the annual increase of nearly 100 people. Sadly, there were not enough funds given this year; I think there were only enough funds for four or five houses. You can see that at that rate of population growth, places like Port Keats will never catch up. I believe the situation in many other communities is not much different. There needs to be ways to increase the availability of houses for Aboriginal people.
I issued a media release when the HomeNorth scheme was announced by the minister in June asking why the HomeNorth scheme could not be used by Aboriginal people as a means for them to purchase their own houses. I looked through today’s statement, and I cannot see any mention of the possible use of this scheme for Aboriginal people living on their land. Why can’t we work out ways that would allow Aboriginal people to have a bit of ownership, a bit of pride, even a choice in the type of housing they would like? It may not only be issues of land tenure; perhaps we need some form of bank, a government bank or government-backed bank, which will allow Aboriginal people to get a loan, to put a house on a block of land as well. Do you need to sit down with the traditional owners and work through the issues of land ownership? The member for Macdonnell mentioned leases of 99 years.
I would be interested to know if the government has looked at the issue of land ownership in light of the possibility of Aboriginal people being able to purchase their own house on that land. If there are difficulties, we should not stop there; we should try to work around the problem, even if we were able to set up a pilot program on one community. I am not saying this would apply to every community. There might be difficulties, but perhaps we can come to an agreement on one community and see whether such a program would be successful.
For Aboriginal people, is their only option renting a house from the local building association when their name eventually comes up on the waiting list? The HomeNorth scheme has potential to change this. I understand there may be problems with the issues of land ownership, as I just said, but, surely, after all these years, we can come up with a solution to this issue. We need some innovative ideas in making HomeNorth work for those people who need it most. Anyone who has been out to remote communities would know the sad state many houses are in. You can bet these houses are probably rented and overcrowded. Could it be possible that if people owned their own house, we might find there is less chance of these houses falling to disrepair? That is also a comment the member for Macdonnell made. Why? If you have more houses, there is less overcrowding. Naturally, if you have more houses, that is what is going to occur; there will be fewer people in houses. In fact, we were told at Port Keats there are quite a number of houses with 15 or 16 people in them. There is no way that house could stand up to that sort of population without being damaged.
Second, ownership means a lot more pride in their residence. Of course, if someone does damage the house, they know they will have to fix it themselves. There are other spin-offs, especially in the building industry. If more people have access to cheaper loans, then more houses will be built, and that will be a boost to the housing industry, and we know that building houses creates jobs. If these houses are being built on Aboriginal communities, does not that open the way up for more local employment?
Public housing is important. If Aboriginal people are going to have some independence in their lives, give them a chance to pick and choose like other Australians so they too can enjoy the benefits of owning their own home. Minister, I quote two important paragraphs from your own speech which I believe underline what I have been saying:
- … housing underpins economic growth and sustainable development, and is an important catalyst for population growth and stability. Housing has a vital role in helping to build and maintain viable communities across the Northern Territory, including those in regional and remote areas.
The challenge is to have the provision of housing matching and complementing the growth and sustainability of the private housing sector as well as the building and construction industry.
I do hope that those words will come true, especially for Aboriginal communities.
Finally, an area which I believe needs more attention, especially in my rural area, the area of Litchfield Shire, is the construction of retirement villages. It is so sad at the present time to see a large emigration of people in their late 50s and early 60s leaving the Territory. Many of those people are going to Cairns, Atherton or the Gold Coast. We are losing people who have lived here for many years. We certainly need high quality retirement villages where people can get the same facilities they would get in other states, but would attract people to stay here longer.
Housing is not only about families and Aboriginal communities, it is about our retirees, it is about the older members of our community, and it is important that the government does work with private developers to come up with ways of encouraging this sort of development, otherwise, the way I see it, we will lose most of the people we have come to know as, you might say, pioneers from self-government, to other states, and that would be a sad loss. So I ask the government to give that some serious consideration, especially in the rural area, because there is a dire need there for rural retirement villages, so people can feel like they still live in the bush but do not have to leave the rural area to enjoy their retirement.
Mr BONSON (Millner): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise in support today of the minister’s Home Territory 2010 strategy. I have listened to everyone contribute, and interesting points have been made. I will address some of those near the end and, hopefully, some of those will be addressed as I go through my contribution to this debate.
As I was growing up my father, who was a fire brigade officer, often said that people need food, water and shelter and these are the most important things in people’s lives. People’s housing and needs are very important to their broader wellbeing. We talk about housing, and we have to have the ability to turn a house into a home, for young families, for seniors and individuals, and we have to assist that happening.
In this position now for nearly three years, you come in from the outside, you look at the government process, and you often think government can press a button and save the world. But as you learn and grow, you look at the actual statistics behind what we are dealing with here. Roughly, we are approaching, as a total budget in one year of the Northern Territory, just under $3bn.
In the minister’s statement, he made a very important comment about what we need to realise about housing. The Northern Territory needs $850m to meet the current housing and infrastructure needs of our remote communities. That is not even talking about the urban needs; we are just taking about the remote areas. It needs to be recognised there are two definite areas of concern: one in urban areas of cities like Darwin, Palmerston, and Alice Springs, and those out in the remote areas.
What we are talking about - and these figures come from the Northern Territory Department of Community Development, Sport and Cultural Affairs’ Community Information Asset System. One-third of the total budget of the Northern Territory is required to address these issues. This is on top of the fire brigade, police, education, health, etcetera. What has become apparent to me is that the Northern Territory has limited budget and needs to assess how best to maximise those resources to address issues facing Territorians. It cannot fix the problems, and we cannot hide behind that reality - we cannot fix the problem. However, what we can do is maximise the dollars we have to try to get the best return.
In these structures that we talk about to do with housing and turning houses into homes there a number of key players. Why are they key players? Because they have a responsibility. What I mean by that is the Northern Territory government, the Commonwealth government and the individuals themselves are the keys players, the key structures, in providing, in this context, not only housing for those people who need and require housing, but also for those individuals who have the ability to borrow money to obtain housing for themselves. Why do the Northern Territory government, Commonwealth government and individuals play a role? Because they have a responsibility to look after themselves.
As a community, we have collected together and formed structures such as the Northern Territory government and the Commonwealth government to address issues of housing, health, education, power, and water, etcetera, and those structures are there to provide, as best they can on a collective resource, the housing requirement that we need to go forward.
Looking at all the figures, the Northern Territory government, in my mind, cannot address all the issues to do with housing facing them in urban and remote areas. I will clarify those. The individuals in those remote and urban areas do not have the resources to address these problems. So, who does it leave? The third player, the Commonwealth government. It was talked about in this speech, and I will run through the Home Territory Strategy 2010. We talk about the resources that we get from the Commonwealth government. Other members have touched on it, and I have touched on this before when I have been talking about housing, health and education issues.
There are many families who have grown up in the suburb of Millner - including in the electorate of Millner - in Territory housing. Territory Housing has down a job for those families for many years, and that needs to be recognised. Former governments have faced that responsibility and said that they will deliver housing. What we are arguing about here is prioritising those resources and what we, as government, are saying is that we are investing a larger amount - not that we are better than former government. We are arguing that we have made a commitment to invest more resources into this issue. Again, we need to realise that that resource is limited.
In my electorate I have the indigenous communities of Bagot, Minmarara and Kulaluk. There is no doubt in my mind that these communities are floating around in no-man’s land at the moment. The reason is because there is no investment in these communities - and that word has been used. There are resources going into these communities, there no doubt about that, but there is not an investment to improve or to get outcomes or returns in these communities I have said this before in this House that there is less than a three inch fence with people on one side living in first world conditions. On the other side of this three inch fence are people who are living in third world conditions. Members in this House have travelled throughout the Northern Territory and to town camps around Alice Springs, Katherine, Tennant Creek and town living areas in Darwin and recognise this as a reality. I recognise this as a reality. I encourage all members of this House to say yes, the NT government can do certain things. It is up to the opposition and Independent members to ensure that that happens. It is up to the NT government to ensure that we maximise the resources that we have.
The reality is that what is happening in remote areas in terms of housing is a national disgrace. There is no way we can dodge that. In a first world country so rich as what we are in resources, with a population of 23m, with the land mass that we have, compared to what is happening in other countries, the living conditions of people in remote areas for a variety of different reasons - some of it is individual to those communities, some of it is based on the NT government, some of it is based on the Commonwealth government - if we are to ever change that in the Northern Territory we need to make that investment. And the reason is that 29% - as quoted in the minister’s statement - of people living in the Northern Territory are indigenous.
I know for a fact that there are probably three paid positions for indigenous people on the Bagot Community. There are roughly 55 CDEP workers who have been working on CDEP for 20 years. CDEP, for members who do not know, is around $400 to $450 on top-up a fortnight. Imagine that! And people throughout the Northern Territory are living on this resource. What that resource income is doing really is making people sustain their lifestyle which is to live free, walk and talk. But there is no investment into the future of getting a return.
I have often said in this House that if we look at the Northern Territory as a business, that for a lot of historical reasons - and forget about blame, I am not talking about the blame game - there is 29% of the population, and not all that 29% because a large portion of that 29% has historically contributed to the development for thousands of years, for the last 200 years in the Northern Territory, and I am not talking about that population; those people will survive and they will continue. But there is a large portion, because of the historical reasons to do with race relations in the Territory and the lack of resources and dispossession of land and all these issues we know - and I am not talking about a blame game again - are at the moment not contributing to what we think is mainstream community or the economy of the mainstream.
So what we have is a business being run. If you said to a business owner that out of that 29% of this certain part, this department of your business, 20% is not producing and you are losing money on that 20%. Would you invest in that 20% to get a return on that 20%? And the business owner would say of course I would. If in over the long term of the next hundred years in the Northern Territory, if I can invest in that 20% and get a 20% return improvement in my business, would I invest in it? And the answer is yes! That is what we are running. We are talking about investment in that area.
The NT government has a responsibility to maximise its resources. Limited resources, under $3bn in a budget per year, the $850m needed to fix housing problems ain’t going to come from the NT government. Contributions: you can maximise what we have. The Commonwealth government has to come in. We as a group, as a government, as members of the opposition and Independents, we really have to lobby people in the rest of Australia to say: ‘What is happening is a national shame’. In that respect is I went on a recent trip to Perth and there I met an indigenous person who was involved with the Red Cross. He said something very interesting to me. He said to me that there are NGOs like the Red Cross have done a fantastic job for many, many years, do hours and hours of work overseas and provide resources overseas. But they do not work within Australia. So we have to start saying to not only the Commonwealth, but also NGOs and similar organisations: ‘Wait there. We have issues here. We have issues of health and education and housing. We need to address those issues because it is an investment in the future of where we want to be’.
Long-term Millner families in urban areas have used Territory Housing. I congratulate the minister because he is investing in the future, and the opening paragraph of his Minister’s Message in the brochure really sums it up:
- I know what poor housing is like. I grew up in the old Parap Camp. Then our family rented a Housing Commission home in Rapid Creek, which had to accommodate 12 children. That is why I care about public housing tenants.
That summarises where I come from, where he comes from. I grew up in Rapid Creek and Millner. I was lucky; my parents both had professional jobs and their parents had professional jobs and we were able to buy our own house, but we grew up with the neighbourhood kids. I would not have known what Territory Housing was until I was about 20 years old; I just did not think of it. People lived and brought up their families in Territory Housing.
I have a newsletter here that is going to be distributed throughout Millner this week. It is about a sausage sizzle in Gulnare Street. It is a bit of a report. All the local residents turned up, and many of those people were Territory Housing people. What were the issues? People were happy with the $45m refurbishment program. Why? Because there were literally people sitting in Housing Commission houses for five or six years in the Wet Season with buckets in their lounge rooms.
Again, I am not interested in the blame game. The reality is if you are paying rent in private accommodation and there is a leak in your roof, you expect that to be fixed. Territory Housing has a responsibility to do that. People are having their rooves fixed and they are happy. There is paint peeling off walls - I went to a house that had not had any painting done in it for 17 years. There was paint peeling off the walls. They are happy to have their painting done.
Security screening: I visited a residence where a family had lived since 1964 and brought up their family of three kids. Territory Housing has put security screening on their windows, and they are happy. We are talking indigenous and non-indigenous people, people from all different types of ethnic backgrounds. There was a lady with three kids all under the age of six. She told me the security screening made her feel comfortable at night. She said her ex-partner felt safer knowing that his kids and his ex-wife were in that house and they were safe.
These are the things that the $45m program is doing. This is what the minister has been able to deliver. That $45m compared with $850m does not scratch the surface, but that is what we have, that is what we are delivering.
I agree with a lot of the members talking about the purchasing of their house. I purchased my house two years ago. I feel like Tarzan when I walk around in my house, I love it. I feel better.
A member: You look like Tarzan!
Mr BONSON: I wish I looked like Tarzan! What I am saying is that I am encouraging people to look at HomeNorth. I will give you an example: I went to a Territory Housing house where the tenants are paying full rent and have not had refurbishment for 10 years or so. They are paying full rent because their kids have grown up in that household and they all work. There are three of them still living there with their parents and they are paying full rent because they no longer qualify for a subsidy. I walked in and talked about HomeNorth to them. You should have seen their eyes light up. I calculated that for an extra $50 on what they are paying, they will own their own house.
We talk about capital gains; house prices in Millner are going through the roof at the moment. Millner is the sleeping giant of the northern suburbs. People have an opinion of Millner. There was a house sold on the corner of Francis and Mills Street, and it went for $180 000. It was incredible. If you checked out the house and the condition it was in, but because of the block and the area, people are happy to buy in. It is still very cheap compared with other suburbs, but prices are climbing and that is good to see.
The $45m that we are contributing to refurbishment is dealing with long-term maintenance issues: roof leaks, paint peeling, security screens, sheds and fencing. The reason we are addressing it is because it is our responsibility, but it has to be driven. And the minister is driving this. Everyone has a personal interest, and the minister’s personal interest, obviously, is the realisation that there are many people in those circumstances. If a person like Jack Ah Kit can go from Territory Housing to a minister of the Crown, there is hope for everyone to do anything in life. We should never underestimate that.
I want to talk about the positives of what we are doing. I will quote from the brochure of Home Territory 2010. It is from John Ah Kit MLA, Minister for Housing:
- … housing policy is one of the cornerstones of a government’s social policy agenda, particularly where that agenda has at its centre a commitment (to) equity and social justice. I want to emphasise this government’s commitment to the housing area.
- The aim of Home Territory 2010 is to ensure safe, secure and affordable housing for all Territorians now and into the future, in particular, Territorians on low incomes or with special needs.
Home Territory 2010 provides an excellent and challenging new direction for the Territory, which includes:
increasing the supply and range of affordable housing options across public rental, private rental and community housing in both urban and remote communities;
assisting low to moderate income earners into home ownership;
increasing the level of support for ‘special needs groups’ in our community through flexible service provision, working across sectors and improved service delivery;
improving the way we do our business through partnerships across public and private sectors, effective communication and improved long term strategy planning with industry; and
developing a pathway for our current and future tenants which supports clients in working towards sustainable, independent living.
That is the issue. In the structures that we make in our democracy in Australia, the Northern Territory government has certain responsibilities and the Commonwealth has certain responsibilities, but individuals have community responsibilities.
I often have a view of the Bill of Rights in America. I have not met anyone who has agreed with me yet, but my belief is that the Bill of Rights puts the question on the person: What is my individual right? What is my individual right against somebody else? Well, my belief is that the way our constitution is set up, and if you look at many of the High Court decisions, they talk about implied responsibilities. What are your community responsibilities? What is your responsibility to others in your neighbourhood? I believe we should be looking at getting people into private housing, purchased by them. For those who slip through the gaps, we need to provide suitable housing to bring up their families, and the reason we need their families to be brought up in a proper way is because they will contribute if we invest in them.
The remote area issues about housing, is a Commonwealth issue that we have to plan a strategy as a whole-of-parliament to deal with. This is a national disgrace. We need to aim at solving this problem. I look forward to working with everyone in parliament.
Mr VATSKALIS (Mines and Energy): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise to congratulate and support my colleague, the Minister for Housing, on his statement today. It is a very important statement which indicates to people in the Territory the directions and the vision of this government with regard to housing. Quite rightly, in his leaflet which he tabled today in parliament, he says:
- The need for shelter is fundamental to the health and wellbeing of individuals …
We also know that housing, and the owners of a house, creates wealth for families, it creates security for the children, it provides stability for the family unit and, certainly, creates a unity in the community. The housing issue is a multi-faceted role. We have to address a number of issues identified today, not only by my colleague, the Minister for Housing, but also some of the other members, including housing in remote communities.
Let me start with my own story about housing. My colleague, the Minister for Housing, said in his prologue that he remembered very well growing up in Parap Camp, and then in a rented Housing Commission house which had to accommodate 12 children. I grew up in Athens, in a very poor family, in the 1960s. I grew up in one room, one bedroom house, one kitchen; that was how we lived. We were only two children, but still it was a very run down house. My parents could not afford to rent anything else. There was no rental assistance, there was no Housing Commission housing; my father had to pay from the wage he was getting. He was a builder and I do not recall seeing my father home before 10 pm every night for two years. He used to work in his day job as a builder, and then he would travel to work on a block of land he managed to buy with his cousin, to build a duplex townhouse. Actually, it was palatial; it had two bedrooms and a kitchen.
So, that was the beginning of the housing that provided safety and security to the family. It was comfortable, even if it was overcrowded. It is a good indication of what housing can achieve for a family unit.
When I came to Australia, I was very impressed with the quality of housing, especially in Perth. I was also impressed with the level of home ownership in Western Australia. In my country of birth, purchasing a house is a very big expense and, as a result, many parents will provide a house as a gift to their children, hence the custom of providing a house as a dowry to your daughter when she is getting married for the new couple to live in. It is impossible for a young couple to purchase a house, especially when there is not the social infrastructure or the social structure in the country to provide the alternatives of assistance for young couples or a young person to acquire a house.
I recall when I bought my first house how proud I was. At the same time, it was difficult because we bought a house in times when the interest rate was sky-rocketing - 18.5%. My wife was working as a teacher and we had out first son and we decided she could stay at home for 12 months to look after the baby. However, because of the interest rates, she managed to stay home for about five months and had to go back to work after that to be able to cover the payments. Once again, we could not claim Housing Commission housing in Western Australia or any assistance because either there were no products available or our income was just above the cut-off line and we were not entitled to a Housing Commission house.
I have to admit, at the time, the housing stock in Western Australia was atrocious. Having working as an environmental health officer in some of the northern suburbs and having to inspect some of those houses, I was very glad I never asked for a state Housing Commission house to live in because, either it was not of good quality or they usually had Housing Commission ghettos with all the associated problems.
Of course, Darwin was different because you do not have those housing ghettos. You will find privately owned housing in streets with some Housing Commission houses, which is very good. You do not get the troubles and the situations you get when you have exclusive areas full of Housing Commission houses. I acknowledge what my colleague, the member for Karama, said about Malak. We have some problems especially where we have a high number of Housing Commission houses and people who live there are either low income people, or people who have been moved from house to house and from area to area.
The reality here in the Territory is that we have the lowest home ownership and also the highest rental rate than anywhere else in Australia, with 12% of Territorians living in rental property. Most of them, if not all of them, live in Housing Commission houses. Probably that is a remnant of the post-cyclone situation, where the Territory built a lot of houses. I know even now people have been living in the same house, or in Housing Commission houses, for the past 30 years.
Over the last few years, we have seen in the Territory a significant rise in the price of houses, and my colleague, the member for Millner, mentioned that Millner is a sleeping giant in the northern suburb. The reality is that all the northern suburbs have woken up and the prices have gone through the roof. I was very surprised the other day to find that a house opposite Nakara Primary School was sold for $350 000. It was a private sale and there were a number of competitors trying to buy the house for that price. Another house very close to my own was sold in a private arrangement for $576 000. Five years ago, this house would not have sold for $300 000.
Housing demand in the Territory is significant. Housing demand has put houses outside the reach of the people with average incomes. In some cases, out of the reach of people with high incomes because the repayments for a house of $500 000, $600 000 or $700 000, if you do not have a significant deposit, are incredible. It would probably exceed $2000 to $3000 per month. Unless both partners are working in high earning jobs, I do not think they would be able to meet the repayments.
We have a combination of factors which create problems in the Territory. The other thing of course, as mentioned by the member for Macdonnell and seconded by the member for Greatorex, is the situation with Aboriginal housing. The situation with Aboriginal housing in Aboriginal communities is complex. We cannot sort it out in one day or one month or even one term of government. There has to be a bipartisan approach by both sides – or all sides - of parliament. In addition, it has to be lobbied by us to the federal government to address these issues. My colleague, the Minister for Housing, said $850m would be needed to address the housing needs today in the Aboriginal communities and it will take 40 years if we spent $20m every year for this issue. The reality is we cannot afford it.
As Territorians alone, we are not able to afford this situation. We have to somehow address the issue and this issue has to be addressed by a combination of federal and Territory money. If we are really genuine about improved conditions in Aboriginal housing in the Territory we have to work together with the federal government. There are problems; there are complexities because of the land tenure system in place – that is not our making, that is a decision by the federal government. The federal government has to have a serious look at the situation with Aboriginal housing.
As you are aware, I worked previously as an Environmental Health officer. I have been outside Darwin, I have been to communities, I have seen housing that would not even exist in third world countries. These houses are an embarrassment for a developed country like Australia. Two days ago, I had a phone call from a friend of mine, Mr Carl Scully, a member of the New South Wales parliament and a minister. He visited the Territory to have a close look at housing. I believe he met with my colleague, the Minister for Housing, and with the Minister for Health, who took him to Ti Tree and Yuendumu. Carl rang me and said that he had heard stories about Aboriginal housing but he did not believe them until he went there. He saw the conditions and he had tears in his eyes. He could not believe the condition of the housing in Aboriginal communities. A few months ago, Carl Scully was arguing strongly against an extra allocation of money to the Territory for housing. He did not believe that we had such a need. Now he has changed his tune. Now he says he is going down south and he is going to speak to his colleagues in the New South Wales parliament. He is even going to speak to the shadow minister for Housing about the situation in the Territory and urge him for extra allocation of funds for the Territory.
The situation with housing is not only Aboriginal housing. We also had problems and we have problems with housing for public servants. We have argued many times about how to keep nurses, police and teachers in remote communities. The reality is you are not going to keep these professions in communities unless you provide decent housing. In my capacity as an Environmental Health officer, I had the sad duty to condemn public houses, houses owned by the Northern Territory government for public servants, as unfit for human habitation. That was an embarrassment for the previous government because they never put money in housing. They said that they put money into maintenance but the maintenance was patch-up work, just a coat of paint, but no serious money for the complete refurbishment of all houses, or the construction of new houses. My colleagues, to their credit, have allocated funds for the construction of new housing in Aboriginal communities, for houses for people with special conditions, and for housing for public servants.
What is very important is that this government has a vision. It has a vision of what it wants to do about houses. They four key objectives of this government is to provide a sustainable social housing system. With house prices going through the roof we have to find a way to provide housing – sustainable housing – for people with mid-low to medium level income. Most importantly, we have to be able to provide housing for young Territorians, the people who are starting their lives and the people who cannot afford to pay the $300 000 packages for land and housing. That was the reason when I was the minister for Lands and during the debate about Larapinta subdivision, I made sure that 10% of the Larapinta blocks should be available to young Territorians for first home owners, and I am very proud of it. I have been through it; I know what it means for a young couple having to face a significant bill every month to pay for the mortgage, and I have insisted there should be affordable crisis for the block in Larapinta so the total package of land and house will be within the reach of young Territorians.
Second is to improve the way we do business. I must admit that I have worked with difficult public servants and with public servants who are very keen to help their customers. In the last few years, I have seen a significant change in the attitude of public servants working in the Department of Housing. I never have a problem; I pick up the phone as the local member and I speak to people in charge of different areas in the department and things are happening. Yes, sometimes they might not happen immediately for various reasons, but they have the decency to come back and advise me why it is not happening, or when it is going to happen, so that I can pass on information to my constituents.
I will give you an example of what was happening before because I was really affronted by the member for Greatorex telling me that we lied; that the previous government did a lot for housing and spent a lot of money on houses. I was doorknocking in Alawa and I visited a lady who was 80 years old. She was sitting on her sofa and said, ‘I would like to invite you in but I am too ashamed of my house’. I asked why and she said, ‘It is a Housing Commission house. I have been asking for a long time for it to be painted and they haven’t done it because there is no money in the budget’. I told her I would like to have a look at it. I walked in and the only thing left on some walls was just the asbestos sheeting. There was no sealant, no paint and the whole thing was just incredible.
Later, I spoke to the people in charge and in the beginning they were reluctant because they did not have that particular house in the plan. When I explained the situation and the age of the lady, within a week they addressed the issue. They moved the lady out, put all the furniture in a container and rectified the house. These examples happen every day, not only my electorate, but I am pretty sure it happens in other electorates where people are facing the same situation.
We have to provide a number of effective and responsive housing models that meet a diverse range of housing needs. We need houses for families - small families and big families; young people and elderly people. In my case, one of my constituents had a heart condition. She returned from visiting family overseas and she had to rent. When she went to the Housing Commission, they offered her house that was totally inappropriate for her because a woman with a heart condition in her 70s would not be able to climb two flights of stairs to get to her unit.
We have to consider the needs of our clients; we have to be able to provide appropriate housing for people with disabilities, people with medical conditions, people with big families. Many people talk about noise, nuisance, and Aboriginal people living in mainstream suburbs and their relatives come from somewhere else and create a problem. We have to address these issues. This not an issue only for the Territory; it is an issue for other states. I came from Western Australia and it was exactly the same situation in some of the urban centres in Western Australia, especially in Port Headland because that was focal point for many Aboriginal people coming from the desert to visit their relatives.
I must acknowledge one common factor: the sometimes inflexible attitude and approach of some people working the department. Again, I had the sad duty to condemn public housing because they were trashed by people who had visited, some Aboriginal people. I used to laugh when I heard stories about sticks in the oven and lighting fires and cooking food on top of the fire until I saw it with my own eyes. The problem is that the public service and other organisations have to adjust to the realities of life. They have to bring people in to educate and train them and provide a proper house.
A good example was that people in the Kimberleys asked for several houses. The Western Australian Department of Housing built them beautiful three bedroom white people’s houses that you would build in the middle Perth. What the people wanted was two or three bedroom and a big room in which the whole family could get together and a big yard. They did not build those; they built a little square with a small yard. These people came from an area where the back yard was about two square miles, and they were put into 400m with a house that was more appropriate for Perth. That was a mistake. We have to adjust the design and use of our houses to what the client wants.
The housing market underpins economic growth. We have seen recently, with the upgrade of housing stock, a significant increase of contracted work in public housing. I know contractors very well; they have been working in the past few months putting screens on windows and doors, improving the safety and the appearance of the houses. We have had a number of houses being upgraded, so cabinetmakers, plumbers, electricians and painters were working there. After all, this provides jobs for Territorians. The people working on the upgrade are not coming from down south; they are local Territorians with a small group of people who are working mainly on Housing Commission contracts. That provides security to people, and improves conditions and housing for fellow Territorians.
It is important for us to improve the housing situation. That is one of the best ways we can attract people from down south: jobs and affordable housing. At the moment the Territory still has, when you compare it with Sydney, Perth, Melbourne or Adelaide, affordable housing. The latest HomeNorth package will provide the opportunity for many Territorians to access housing for the first time. When I say first time, it is because I know people who have lived in the same house for 30 years, and were unable to buy the house because either they could not raise the deposit, or they could not make the payments. I have people asking me for the best advice, which I cannot give - I am not a financial advisor - but the advice is you buy private housing at the department and TIO and under the new HomeNorth scheme. I am very pleased to forward to them the booklet, all the information, and quite a few people have made this final decision to buy a house.
Buying a house in the Territory does not only mean a financial commitment to the bank. It means a commitment to the Territory. People who buy houses in the Territory are most unlikely to move out of the Territory unless, of course, the family situation changes. Many people have parents down south and have to move, or they have been transferred because they work in an organisation that transfers them from here to there, such as the Defence forces.
As I said before, I was very impressed by Home Territory 2010. This booklet is very informative. It contains true stories of true Territorians who actually live in our neighbourhoods, and we know some of these people. We have met people like that, and we have seen the quality of the housing that is now being offered in the Territory. We still have to work hard to provide quality housing to Territorians. We have to work harder to make sure that people have that fundamental right of shelter, and acquire this fundamental right.
I urge both sides of parliament to work together to resolve housing issues, especially in Aboriginal communities. There is no way we can resolve it ourselves as a Territory. We have to engage our federal counterparts. It will be an indictment on us if we fail to work together to resolve the housing issue, especially in the remote communities.
Mr BURKE (Brennan): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I rise to make a few points regarding the minister’s statement. It was refreshing to hear the member for Millner speak this afternoon; I thought he made a few good points. What was refreshing was that he approached the debate in a mature way in recognising the constraints that are on the Northern Territory government, the constraints that are on Territory Housing and the constraints that are on, I guess, the Commonwealth. Although he seemed to suggest that somehow the Commonwealth would fix this problem in terms of dealing with this whole issue of inadequate or poor housing nationally, particularly as it relates to indigenous people. In that regard, I thought some of the points he made were very well made.
However, what was refreshing was that he did not dwell into the 20-odd years of CLP neglect, which some of his colleagues, including the minister, seemed quite eager to address. I found his comments refreshing because, when you listen to the other comments about how bad the former CLP government was, and the fact that houses had not been painted for 20 years and the plaster is falling off, I kept thinking, ‘Well, Territory Housing must be doing an awful job’. If you are one of the public servants who works hard in Territory Housing on a daily basis, it is too cute to say the CLP never gave them enough money and therefore all these things were neglected. I would like to see evidence of a house that had not been painted for 20 years in the urban area.
It is one thing to say the house has not been painted; I would like to go a bit further and then go back and ask: Why wasn’t it painted? There are BAMS programs in place; there have been diligent ministers prior to the member for Arnhem - and with no disrespect, one does not need to be an Aboriginal and to have lived in Housing Commission housing to, somehow, have some great insight on the housing problems in the Northern Territory.
I came from a pretty poor background and my family lived in a Housing Commission house with six kids. We did not have 12 in our house, but we had a family of six kids and mum and dad. My dad did not earn much and, certainly, in my neighbourhood the whole street was full of Housing Commission houses. So, it is not unique to Territorians, generally, to have had a Housing Commission experience.
The one point I thought the member for Millner made well was when he said: ‘Territory Housing has done their job over many years and that has to be recognised’. And they have; they have worked very hard over many years. Strategies that have come forward this evening such as Home Territory 2010 are no different than strategies that have been put forward in this House in the past. This one, for a change, looks to be far more of a PR effort for the current Northern Territory government, something that the CLP never did. It was always the Territory government; it was always produced entirely by public servants.
However, that aside, the strategies that are in place - the endeavours and aspirations for better housing; the way people look after their housing; the way they relate to others; the efforts we have to make with indigenous housing - are not new issues in the Northern Territory at all. The current minister continues a tradition of successive Territory governments recognising all of the issues surrounding housing that are reflected in his statement and also in the strategies. He should also, I believe, have the courtesy to reflect on the efforts of previous ministers; one of whom is the Speaker of this House. When you talk about all these years of neglect, by default you are not only criticising the public service involved, but previous ministers such as Madam Speaker - which is entirely unfair – who, in their time as ministers did a sterling job and, I would suggest to you, with no less effort, vigour and endeavour than the current minister in attending to the problems that are out there.
When we hear about this new-found understanding and feeling for people who need Territory Housing assistance, I can only reflect on the member for Wanguri when we were going to build - probably under Madam Speaker’s time - a seniors’ facility at Leanyer. Where was his care and concern then when he railed against that particular facility? He railed against the socioeconomic problems that it might bring to his particular electorate. That was his feeling for seniors in the Northern Territory at the time. That was a politician playing divisive politics in his own electorate on such an issue. I bet you when he goes out there now – and I am pleased to see he has walked back in …
Mrs AAGAARD: A point of order, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker! The member for Brennan knows perfectly well he is not supposed to refer to the absence or presence of a member.
Mr Acting DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, member for Nightcliff. The member for Brennan is well aware that he cannot make any reference to the absence or otherwise of anyone in the House.
Mr BURKE: Awfully sensitive. I do not care if anyone says that I am in the House or out of the House; it does not bother me.
Mr Acting DEPUTY SPEAKER: Thank you, member for Brennan.
Mr BURKE: I bet when the member for Wanguri doorknocks that particular electorate now and goes around to each of those seniors, he sits down and says: ‘Oh, isn’t it a lovely facility you have here? Oh, it is a lovely unit. Do you have any problems? Do you need a wall repainted? Oh, I am so proud of you being in my electorate. Can I give you my current newsletter?’ What you should be saying is: ‘You lot, all you bunch here, if I had my way you would be somewhere over the hill, but nowhere in Leanyer’, which is what he wanted. So, when we talk about these aspirations and how we love the people who live in Territory Housing, some of us have a bit of a memory about some of the history and some of the actions that were taken with regard to those particular tenants.
I want to speak about my own electorate. I am sorry, minister, I cannot give as good a report card as the members of the government with regard to the efforts that are being made in their own electorate. When I look at my electorate, I see seniors’ housing that we proudly put in, as a CLP government, in areas of my electorate and areas such as the member for Wanguri’s electorate. Senior housing complexes, I believe, were clear evidence of a strategy of turning over older stock, getting better stock for seniors in particular, putting aside land for future developments under that particular strategy, and certainly under the term of this Labor government – I stand to be corrected – but I cannot recall any new seniors complex that has actually been built and occupied under that particular strategy.
I know there are some on the drawing board. I know there is one coming out of the ground in the Chief Minister’s electorate. Certainly, the momentum that was there under the previous program put in place by Madam Speaker and the member for Daly as housing ministers seems to have come to a bit of a halt. If there was any more momentum put into that particular program, good, because you are continuing a strategy that has been successful in the past and has seen, I believe, a turnaround in the general image of Territory housing.
There is no doubt that we can see efforts of refurbishment, including in my electorate, such as new fencing that is going up, which is pleasing to see, and a continuation of programs such as the security screens program – which again, if you were courteous and honest with yourselves you would give credit to Madam Speaker who was the Housing Minister at the time and pushed through that particular program. It is good to see that that program is continuing.
One of the issues that I have continually in my electorate is the issue of good neighbours versus unruly tenants. I suggest to you that any member of this House who would claim that they do not have that problem – and would even make the claim that somehow things have improved under the term of the Labor government – would simply be lying. I cannot sense any improvement in those issues in the general Palmerston area. In fact, one could even suggest that in some areas they are getting worse. There is a lot of work to be done and a lot of effort by Territory Housing through the minister to ensure that Territory Housing is a very proactive and professional organisation in the way it is resourced, the way its staff are trained, the way they are deployed in their duties and supported by their department and also by government.
It is interesting that this was a government that came to power saying that they would support whistleblowers – in fact, they were going to bring forward whistleblower legislation – if you were someone who was aggrieved by efforts in your department and you had the courage to speak out, you would be supported by government and you would be supported by legislation. I have had two instances that I have brought into the public arena in the past few months where people have come to me complaining about issues within their department and, sadly, I see none of that support evidence in the way those particular individuals are being treated. I note that there was a particular effort to identify and sort out the Housing officer who came to me. No support whatever from her senior staff in the comments that she made to me. And the issue of the Palmerston Health Precinct where nurses spoke to me about bullying in the workplace and lack of support by senior managers, the latest report I have heard is: ‘Once and if ever we find out who those people were, we will make sure they never work for Territory Health Services again’.
A member: Charming.
Mr BURKE: That is true. That is verbatim from the nurses themselves who still live in fear of somehow being singled out and identified by this great government that is going to protect whistleblowers and support people, public servants, who rightly speak out on issues that they have in their own workplace. When it comes to the rhetoric, when it comes to the glossies and comes to the actions, I believe this government is being seen more and more as a punitive and vicious government that will deal with anyone who speaks out.
When it comes to the issues of housing generally, I believe the member for Millner said it explicitly and that is we need to put to one side the issue of remote housing and how we as a government can deal with remote housing, and also the issues that surround housing in the urban area. In my electorate – sorry, minister, you are not getting a good report card from the people who live in Territory Housing. You are not and if you do not accept that I am sorry. I can only report that. I feel very confident that in my electorate they believe they were as well served or better served by the efforts of the previous CLP government than they are by the current government. I hope it is not a fact that if live in Karama or Millner, you get special attention from the ALP government and if you live in Palmerston, we will flood all the low life into Palmerston as long as we get rid of them out of our electorate. That would be a particularly divisive and punitive way of a government to act. In my electorate …
Mr Kiely interjecting.
Mr BURKE: I do not care what you think of it. The member for Sanderson is going to lecture me on what I can say in this House. Member for Sanderson, you won one election; good on you! You have had the support of your electorate for one election. I have won three, so when I stand up here and I speak for my electorate, they have supported me in the past, and I will continue to speak and I hope that I will get their support in the future. So do not lecture me on what I should say and what my electorate might think of it. On issues like Territory Housing and how the government supports their housing officers and the resources the government has put into training and supervision, the professional approach of how they deal with tenants, you are not scoring well. You are not scoring well at all, and if you do not like that, too bad!
This is evidenced, for example, at public meetings in various areas, the latest the minister would be aware of is Cornwallis Circuit where they have banded together as a community to try to deal with issues in the area that have arisen clearly and simply from Territory Housing tenants. It is not so much the actions of the tenants only; their frustration is the inaction of Territory Housing. That is where their frustration comes from. We have had Territory Housing officers speak to them, and they are at pains to explain to them the limitations they have in dealing with some of these tenants. When you hear the explanation, and you understand the constraints that they work with, prima facie it sounds reasonable. However, at the end of the day, you need to have a situation where if we are talking about the government and the taxpayer providing subsidised housing to people in need, that comes with some responsibility. The responsibility is to act harmoniously and as a good citizen to the people who live in your own neighbourhood. That is not occurring.
The latest one is this: I will table for the minister’s attention just to put it into perspective. These are Territory Housing units and these are the rubbish and recycle bins in one street. This is your professional program at work. This is what Palmerston people in my electorate drive past and see every day of the week. This is Territory Housing supported by its government at work. What you have is a mess. They are your tenants. These are the ones who are thumbing their noses …
Mr Ah Kit: May I have a look?
Mr BURKE: I will table it in a second because I want to read from it. The man who sent it to me you would be well aware of because he is very active and I congratulate him for that. He is also active, and I have supported him in this, too, in approaching Telstra to remove the public telephone from the street because it is a gathering place for gangs; it is a receptacle for urination and defecation; it is a place of fear, where others fear to tread. They want the public telephone box out of there as well.
This particular gentleman on this one, and this is one of hundreds of complaints that go in Territory Housing and they are well aware of it, says, and I won’t give the name:
- The residents of [undisclosed] in particular on a regular basis continue to dump rubbish in the street around the mailbox area. The enclosed photos are dated 1 July, 3 August and 9 August. Besides being an eyesore for our neighbours, it is unhealthy as it attracts vermin and dogs. It blows there in the streets into my front yard and I have to pick rubbish every morning from within my property.
The never ending ‘guests’ …
- … coming to stay are also responsible for bashing the telephone box, urinating at the phone box, using offensive language in the street, naked children chasing cars and other children.
Can you please educate the leaseholder if he/she in fact lives there as to their responsibilities and obligations? It seems the property is used by everyone or anyone as a convenience when it town, and sometimes the numbers are far over what [this place] is designed for safety and health reasons. Please enforce the lease/tenant conduct provisions.
Surely, this is not an isolated case for any member in this House. Surely, you get this stuff every day of the week from different places in your own electorate. I have people who come in to me who have bought their houses, have lived in their houses for many years, and guess what? – they are leaving Darwin. They are leaving Darwin because they have just had enough, and they cannot stand it any more. They have seen their investment in their street and their amenity being gradually eroded.
I understand the social problems that some of these people come with. However, I do get pretty tired of a policy that says we have to teach them living skills. You put them right in a neighbourhood where people have put a big investment in their properties, and then, by the way, we are going to teach them living skills. We will not worry about collecting rent; we will teach them what a broom looks like. Well, my people are not all that pleased about it. I suggest to you that, if Territory Housing wants to improve its image, if the minister wants to get greater support from, certainly, the residents of my electorate - which I would applaud, frankly; I will confidently work hard to win my seat at the next election - but if the minister gets credit for getting this sort of problem addressed, I do not really mind. He can take the credit, as long as the problem is addressed, and the problem is not being addressed, it is getting worse and worse.
When a Territory Housing officer has the courage to say to you, ‘I work in a reactive organisation that, too often, responds to a ministerial request which says, “Do something because it has now become a political problem”, but when it is a day-to-day issue, I am not trained, I am not supported, I am too young, I do not know how to deal with some of these people who often threaten me. I have people who are living in some of these units or houses that do not even have leases written, because we have backdated tenants who do not even have leases to bind them in those places, and I am being scared and frustrated’.
I would say to you that, rather than singling that person out, trying to run him down and make sure they do not work again, what you should be doing is saying is maybe it is symptomatic of a larger problem. Maybe it is symptomatic of the fact that when the government says that they are putting all this money into housing, and the bureaucracy of housing, maybe it needs to be drilled down and find out how much of it is actually flowing down to the people on the coalface who need it. They are the ones who are there every day of the week, and they are the ones who are tyring to ensure places are maintained, to ensure that the tenants are responsible in the way they act, to ensure that they are harmonious in the neighbourhood, to ensure that they only have the appropriate amount of visitors and guests, to ensure that they are not those units that are causing mayhem in the neighbourhood, and they look for support from their government and from their senior officers. They understand the legal restrictions at times that they work within, but they certainly want, when issues can be fixed, they want them fixed. For example, if you are …
Ms CARNEY: Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I move that the member be granted an extension of time to complete his speech.
- Motion agreed to.
Mr BURKE: Thank you. For example, it is of some frustration, if you are renting a house that on the private market would rent for, say, $250 a week, and through your personal circumstances you obtain that particular house for about $35 to $65 a week, I would say that comes with some responsibilities. All people want is for tenants to recognise and adhere to those basic responsibilities.
In one area they are having a barbecue in the park soon, I would applaud the minister and I will give him the date, he might want to turn up, because they are having the barbecue not to attack these people, but to try to get to know them better, to try to get them to understand the issues that they are dealing with, because they want to be good neighbours and they want to be cooperative, and they do not necessarily want them to be evicted overnight. What they want, though, is for these people to realise the harm they are causing to the neighbourhood, the generosity of the Australian and Territory taxpayer in the way that they are looking to deal with their concerns, and they simply want to be met halfway in meeting those responsibilities.
I have had enough time in getting the points across I wanted to make. I recognise the importance of the statement, the initiatives that are coming through in Territory Housing, and the efforts of the government in dealing with – as the member for Millner pointed out – very difficult issues that will take some time to address, and need to be addressed, on all fronts. However, one of those fronts has to be that if you are receiving the generosity of the Australian taxpayer in attending to your needs, you have a basic responsibility to come halfway, and that is all that Territorians ask.
Mrs BRAHAM (Braitling): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I take the opportunity to comment on the minister’s statement because, as the minister knows, I have many concerns about public housing within my electorate. We have been in contact over a number of months over this. I am pleased to say that the Department of Housing has endeavoured to address the problems as best they can. I am also pleased to see that many of the recommendations I made to the minister some time ago have been put into place.
I ask the minister to re-think some of the things he is saying. In the statement, he said: ‘I care about public housing tenants’. I believe you should make an amendment to that and say: ‘I also care about their neighbours’, because it is the neighbours who quite often are suffering because of the attitude of the public housing tenants.
Some of the things the minister mentioned when he was talking about the quality landlord strategy are many of the things that we have discussed and put into place in some of our difficult streets and complexes in Alice Springs. I say to members that you need to keep close contact with the police. We now have a process whereby if there is a drinking party in the car park of the complex, the police will go around and tip out the alcohol and confiscate it, just as if it was a 2 km law breach. It is extremely good that they are able to do that at last. They are also imposing trespass notices stating that people should not be there if the tenants in the units do not want them. That way we manage to get rid of them for the people who have the problems. The ‘no grog’ signs are also an excellent idea if you can get those onto your tenant’s house, because it is the tenants who are suffering because of the behaviour of a few.
The minister has listed many things they have done. However, one thing that he has still not addressed is a camping area for those people who come in from out bush. If these people come in from out bush - and we are talking about the trouble that they make when they arrive as visitors en masse to someone’s unit or house - then we have to find an alternative. The alternative, in my mind, is to make sure that they have a pleasant camping area that they can go to. I notice that many of the cars that come into our complexes used by the people causing problems are registered in South Australia. They are obviously coming from the Pit lands. However, you cannot have 10 people go into a two-bedroom unit without havoc eventually happening. You cannot have 20 people playing cards on your front lawn without disturbing your neighbourhood, when grog is involved. I am just saying to the minister: give them an alternative.
Most of all – and this is something I have been talking to the Lhere Artepe elders in Alice Springs about - you need to educate them. I know the minister may find that patronising. However, the elders in Alice Springs have said quite clearly that they believe people coming from remote areas should know how to behave when they come to their lands. They certainly need to get that message clearly across. They have talked about putting out announcements on CAAMA or doing advertisements on BRACS programs or even on Imparja. It is a good idea because, who tells you that when you come to town you cannot have a whooping good time and disturb a tenant and the neighbourhood? Who tells you that you should show some restraint when you visit people and upset their lifestyle? The best people to tell them are the elders of that town. That is why I would like the minister to look carefully at that suggestion and go ahead with it, because it is something that is good.
The minister talked about the renal cluster village, and that was one of the things I raised with him many months ago. He needs to keep the emphasis on seniors’ villages also. I do not want to talk about the past. It is okay and stand up and bag what has happened in the past but, yes, I was a Minister for Housing. I was very proud to open the new seniors’ village along Dick Ward Drive. Obviously, the seniors’ villages are one of the best options because we do not have retirement villages at affordable price for our seniors in town. One of the seniors that I really respect is involved heavily with the bowls club and came to see me the other day and she said: ‘I have had enough. I am leaving’. But if she had a unit in a complex where there were people of her own age that she could relate to then she would not be leaving town. We need to say, ‘Yes, it is good to see that at last we are getting renal patients looked after,’ because we did have renal patients who just left because of the humbug that it caused, but we also need now to look at seniors. Perhaps we also need to look at complexes for disability people because they also have trouble living in situations where there are multi-age groups, and that is one of the problems we have.
I want to talk about the HomeStart Scheme very briefly because it is great. We must encourage people to stay. However, the minister does not mention very much about first home buyers. All right, only two people in Alice Springs have picked up the HomeStart program. We all know why. The price of homes in Alice Springs is ridiculously high and land is not available. We are land locked. The minister should make sure in the developments that are going ahead that there is plenty of opportunity for young people to buy land at a reasonable price under the first home buyer’s scheme. It is essential that the minister for Lands pushes this to ensure that it happens. It is all very well to say that we are going to release all this land but we must make sure we have land available for those first home buyers. It is something I will keep pushing with the minister.
I wrote to the minister not long ago because it was suggested to him that when he was looking at reviewing the HomeStart loan scheme that he put in a ‘green’ loan component. Everyone is well aware of the emphasis on water and energy conservation that we have in Alice Springs. The ‘green’ loan component of any loan is one that is an incentive for people to make sure their home takes this account. Unfortunately, the reverse happened. The minister gave a white goods component in the loan which consumes energy, whereas the home loans energy efficiency package has been ignored. The minister did say that the department is still investigating the home energy efficiency features in relation to both rental properties and the home purchase schemes, and he said he will keep me informed. However, I might add that I have not heard anything further on that since April.
The home loan schemes that give a ‘green’ loan are quite popular in other states, and they do find that many people will take up this particular low interest loan. It is something the minister should not just ignore; it is something that is very vital for us. The minister also knows that I am very keen on a ‘water tank’ subsidy being introduced. There has been a water efficiency study done in Alice Springs and I am waiting for the other minister to get back to me on what he is going to do with it. How creative and innovative of this government if they were to introduce a water tank subsidy. Just as we say that we will give $1000 towards a solar hot water service to save energy, why don’t we say to new home builders that we will give them a subsidy if they install water tanks? I realise it may not be necessary in Darwin, but I am talking about Central Australia where water is a precious resource. It has come to my attention that most other states have a water subsidy except the Northern Territory, and that is crazy. All states and territories except South Australia and the Northern Territory offer rainwater tank rebates. If it is that easy to do in other states, in this dry part of the continent, why are we not offering rain water rebates? What I have suggested to the minister is that people who build their own home be entitled to a rainwater subsidy. Give it to them because you will save enough on the use of water to off-set that.
When you are building homes on remote communities, put in a rainwater tank. If you are building more government homes, put in a rainwater tank. Give people, as first home buyers, a water tank. There are some very great innovations going on at the moment. The Centre for Appropriate Technology in Alice Springs runs some very good programs. At the moment they are promoting what they call a rainwater harvesting system. It is at Mutitjulu. They have put in tanks with the houses to capture rainwater. Some people say that rainwater tanks get contaminated and you will probably get sick from them. I have had a rainwater tank ever since I moved into my house well over 20 years ago and I have not been contaminated yet. The technology has been designed to suit the environment of Central Australia and it is really pleasing to see that Mutitjulu community has taken this initiative and has this vigorous rainwater harvesting program. Apparently the people have identified this. They felt strongly that they have a right to collect and drink water that falls on their traditional land. They also say that it tastes better than the salty bore water they often get.
There is a rainwater tank trial occurring in a home in Alice Springs. The rainwater goes into the tank which is linked to the hot water service. What that does is reduce the corrosion in the rainwater tank, in the shower, and by going through the hot water, it also kills any contamination or any germs that may be there. This would be a great initiative for the minister if he would take something like this on. He has missed the opportunity to put the ‘green’ loans component into HomeNorth. Let’s get a bit innovative. Just imagine if we did say to the people in Central Australia, or to IHANT, which is building lots of houses out there: ‘Put in rainwater tanks’.
Apparently, a study that has been done shows that over a period of time, the cost recovery is there. Even if the government gave the rainwater tanks to people, they would still save that money in the production of water. Remember at Alice Springs, as we go deeper and deeper to collect water, the cost is higher and higher. Alice Springs people are the second highest consumers of water in Australia and they probably do not pay the actual cost of producing that water. It is getting dearer and dearer as it goes deeper and deeper.
I am a little disappointed that I have not had a response from the minister yet about that because it would innovative. It would be great. I believe the member for Barkly said that there will be a trial in Borroloola, so there is obviously interest within Central Australia to look at water harvesting and energy efficiencies within our homes.
We know that this government has, along with other state and territory governments, agreed to an intergovernmental agreement on a national water initiative between the Commonwealth of Australia, governments of New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and the ACT. That paper deals with urban water reforms and how government should work towards making sure that we have sensible use of our water. This government is already signatory to that. Perhaps this government needs to go one step further and think about putting some innovation into this suggestion that I have.
I know that we also have an Alice Springs water efficiency study and we have had some positive feedback from it. We are waiting for government to adopt some of the measures in there. The Arid Lands Environment Centre is running this trial in an Alice Springs house and they are keen to get some of these trials into the public housing sector. It is a simple thing, but it would be popular with people who are much more acutely aware of the need for conservation of our water and our energy resources, particularly in Central Australia where water is so precious.
I say to the minister, although your statement sounds all very nice, I still think there are some things you should be doing. If you are not going to do the ‘green’ home loan, seriously think about doing something innovative by looking at rainwater tanks in public housing. Start thinking seriously about how you are going to address the antisocial behaviour that occurs in public housing. I get a little bit weary of the people who say to me, ‘What are we going to do?’ I know the police get a little bit weary of having to go down the same streets. It is not nice to be harassing people. There is almost a feeling out there that this minister will not make the hard decisions when it comes to problems caused by indigenous people. That may seem a bit hard, but perhaps the Chief Minister should seriously think about giving public housing to another minister. They are hard decisions that you have to make. We have to be honest, and you have even intimated in your speech that many of the problems we have in public housing stem from visitors from remote communities who seem to think they can cause problems for their own people without any retribution.
The minister must understand that he has to get that message clearly out to the people concerned. He must make sure that it is not just public housing tenants he cares about, but it is also their neighbours. He must make sure that when people go into the homes they understand their responsibility as a tenant, and also the responsibility they have to the people who live around them.
I thank the people in Housing in Alice Springs. They have been very tolerant. They have been very cooperative at addressing some of our problems. I believe they are overworked. I do not believe that there are enough of them to cope with the huge tenancy work they have to do. Some of them, as people have said, are inexperienced. Some, I am sure, must go home frustrated because they hear the same story over and over again. There needs to be a management program for them to give them assistance. The minister did say he was going to put some additional staff in the Alice Springs office, and perhaps he can tell us whether that has occurred because I am not aware of it at the moment. Certainly there is a need for assistance for housing department personnel to be able to do their job well. Tenancy management in a public housing situation is far more difficult than it is in the private industry, and it is very time consuming and, as the minister says, there are a large number of them.
Mrs AAGAARD (Nightcliff): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to speak on Home Territory 2010, Moving the Territory Ahead. Housing, or shelter, is considered a basic human right. It is an extremely important area and, might I add, it is also a very difficult area and one which requires considerable planning.
I do not think that any kind of housing situations throughout Australia have been perfect. Some of the issues that have been raised by members in the House today are seen by governments all around Australia, including in the Northern Territory, but also around the world. It is not just about, in the case of people speaking tonight, public tenants but about people and, when they are living in close proximity, the kinds of things that arise.
This statement looks at both an urban and a bush response to housing needs across the Territory. It considers matters such as affordability of public and private housing home ownership, particularly home ownership for low to moderate income earners, and offers a considered plan for public housing over the next few years. The minister also outlines a plan for safe, secure and affordable housing for all Territorians, and especially for those on low income and those with special needs.
It is of concern that the current situation in the Territory is that we have the lowest home ownership rate and the highest number of public housing tenants. The minister says that there are 55 800 dwellings in the Territory, of which 12% are public housing and 11% in indigenous communities. It is also very concerning that 6900 households in the Territory are dealing with housing stress, which means paying more than 30% of their gross income on housing. This seems to be more likely in the private rental market or the mortgage market.
In the bush, they are totally dependent on community housing or government employee housing, and this is a very serious situation. The member for Millner raised this. The Commonwealth really needs to look at this as a national problem. The Territory is putting considerably greater sums into housing in the bush, but it is not going to be something which we can address simply as a Territory government. We simply do not have the funding available, and are unlikely to have the funding available over the following decades to meet the extreme need in bush communities. As somebody who has travelled around bush communities, sometimes the housing just makes you want to weep. I congratulate the minister that he is looking at a national policy in this area.
In an urban setting, the minister outlined many difficulties facing people hoping to enter the housing market to purchase a home today. Some of us who were fortunate enough to buy houses - maybe bought our houses some considerable time ago - have benefited from the increase in the value of those homes and, in fact, have become wealthy as a result of that. Sadly, this is not available to many young people today, or to those people who are on low and moderate incomes. One of the most difficult situations is young people who are studying at universities and who will have quite huge HECS debts, sometimes ranging from $30 000 to $80 000, which they have to pay off at the same time as they may be considering entering the housing market. They will be starting off on relatively low incomes, and this is a situation which is very concerning for the Territory and also for Australia as a whole.
Therefore, the HomeNorth scheme which has been introduced, particularly for low income earners, is going to be something which really helps to increase home ownership in the Northern Territory. For young people it is just not the same as it was in the 1950s, the 1960s, and the 1970s when there was a boom in home ownership, and to own a house was something which everybody desired, and it was reasonably easy to buy a home in Australia at that time. Now it is not that easy. The new program, whereby you can have a very low deposit - as low as 2% - and the house can be up to $240 000 in value will see a dramatic increase in home ownership in the Northern Territory, which will add to people’s enjoyment of the lifestyle of the Northern Territory and also improve their entire lifestyle for their life span.
Since the minister introduced this scheme in June, I have had a large number of inquiries from people both in public housing and in private rental accommodation who are, for the first time, considering the possibility of owning a home. I am looking forward to being invited to their new homes. I am not sure that they are going to be able to afford to live in Rapid Creek or Nightcliff, unfortunately, where houses, as the member for Casuarina said, have gone up exponentially in their value. However, these people, for the first time, will be able to buy units, flats and townhouses, and we know this is going to be excellent for them.
There has been much said tonight about the quality landlord strategy which looks at the good neighbour policy for public tenants. I have a very large group of public units in my electorate - the John Stokes Square - and there are 75 residents at that tenancy. I also have large numbers of private units and flats, particularly along Aralia Street and Casuarina Drive in my electorate. I probably get the same number of complaints from private people as I do from public ones. I find quite disturbing the suggestion that, somehow, public tenants are more of a nuisance than private tenants. In fact, I think it is completely the opposite. I think that these are just normal people and some just happen to be public tenants, and some are private tenants, and you receive the same number of complaints regardless of whether they are public tenants or not. It is simply that it appears that the government is responsible if they are public tenants but perhaps nobody is responsible if they are private tenants.
In relation to John Stokes Square, I would have to say that I have had many complaints over the past three years about John Stokes Square. I have been working with Housing over that period to look at strategies to make the place more secure. I thank the minister for many of those things that have been introduced over that three year period. Certainly there have changes to simple areas like closing a gate so that itinerants could not just wander into the centre. That actually stopped a huge number of problems. It seems so simple but it had never been done. There is now a very good security guard who comes in every hour and checks to make sure there are no problems at John Stokes Square. I would have to say that during that time the people at John Stokes Square have become a lot happier about living there. Of course, there are always going to be problems, and I do not actually think that it is going to be possible to solve every kind of problem for groups of people, but it has really improved in that area.
As other members have mentioned, there is also the problem of itinerants coming into public housing areas. I am very interested in the scheme whereby signs can go on people’s doors or at the entrance to public housing areas to suggest who might and who might not be able to go into that area. I will be investigating that further with the minister because I think that would be particularly useful for the people of John Stokes Square.
I would just like to put on the record that the people of John Stokes Square are fabulous. I meet there quite regularly and I would not like them to think that I thought less of them those people who lived in private accommodation whether that is people who had bought their own home or people who are renting elsewhere. These are very valuable people. They are people who have worked hard most of their lives. Many of them are sick or elderly, some of them are disabled, and they are very special people.
The minister mentions in his statement a move to the renal cluster village pilot scheme. This certainly seems like a very exciting scheme and, with the increase in kidney disease in the Northern Territory, it is well overdue and will truly benefit some very unwell people. One of the major problems with people having to seek dialysis is that whole situation of having to have accommodation when they come to a centre and the difficulty of that, and also the difficulty of having to move from that accommodation to the place they are having the dialysis. This can be very difficult. Certainly in Darwin, some people are fortunate enough, they have been able to stay close by. In Nightcliff, they can stay at the hostel there and be able to travel to the renal dialysis unit on Dick Ward Drive. Other patients have had to find housing and they have had to go as far away as Palmerston. This has caused a great deal of difficulty for those patients and it takes up so much of their time. I certainly welcome that and it is an excellent initiative.
The urban renewal program, which is $45m over five years to upgrade public housing to a standard commensurate with newly constructed housing, is fantastic. For the first time in public houses there is going to be the provision of security screening, improvements such as driveways, fencing, sheds and smoke detectors. Previously, these needed to be paid for by tenants who, of course, are low income earners and was quite difficult for them to purchase. I congratulate the minister on that initiative.
In this brochure that the minister has handed out today, I notice that page two there is a photograph of Bev and Noel Thorpe. I was very excited when I saw this because Bev and Noel came to see me. I have known them for some years and they are great people. They have worked tirelessly for groups like SIDS and for the Hospital Auxiliary. They are very community-minded people. Suddenly, they found themselves having to permanently look after their three grandchildren.
Public Housing has been fantastic in this situation. They came to see me and Public Housing helped them move from the seniors’ village at Coconut Grove to a newly-renovated house in Karama. In talking to Bev and Noel, they say it is the best house they have ever lived in. It has been totally renovated and I am looking forward to visiting them there. They are very happy and I thank the Housing Commission their involvement.
I congratulate the minister and the department on the different types of housing available for people in the Territory. Of course this is not necessarily something new, but we are seeing the continuation of a really important program. The seniors’ village at Coconut Grove is outstanding. I believe at the one that is being built at Fannie Bay will be an excellent place for our very valued seniors. As you get older, you do not necessarily want a huge place with a gigantic garden and everything else to maintain. This is an excellent way for things to be going in the Territory.
It is not mentioned in the minister’s statement, but there have been, over the period of government, some excellent centres completed for housing for people with disabilities. There is one at Palmerston. I visited there, and I know that the residents are finding the accommodation excellent. It is a good way for the government to be moving in providing specialist accommodation for people with different needs.
I thank the minister and look forward to hearing an update on this strategy. I know the minister is moving us forward in the best possible way for the Territory.
Ms CARTER (Port Darwin): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I was disappointed this afternoon with regards to the opening of the minister’s statement. It was a shame that he had to make such party political comments in what should have been a statement of looking forward and positively towards things. It is disappointing to see that happen, but it is a tactic being used more frequently by this minister. It reduces the minister’s credibility, which, in many ways, with the Department of Housing has been very good. I have had some very good results working with the minister over the past few years. So the tone of the introduction was been disappointing.
To my mind it attacks the hard work of the staff of that department who have been there for more than three years. This is a real shame because public servants work hard in all circumstances and the inference from the statement that for many years public housing has been neglected is really disappointing to hear.
Public housing is very important. We do have a low rate of private ownership compared with the rest of the country. That is for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is the youthful make-up of the Territory population. Young people often take a little bit of time to get on their feet financially and to make a decision to commit to purchasing a home.
We also have a significant proportion of the community that cannot afford to purchase their own home. We also have a community that, by its nature for many years, has been quite transient. Many of us in this House came to the Territory with the view that we were only coming for a year or two before we head off on another adventure in our life. There would still be many Territorians who come up with that point of view who either leave after few years or who take quite some time to make the decision, that, ‘Oh, goodness, I have been here 10 years, maybe I should buy a home’. Territorians generally are not fast on the uptake of the purchase of a private home. That is why public housing has been very important in the Northern Territory over the years.
In my electorate of Port Darwin, I have a number of substantial government housing complexes. One of them is Tuckwell Court at the end of Barossa Street in Larrakeyah, which consists of approximately 45 units, housing senior Territorians. It is a great complex, located in an enviable position, and if you are lucky and pull the long straw, you score a one-bedroom unit overlooking the golf course with million dollar views. Another great complex is in Gardens Hill Crescent. That is a two-storey complex of about 30 units which, to a degree, tends to house senior Territorians. Another complex is in Barossa Street, Larrakeyah, and that is a complex of about 14 units and, once again, houses senior Territorians. It is a ground level complex, and is in very good condition and I know the tenants there are very pleased with it. Another complex is at Tomaris Court, on the corner of Daly Street and Smith Street, and I will speak about that in more detail in a moment.
Finally, and often forgotten, is an area which I know does not come specifically under the control of Territory Housing, but it is an interesting area of housing. It is called Railway Dam. It is, in fact, an Aboriginal transient camp supposedly, set up many years ago to house people who come into Darwin from remote communities. This is a camp that is in very poor condition. The last time I went doorknocking there, I was chased within the grounds by a pack of about five, what I would describe as, very obviously camp dogs, who had all the features of a camp dog that you would expect to see in the middle of nowhere, and yet it sits within a couple of kilometres of Darwin’s GPO. It would be very interesting to hear from one of the ministers, at some point in time in this House, what is planned for Railway Dam because, quite frankly, it is getting to a point where some decisions need to be made. It either stays or it goes. If it stays, it needs to have its housing substantially improved. It is in a very poor condition and I would like to see something done one way or the other by the Labor government.
I return to a complex known as Tomaris Court, which contains about 65 units in three-story blocks on the corner of Daly and Smith Streets in the CBD. When I was first elected, I had already doorknocked it several times and it was a great complex. So, in the year 2000, this was a fantastic complex. People of all races and nationalities lived there, some people worked, many did not work, but it was a great complex. It was neat, tidy and clean. I did not receive complaints about it. When I was first elected the view was that, because I was a Country Liberal Party person, it would be a place that I would not go into very often, because the inference was Territory Housing people more likely than not vote Labor.
I refused to follow that line of thinking, and I doorknock that complex twice a year, in the middle of the Dry and just before Christmas, and when I go around at Christmas I take little plum puddings, I scour the shelves at Woolies for months beforehand, and take little plum puddings around to the tenants there, and we have a great time as we …
Members interjecting.
Ms CARTER: … Christmas good cheer. It is a wonderful complex. However, over the last few years, it has deteriorated substantially.
Members interjecting.
Ms CARTER: The members for Johnston and Sanderson might find it highly amusing to laugh at the plight of people living in Territory Housing, as they giggle away here in the background, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker. It is a shame that they find that funny. I can assure you, the tenants of Tomaris Court know very well who to sheet home the blame to as they see their living standards deteriorate over the last few years, for some of them, to a level of abject misery. It picks up on the situation that has been mentioned here tonight by a number of members of parliament.
We are seeing an increase in the arrival into these complexes of people who cannot stop their family and community members from remote areas coming in and camping around their unit; joining the family members there so that you have large numbers of people living in small units and creating merry hell.
I have been working with the minister over the last couple of years in an effort to address this problem at Tomaris Court. There have been moments of success, and there have been times of failure; it comes and goes, as I know the minister and the department struggle to find ways of solving these problems. Mention has been made here tonight about the need to be concerned about the neighbours of Territory Housing tenants. The inference, of course, always is with regard to houses. One must also be very mindful of neighbours within unit complexes. It has been hugely sad for me, over the last few years, to see the distress that some of my constituents suffer. They have been living long-term at Tomaris Court; they are settled there. I am quite sure many of you can appreciate the enjoyment that someone of limited means would have being able to live within the CBD. Many of these people - and some of them are in their 50s and 60s have lived in the CBD all their lives – have seen what was a great complex only four years ago being turned into a hell hole from time to time, and it has been incredibly stressful. The tenants there are well aware that I have been working with the minister. I convey to them on a regular basis any updates from the department as to how things are going.
There have been some good moves. For example, I was able to lobby successfully to get the ‘no trespassing’ signs put up on the fences, and to have the minister and his department liaise with the police to figure out who does what because, at one time, it appeared that the department staff and the police were not sure who had a right to say to the itinerants who were camping in the grounds of Tomaris Court whether they could drink. The inference was that, because they were on public land behind the fence, it was not a place that the police could go in and demand that people tip out alcohol. It was quite difficult while that jurisdictional wrangling was going on, as to what actually could be done with regards to 20 or 30 itinerants from remote areas camped on the lawns and having a fabulous time, particularly around pension day, and driving the tenants of this Housing Commission complex crazy with distress.
Another thing that has worked well recently has been the arrival of Millennium Security. Up until recently, there was a security service being provided at Tomaris Court. However, apparently the officers involved did not get out of their cars, came at a regular time and, so, the drinkers came and went knowing full well when they would and would not be sprung. As soon as the security car had driven out, back they came into public view and had a great party. Millennium Security workers have actually taken the bold step of getting out of the car, going to meet the people, and working constructively with some of them in an effort to try to get them to understand how their poor behaviour is impacting on the people living in the complex. This has worked from time to time. It lapses from time to time, and I have certainly had complaints in the last month with regards to the behaviour of some of the tenants and the itinerants that camp there.
I know that there was a comment made by one of the other members of parliament with regards to the staff at the Department of Housing being overworked and stressed. I am also aware of this. I am not going to give up my source because I know what will happen to them. However, I have also had a staff person comment to me with regards to going into Tomaris Court approximately four or five months ago, and telling me that they - and I am not giving up the gender here as you can see – are stressed and frightened about going there and dealing with the itinerants and the tenants who display poor behaviour.
So, it is from time to time a situation for the staff there. I do extend to them my concerns that they do find themselves in this situation, that when they have had a complaint from a well-behaved, good tenant about poor behaviour, that when they have gone in there they have been abused. It is a sad day to see that those tenants, who behave poorly for some reason or other, still get to stay there. Quite frankly, many of us, if we were tenants of Territory Housing and we behaved in a way that some of these people behaved, you can guarantee we would be out quick smart. It is very distressing for people to know that there are two ways that you get dealt with depending on various things.
Mr Kiely interjecting.
Ms CARTER: You think about it. You know what I am talking about. You know full well what I am talking about.
Mr Kiely: Go on, say it then. You are making the allegation. Have the gumption to get up and say it in plain English. Don’t say it in code.
Ms CARTER: I will deal with it when I am in government, mate.
I just want to make a comment with regards to the member for Nightcliff’s views which I guess I am reflecting here as well. She made the comment that she would hate to think that people in the Territory Housing units thought she would treat them any different to people in private housing units. My electorate consists of a mix of public and private units. Up until a few years ago I, too, did not have complaints from people living in public housing units. In fact, people in private and people in public got on with their lives and everything was fine. It is only in the last couple of years that we have seen a steady decline at Tomaris Court, which is the only block that I am raising here as an issue. I have other blocks but there are no problems at all. Tomaris Court is where the problems lie. The problems started only a couple of years ago and, in my view, it is something that can be fixed because it only recently changed.
As I mentioned earlier, the minister has been disappointing in his statement. Obviously it was just irresistible for him to make this comment about houses that have not been painted for 20 years. But it is following a habit. I am going to table a letter, dated 26 July 2004, sent to tenants across the board in Territory Housing by the minister. It starts with:
- The opposition neglected Territory Housing while they were in government. I have been shocked to find that some houses were not painted for 20 years.
Okay. Two points there. First of all this letter, I am quite sure, has already started to come back and bite the minister because I have had constituents who are tenants at Tomaris Court outraged by this letter because they know that full well when the CLP was in government they had a fantastic complex. They know that. They know that it has only deteriorated in the last couple of years. So this letter fairly got up their noses. I am aware of at least one gentleman who has contacted the minister’s office and made that point.
The next sentence was that he was aware some houses had not been painted for 20 years. I agree with the member for Brennan. Let’s see it. Let see these houses, plural, let’s see them, two of them at least that have not been painted for 20 years. If they exist and can be shown, then I stand corrected, but I will be interested to see them.
Then today we have tabled the 2010 strategy, a government publication which should be put out to people in a non-political sense. It is paid for by taxpayers. In this publication, the minister once again makes comment, and I quote:
- As minister for Health, I was shocked to find, for example, that many house haven’t been painted for 20 years
Now we have many houses that have not been painted for 20 years. This is an appalling use of the minister’s position to have a go. I look forward to when we are in government and we can have a go at you lot.
To conclude, the minister is not always covered in glory. About three months ago, I was approached by a tenant from Tuckwell Court, the seniors’ complex in Beagle Street, Larrakeyah. He had become aware of a new tenant, a lady, who was moving in who was terribly distressed about the condition of the unit that she was going to go into. There were two issues. One was the state of the lino in the unit and the other was the condition of the toilet in which the water level in the bowl and below was black. No matter what she did, she could not get rid of this blackness in the toilet.
Mr Kiely interjecting.
Ms CARTER: Pardon?
Mr Kiely: I said that would have been an offence to you.
Ms CARTER: It would have been an offence to me. You, obviously, would be quite comfortable with that sort of situation, and jolly good to you. If that is your standard of living good luck to you.
This lady was very distressed. She had a new unit and she was excited about moving into the CBD. She was a senior lady and she did not have very good lino and this toilet. We approached the minister’s office, particularly with regards to the toilet and we were given advice that things would be sorted out. Within a week or so, I was advised that the workmen were in there. That was great. As it turned out, whereas the lino was one colour, brown or beige, the bits that were dodgy in the lounge room were replaced with blue lino so that within small area, you had one colour and another colour in bits and pieces. Well, all right, so maybe you can live with that.
When the lady went into the toilet, she was so excited because she saw there was a new toilet seat and across the new toilet seat was one of those hygienically sealed strips that you see when you go into motels. When she lifted the lid of the bowl, lo! and behold, the black toilet still existed. Obviously, the workers concerned thought that was highly entertaining, and that was all that was changed. It was only through another approach to the minister that the toilet bowl has been fixed. I congratulate and thank the minister for that, but – goodness me! – what an effort to get something done.
It is disappointing, the way the minister has spoiled the statement by making it political. I have tried to work well with the minister and he has, on many occasions, done the right thing with these problems and I know they are difficult things. I extend my support to the staff because I know they have a very difficult job. The unnecessary introduction in tonight’s statement, and this letter that went out, is a shame. I seek level to table it.
Leave granted.
Ms CARTER: Then there is the tone in some of the sentences in this. I do not think it is necessary or constructive but I guess the minister is in a position where he can do it.
Mr KIELY (Sanderson): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I compliment the minister on this strategy to 2010. I add my contribution on behalf of the people of Sanderson.
I would like to give you a profile of the electorate that I represent because we have quite a mix in housing standards. Northlakes has a middle to high socioeconomic level. There are great houses there, well kept with beautiful lawns. It is an immaculate, private housing development on a golf course with the golf course as the central theme. The only public housing in that complex is Defence Service housing. That is owned by the government, so I guess you could classify that as public housing. But there is no Territory housing in there.
Across McMillans Road are the suburbs of Malak, Anula and Wulagi. They are reconstruction suburbs after the cyclone. There is a dominance of certain types of houses there: Barclays, Orlitz, Grollos, PDCs, a couple of C19’s, and then you have your basic, ground level, three-bedroom brick veneer Territory Housing houses. Over the years since the cyclone, when these suburbs were established, which is where I will be mainly talking about tonight, there is great housing stock which is owned by Territory Housing. It was not actually put there to house low income earners.
We have great housing stock. The CLP opposition do not like us going back all those years. I will go back there, and I will compliment them for working hand in hand with the federal government and the Darwin Reconstruction Commission, in getting all that public housing created through those suburbs. There was a sameness to all this housing. There are blocks of Barclays and Grollos all over the place; there was a sameness. These houses had to be put up with a sense of urgency to meet the housing demand, and predominantly they were owned by the Northern Territory government and leased out, as I said, not necessarily to low income earners, but to Territory public servants. I believe you have to appreciate where all this housing stock came from in the start. I believe that, at that time, those houses actually might have been managed by the departments hand in hand with whatever Territory Housing of the day was called.
Over time, people moved in and out of these houses. They were all rented accommodation, so no-one was really investing any great amounts of money out of their own pocket into these places. I am talking now about your transient worker; your two, three, five-year person who may have came up here and then moved out of the place. So you get not much happening with the yard, and not much happening with the house.
There were your long-term people, who were in there and committed, and they started mapping out how they wanted their house to be. They were still happy to rent, and great tenants, who brought up their kids, and there were many families around that area who are of that nature. As time went by, they had the opportunity to purchase their houses. Over time, the housing stock started to be utilised by low income earners, people who, through circumstance, were not in a position to be able to buy, and could not afford to rent on the private rental market. You must remember that over the years we have not had very much rental stock until quite recent times, and the private rental stock was terribly expensive. These people had no hope of paying private rental or market rates, and they were living in Territory Housing.
When I was a candidate back in 2000 and 2001, walking around, doorknocking, I would go to many of these long-term low-income places. I could see all the houses in my area pretty well. When I went into these houses, they were in an appalling condition. The tenants were telling me stories of how they would be phoning up and be placed on a waiting list to get repairs done. Only the most urgent of minor repairs, such as if a pipe had burst, would they get anything done. But as far as the maintenance that was required to maintain this housing stock such as painting; putting down proper finishes in the yard like a driveway; fencing - all of them had pig wire fences; planting trees or establishing lawns was just not there. The floor furnishings were that standard grey public service tile that you get in so many houses - which is still there - and the old hopper windows. It was all like that. These people just could not get anything done by the housing agency at that time.
Dr Burns: Because there was no money.
Mr KIELY: That is it. They were not complaining. They were not complaining about the people they were dealing with at the counter or the clerk in the background. They would contact Territory Housing and Territory Housing would just say, ‘There is money. That is it. There is no money for that sort of work’. That is how it was. People accepted that because they would go there year after year asking for something – nothing! They would not get anywhere. What was the use? They would go to the local member – nothing! Nothing was getting done so they stopped complaining. They were happy to have someone who had the potential sit in their house with them and talk to them.
They kept their houses clean. Just because people are on low incomes – whether black or white - does not mean they live in pigsties. People are houseproud, leastways the ones that I can talk about; the ones I visit in my electorate. They are houseproud and, on the meagre incomes that they have and within their means, they try to keep it right. These people do not have access to flash lawnmowers, garden edgers, paint brushes, excess paint, or all these sorts of things. When you are struggling, day in, day out, to feed you family, a lawnmower and a can of paint are things that are far away from your thoughts. They did best - and they still do their best - with what they have.
I went into one house and the person was a subcontractor. This guy was talking to me and he was just about in tears, saying he was small subbie, a tiler, who could do all this maintenance work but, because there was no maintenance money around, even though he needed work, there was no money coming out for him, as a contractor, to get any work, and he had had it. He did not have money to get his car registered, and he was worrying about his family. I paint that picture of how it was before we came to government. One of the things that I did was write to every public housing person in my electorate and said that, should the Labor government get in, I would do all within my power, with the help of my colleagues, to see what we could do for them. The culmination of Home Territory 2001, the urban renewal project and the HomeNorth loan is the fulfilment of that promise that I gave to all those people.
The members for Brennan and Port Darwin were saying to us: ‘You come in here and are so unfair. You say the CLP did not paint any house for 20 years. Give me proof; show me. Show me what it is like’. If these members like, I will talk to the people in these houses and they can come around and I can show them bathrooms in these houses where the sinks have separated from the walls; where the tiles had never been done properly; where things have not been painted. I have here a copy of my newsletter that went out in July. It has: ‘Good News on the Home Front. HomeNorth paves the way with a new loan schedule for first home buyers. Public Housing receives much needed repairs and maintenance funding’. For the members for Port Darwin and Brennan, who wanted proof of what houses had not been done, here it is on the front page; a picture of a house being fixed up, which had not been painted for 20 years - no one went near it.
Dr Burns: Shame. Table it.
Mr KIELY: Here it is. I will table this. I will table it, if they wanted proof. There are still houses in the electorate of Sanderson, in the same condition, that are now on the list to be fixed up. It takes time; we are rolling around to do it. This house here - do you know where this is? This house was in a terrible condition. The people in there were battling but they did their best to maintain it. Something like $40 000 or $50 000 had to be spent on this house.
The member for Millner made the point that things take time. There is not enough money in this world to go bang! and get it all done. Therefore, we still have houses to this day within my own electorate, and the electorates of Karama, Brennan, Blain, and in Greatorex, Barkly and Katherine, in this same condition. These houses did not get to this state in three years. I am amazed at the temerity of those members on the other side who say it is unfair to blame the CLP. Well, who else can we blame?
This is not tenant neglect. This goes beyond fair wear and tear. This goes to landlord neglect and that is an indictment of the CLP. I will table this document. As I said, I will talk to a couple of tenants in my electorate, and if the members for Brennan and Port Darwin who have been shielded so much - I will get permission I am sure from these tenants - and I will take them out there. Then we will see them stand up in the House and say, ‘Thanks member for Sanderson, we were not aware but we have had a road to Damascus epiphany and now we are converted’. If that is what it takes then I am prepared to do it. I seek leave to table this document.
Leave granted.
Mr KIELY: In my newsletter I also say that:
- The Urban Renewal Program for Territory Housing continues to roll out providing jobs for Territorians and improving the standard of living for tenants. 73 properties were renewed in 2003-04 and 96 properties are planned for renewal in 2004-05.
We have quite substantial housing stock but we are getting to it. My congratulations to the minister for getting this through Cabinet, but I would suggest to you that it would have been a pretty easy call. The Minister for Housing is a great bloke but something like this would have had the full support of all Cabinet members. We all know and appreciate the need for improving the standard of housing stock.
It is not all altruism. Not only has this program improved the housing stock within the Territory, it has given us a way of injecting cash down onto the street level, down to those subcontractors like the one I mentioned before. It has been able to get them work, get them going again and these are the benefits. I am not surprised that the CLP could not see that because of their blinkered view that people in social housing, and I think the term was ‘low lives’ - that is right, ‘low lives’ was used by the member for Brennan - they are low lives and therefore do not deserve a hand up. I do not subscribe to that. We, on this side, do not subscribe to that. The majority, the vast majority of Territorians do not subscribe to that.
These people in social housing are battling for a quid. What do they expect? Do they expect that they are going to be painting the house? Does anyone have any idea of how much it costs to do renovations, or up-keep of a house? It is shocking, it costs a fortune and they do not have the money. They expect the department as the landlord, the government as the landlord, to come and do it, just as anyone’s landlord in the Territory is governed the Residential Tenancies Act and this program is about making sure that we act as good landlords. I stated in my newsletter:
- Another exciting development has been the continuing action to finally bring public owned houses up to a standard comparable to what a private landlord is expected under law to provide for their tenants.
What is so sinful about that? Should we say ‘Sorry, you are a low income earner and therefore you do not deserve decent housing? Let’s put a stigma on you’. I do not think so. I do not think that is the way to go about the things in life. We are supposed to be a fair and just society no matter what side of the political fence we are on.
Let me point out right here and now that the contributions from the CLP opposition in this matter are appalling. I am shocked and dismayed that people in politics should talk in such code and talk about people in public housing. They are using code all the time, talking about Aboriginal people in houses. Well, I have news for you. I get around my area and we have Aboriginal, Chinese, and Anglo. It is not just Aboriginal people in public housing. It is not just people in public housing who make noise. Go to a rented property next door to a group house and see what you think. It would be full of young fellas, probably white, who are making a hell of a noise and giving the neighbours curry. It happens all over the place.
I would like to talk about my own street. In my street, there are 10 houses and of them, seven are privately owned and three are publicly owned. One of the houses is straight across the road from me and has an Aboriginal family in it, a single mother. She has visitors coming in from the bush and they sit around out the front sometimes and, yes, it is pretty crowded. Sometimes there is a bit of noise. What is the big deal? If things get out of hand there are mechanisms in place.
There will be houses where there will be visitors who are unruly, make noise and are unwelcome. That is a shame, but that is an individual shame. You get the same thing happening in the Chinese and the Anglo community and to tar it all up and say: ‘No, it is only blackfellas getting visitors and they need to post names up on the wall so that they are the only ones there’, is discriminatory. It sickens me that people should come in here and promote that as a way to do things. If authorities can say how many people can come and visit, that is not the society I want in the Territory. That is not the society any of us should aspire to. You sign the leasing agreement. Crickey! It is not rocket science.
I wish the CLP would stop thinking that only Aboriginal people, noisy ones at that, are those who are in Territory Housing. That is not the case. Territory Housing is there for everyone. We are doing our best to make it a great asset for the community. We are doing our best to make sure that people can find a way out of public housing and get into the private area. That is where the HomeNorth scheme comes in. It is under the minister’s guidance and he is doing a great job. I commend the HomeNorth scheme. Many people in my area think it is wonderful. I have had a single parent who is a school teacher and, as a university student, could not own a house. She is now a neophyte, first year out. She has talked to the HomeNorth people and I believe she is buying a house. That is what it is all about: getting people on low incomes set up so that in future years their equity in the house will go up, they are not a burden on the taxpayer, as the CLP seems to think that anyone in public housing is.
Ms Carter: Who introduce the HomeNorth scheme?
Mr KIELY: This is another point; the CLP is quick to say: ‘You cannot come here and blame us for all this bad housing. How can you dare do that?’, but the minute there is anything good – and I will give the CLP credit for getting the scheme going - they want to put their hand up and claim it. They will claim that, but they will not claim their years of neglect and the way that they treated the people. You cannot have it both ways, member for Port Darwin. You cannot have it both ways. Either put your hand up and own up to everything or sit there and keep quite about it all. Do not be selective. Do not be selective in the past because it just does not wash.
I will tell you what: in my three years in this House, I have heard no questions from the members for Blain or Brennan about housing stock. In Estimates, nothing. All I ever hear is them complaining about bad tenants, get the tenants out of there. Never have they shown any care for these people in our society to try to get them ahead. I will be happy to go to Blain or Brennan and doorknock around the public houses and talk to these people because they are not represented, particularly by the Leader of the Opposition or the would-be Leader of the Opposition again, old Lazarus over here, who is going to make his second coming.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I will wind up. I am pretty cranked up about the contributions from the other side, which verge on racism. I commend the minister. I do not believe the minister’s message in Home Territory 2010 is political. He says it straight. It does not mention political parties. My congratulations to the staff who put this together and congratulations to all those out at Territory Housing who support these people. It is a tough job but they are doing it well.
Mr AH KIT (Housing): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, in closing this debate, I thank the members for Casuarina, Sanderson, Nightcliff, Millner, Karama, Nelson and Braitling for their contributions. There were some good points from members opposite in regards to the speakers from Katherine, Greatorex, Brennan, Port Darwin, and Macdonnell. I will come back to some of those comments. I want to pick them up in this closing debate because there are a few issues that I wish to take up with them.
There has been a history of neglect of public housing dwellings under the previous government. That is a fact. Whilst members opposite argue and beg to differ, then so be it. Firstly, the member for Katherine would have you believe that the repairs and maintenance programs under the former government was effective. However, for at least the past ten years, the repairs and maintenance program for public housing has been for unforeseen maintenance and vacates only. There has been no systematic or preventative repairs and maintenance done for many years.
It is also important to mention that Housing 2010 and the launch of that, and the ministerial statement today is moving forward from the former government’s Housing 2003. However, we want to make sure that there is a clear vision for where we will take Housing in the Territory in the next six years to 2010. I feel that there has been an irresponsible government in the past, where they have lagged behind the Commonwealth/State Housing Agreement and really dragged the chain. That is something I am endeavouring, along with my government, to make amends and move it forward. I think they realised that in late 2000, or up until mid-2001, when they started to make some changes to bring about a better policy. However, for the 10 or 15 years prior to that they were lagging quite seriously behind conditions that were put in place under the Commonwealth/State Housing Agreement.
I have seen for myself public housing dwellings that have not been painted for over 20 years, with paint peeling off the walls, lino peeled up, stoves not replaced, and rotten benches throughout the kitchen and bathroom of many houses. There was a whole litany of under-resourcing. The previous government failed and neglected the tenants in their care.
I would also like to apologise to the House and interested stakeholders for the member for Katherine’s ill-informed and brief comments. I believe we were all shocked to hear the shadow minister, and I use the term loosely, say that we do not adequately cater for our seniors. One of the few things the former mob got right when they were in government, and this was mentioned and touched upon by the member for Brennan, was the seniors’ villages they constructed. The member for Katherine really does not have any understanding that her party in power had begun to do some very good things for seniors’ villages.
The member for Katherine may not realise that there is a significant project currently underway for senior Territorians in Fannie Bay. The Fannie Bay Seniors Village is being built at a cost of $7.7m, which will provide 40 ground level two-bedroom units. And just to remind the shadow minister, we also have the Leanyer Seniors Village, Tambling Terrace Seniors Village, the Gillen Seniors Village in Alice Springs, and the Coconut Grove Seniors Village. I am sure the member for Greatorex will recall the Coconut Grove Seniors Village, because he was kicked out of it by a resident last year. I am pleased to inform the member for Katherine that, through our comprehensive stock planning process, we have identified the redevelopment of several large complexes across the Territory, including the Bernard Street complex in Katherine. At a cost of $1.5m, the Bernard Street redevelopment and reconfiguration will improve the living space for the complex, reducing the number of units from 54 to 43, and creating a community centre in the complex. I believe that that is going to be well received by the Katherine community.
It reminds me, also, of the attacks that rained down on me when the members for Araluen and Greatorex took issue with me as the Minister for Housing in regards to the Cawood Court complex regarding the wrong decisions and the wrong developers chosen. We do not hear much from them anymore, but we see that there has been an excellent job undertaken by the project developers. All those units have been sold and, actually they have also been on-sold since then, and some people are making a couple of dollars out of it. Good luck to them. Certainly, the Cawood Court complex fits in really well with the environment and has lifted the value of housing in the Gillen area of Alice Springs.
May I also point out that my office - and this in regards to the member for Katherine - is always available to organise a briefing. In fact, the member for Katherine had a briefing in my office last sittings on housing issues, and I am not aware of any other approaches she has made. She said in her contribution this morning that she finds it very hard to get a briefing from my office. Well, I have offered - and I will continue to offer - members opposite, and Independent members of this Chamber, briefings on issues that are within my portfolio area. I have put my staff on notice - especially my chief of staff - that we need to accommodate their requests as long as they are within reason and they apply through the proper processes. Protocol dictates that, if you wish to have a briefing, phone my office, write to me, tell my office what those issues are, and then we will arrange a briefing. It is as simple as that.
However, we will not do it in the manner in which the member for Katherine would like it to be done. I give you an example. This morning, the member for Katherine said: ‘I find it very hard to get a briefing from the Minister for Housing’s office’. I asked my staff to check with the department; she had her electorate officer to ring this morning seeking a briefing. She has suddenly realised this morning that this was coming on as a statement and she was the shadow minister, and that she would use that in her contribution to the debate. Very sad, very lazy.
Dr Burns: Opportunistic.
Mr AH KIT: Very opportunistic, yes. She really needs to do better than that. I find in some of her comments in the Katherine Times, where she is pitching to her so-called audience, that she makes mileage out of saying these sorts of things: ‘Very hard to get briefings from ministers in the Martin Labor government’. Well, she should come clean and organise briefings through the proper protocols, so she can understand what her responsibilities are for the portfolio areas she has as a shadow minister.
I welcome the comments of the member for Macdonnell regarding private housing ownership and the introduction of private capital to our remote communities. At last, a small sign of a small amount of intelligence opposite. In fact, I can inform him we are working with the land councils on issues surrounding this very issue. As the member opposite would have seen, if he has read the policy document properly - and I refer him to pages 12, 13 and 14 of Home Territory 2010 – it is clear in the Home Territory strategy that we want home ownership in the bush. Page 14 states: ‘Develop initiatives that encourage indigenous Territorians to purchase their own home’.
Mr Elferink: Halleluiah.
Mr AH KIT: Well look, it is here. Do you want to argue about it?
Mr Elferink: I am saying congratulations.
Mr AH KIT: How clear does it have to be? This does not …
Mr Elferink: But it is not very clear.
Mr AH KIT: This does not apply only to indigenous people in cities and townships. It is for the bush also. And so if you go to the objectives on page 12, objective 1: A sustainable social housing system, and half way down the page: Sustainable remote indigenous housing, and it says under the Focus Area:
ensure indigenous people remain central in the planning and provision of housing services in remote communities;
investigate the pooling of Indigenous Essential Services funding with remote housing program funding.
Under the second dot point of the Focus ‘Building capacity of the community housing sector’, is ‘Through IHANT build the capacity of indigenous community housing organisations’. On page 13, it says under objective three, Focus Area, ‘Encourage choice across housing tenures’, and the second and third dot points state:
explore potential extension of housing models for remote communities;
investigate land tenure options for remote communities.
Page 14 under objective three, Opportunities to access and maintain home ownership, the strategy is:
develop initiatives that encourage indigenous Territorians to purchase their own home.
It is there and spelled out. If the member for Macdonnell is congratulating us for having that in the document, then fine.
We understand that this is not going to happen overnight. We need to talk to land owners, we need to talk to land councils. We need to encourage them to think seriously about allowing land for housing development. I would like to see it similar to what I have planned for government employee housing. We know that if we are able to build houses out there and accommodate government employees, which is their entitlement as public servants, then that would take the housing pressure off ATSIS, ATSIC, or whoever is going to be delivering houses now that ATSIC is on its knees and ATSIS is still in place, along with the ATSIC regional councils for the next 10 or 11 months. We will have to await the outcome of the federal election to understand that the future role of indigenous housing and who has carriage.
I believe something like HomeNorth should be extended to the bush. My department has been instructed; it is in here. We are looking at ways we can do that. It may be that the land owners wish to do something similar to Lhere Artepe. They may wish to do something similar to Larrakia with the Darla developments in regards to becoming an entrepreneur and making land available and developing serviced land lots for which people could qualify. We know in communities that there would be up to 20 or 30 families that would appreciate contemplating a HomeNorth loan. HomeNorth loans should not be specific to the cities and towns. We are looking at the extension into the bush. Then governments would have a responsibility at looking at providing the power/water/sewerage infrastructure. It could be another suburb of that particular community.
That is the process we need to work through. But I certainly think if we are able to deliver on that two, three, or four years down the track and we get the Commonwealth’s support on this, it would be a big plus in trying to catch up with the housing needs that we have in the Northern Territory. I remind members it was $850m unmet indigenous housing needs in the Territory; something like 5000 houses that we would have to build to accommodate people in remote parts of the Northern Territory.
It is early days yet, but the real problem is there is no private market. That, clearly, is a disincentive to private capital at the outset. Nevertheless, we are pursuing possible leads for the long term in this area. As members opposite said, it will inevitably be a very slow process. The strategy is not the only approach that government is taking on this important issue. The Indigenous Economic Development Task Force is also working on this issue. However, it does not obviate the real and immediate shortfall in general housing funding on our communities.
The existing housing stock is simply nowhere near adequate. So I find it somewhat weird that the member for Macdonnell is suggesting that there is over-servicing in the area of housing provision in remote communities when we know that overcrowding is shockingly high. I encourage the member for Macdonnell to have a chat with me or put in writing how he arrives at that position.
I have argued strongly to improve housing conditions in the bush and I am pleased to inform the members opposite that an additional $23m will be delivered through IHANT this financial year.
The other point that I would like to pick up from the member for Macdonnell, and he may need to point it out to me, is that he had said, I believe, that I had complained of the over-representation of indigenous Territorians in social housing. I do not know how he arrived at that. This has never been the case. I am offended by such a provocative statement. The member for Araluen has for sometime has been seeking information on how many indigenous people live in public housing in her electorate. She wrote to me on a couple of occasions. As I have explained to her, either you qualify for public housing or you do not. Race is not a qualification and the day it becomes so by some government in the Territory, it will be a sad day.
I take this opportunity to comment on several public comments made by the member for Blain in the Alice Springs News. I will table this for the perusal of members, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker. He made comments like:
- … Territory Housing is providing a breeding ground for gangs who delight in antisocial and criminal behaviour and terrorising neighbours.
This is a completely irresponsible and reckless position to have. Less than 1% of our tenants have any formal complaints made against them. That means 99% of our public housing tenants are good tenants. They look after their houses, pay their rents and, for the most part, lead peaceful lives.
The CLP would have you believe that all public housing tenants are drug dealers, criminals, debt evaders or indigenous people. They seem to be unaware, or perhaps deliberately ignorant, that Territory Housing has some constraints, the same constraints that apply to private landlords. I cannot evict people whose kids are playing in the front yard or on the street, as a member for Brennan suggested. That would be illegal for Territory Housing to do, just as it would illegal for a private landlord.
Mr HENDERSON: Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I move an extension of time of 10 minutes to allow my colleague to conclude his reply.
Motion agreed to.
Mr AH KIT: Thank you. If the member for Brennan tables that, fine. Cornwallis Circuit has been brought to the department’s attention. I understand the complaints. I am not supportive of that type of behaviour. If he wishes for me get the department to provide a briefing or a news flash on it, I will do that and I will pass it on as soon as possible. But it is very similar to the quite stupid suggestion in the Question Time by the member for Macdonnell who stated that the gates have gone missing at Wirrina flats. I obtained some information on that. The gates have not gone missing; they have been locked and kept open. For security purposes, we tried a situation at Wirrina similar to what is done in private flats. It did not work as people kept jamming it. It created more problems for us than what it was worth, so the department is reviewing that.
I get a distinct feeling that the members opposite, especially, expect the Minister for Housing to be right across every broken louvre in public housing, every gate that has gone missing, and every light bulb that has blown. Where does it stop? For goodness’ sake, I ask them to have a bit of common sense and work with me. I am quite happy to get back to them if they have genuine complaints to raise with me. But, if they want to be ridiculous about which light bulb in Fourth Street in Katherine went off at 2 o’clock in the morning at a public housing complex, well, they need to start to mature and make sensible contributions to this Chamber.
Territory Housing is serious about being a quality landlord, and serious about the management of its debt. We have a sound debt management program which is achieving positive results. For example, in 1996, under the CLP government, the percentage of tenants in arrears was 37.86%. The rent arrears as of June 2004 was 23.24%, an improvement of 14.5%. If we use those figures, and I am quite happy to provide them to the shadow minister for Housing, and you have a look at what the member for Blain has said in his letter to the editor - and I will come back to that very shortly - you would be throwing a lot more people out of public housing, according to him. We have a situation where they, and especially the member for Brennan, jump and down, whinge and whine, but they do not offer any solutions.
I would really like them to put their heads together and come forward with some very good ideas regarding solutions. If they want to be knockers, that is fine, but if they are not going to offer up any solutions, then they are not helping the Territory to move forward.
I have here Terry Mills, the Opposition Leader, making the following comments:
- The Martin government’s complete lack of interest in Territory Housing is providing a breeding ground for gangs who delight in antisocial and criminal behaviour and terrorising neighbours.
This is a beauty:
- Under a CLP government, neighbours from hell can go to hell.
Well, if we believed that, they want to start having a look around for which shady tree they want to be camping under, because these residents out there in public housing, black, white or brindle, I am led to understand, are on the roll and will vote.
Making those sorts of statements as the Leader of the Opposition does not help public housing tenants, and does not help recognising that they are, in some cases, people who are battlers, people who have come to the Territory to turn their lives around and to make a new start for themselves and their families, or people who have not been able to get the education some of us have been able to obtain and therefore have been able to do really well. But they are eligible for public housing. This government recognises that. We subsidise public housing in many cases, as we are all aware, but we are more in touch and more humane in the way we treat our public housing tenants and people who are making application for public housing.
The Leader of the Opposition blames the Martin Labor government for a complete lack on interest in Territory housing. What nonsense! Under the Martin Labor government, we have overhauled the HomeNorth program and, since its introduction on 1 July 2004, assisted 48 Territory families into home ownership with loans approved to the value of $10m. We have also implemented a $45m urban renewal program to improve the standards of our public housing throughout the Territory. There has been a significant investment into government employee housing to bring new and improved housing for key workers in the bush. We will soon have a comprehensive security screening and smoke alarm installation in all public housing dwellings. We will introduce a range of strategies to improve the way we do our business, including the quality landlord strategy and comprehensive frontline staff training.
I meet, as much as possible, with public servants in Housing. I have the utmost admiration, especially for those Housing staff who are on the front line - the tenancy managers and all the other staff who go with it. They have a very difficult job. I provide support, and I know my CEO provides as much support as he possibly can. We recognise that their job is not an easy one and we encourage them to continue to work studiously because they, I believe, get some form of satisfaction from undertaking that type of strenuous work. All I hear from members opposite is that they are bludgers; they do not do their job properly; they are too soft. I believe that is an insult to those workers, and they should be a fairly sensitive in understanding tenancy managers and housing staff and how hard they work to do their job properly and accommodate varying interests and varying degrees of hardship being experienced by tenants of public housing.
I thank the member for Braitling for her comments regarding the green loans scheme. I am pleased to say that the department is currently considering this option. We are keen to encourage environmentally sustainable construction, as commented on page 15 of the strategy, which states: ‘Any new dwellings constructed for public and indigenous housing are environmentally sustainable’. I do not believe that this has been a missed opportunity.
I thank the member for Port Darwin for pointing out the issues that were raised in the past with the abject misery of Tomaris Court – hell hole. Territory Housing has taken significant action to address the noise and nuisance difficulties at Tomaris Court: fencing and signage has been improved; tenancy staff and community patrols regularly visit the complex; Territory Housing continues to work closely with the police; and Territory Housing has given permission to the police to enter onto the common ground of the complex and move on unwanted drinkers. Tenants at the complex have also been informed that drinking in the common areas will not be tolerated. I am satisfied that Territory Housing has taken prompt and serious action, and that the living environment at Tomaris Court has improved.
Finally, I take this opportunity to thank all staff and the many workers in community housing organisations. They have a difficult job and they do that difficult job well. I thank them for their efforts and ongoing hard work.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, we are a government with a vision for housing. The previous government was tired; their ideas stale and antiquated. Nothing has changed. I commend the Home Territory 2010 strategy to the House.
Motion agreed to; statement noted.
ADJOURNMENT
Dr BURNS (Lands and Planning): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I move that the Assembly do now adjourn.
Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, on 22 July I attended an informal dinner for the Australian Ports Association or AAPMA for their biennual conference at the Aviation Heritage Museum. I was captivated by the Darwin High School Band which performed at this dinner. I was so impressed that I found out a lot more about them.
The Darwin High School Stage Band under the direction of Brian Manning from Northern Territory DEET Music School is a group of approximately 20 students who have been performing together for about three years. The style of music they play has a distinct jazz feel to it, with many famous tunes adapted to suit the ‘big band’ style. Their repertoire is wide and varied and includes traditional jazz pieces as well as songs adapted for their instrumentation such as ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’, ‘String of Pearls’, ‘New York, New York’, ‘Birdland’, ‘Jungle Boogie’, ‘Here there, everywhere’, ‘My Girl’, ‘Sitting on the dock of the bay’ - that is an old favourite of mine - ‘Mercy, Mercy, Mercy’, ‘Lady Marmalade’, ‘Chameleon’, ‘Smoke on the Water’, ‘Mission Impossible’, ‘Born to be Wild’ - I like that one - ‘Oye Como Va’, ‘Sesame Street’, ‘Mas Que Nada’ and ‘A Night in Tunisia’.
The students come from across all the year levels at Darwin High and rehearse weekly for 1 hours. I would just like to go through the instruments and some of the players: trumpets: Matthew White, Robert Jackson, Joshua Blaikie, Alexander Me, Samantha Leung, and Alexander Vatskalis; saxophones: David Bruce, Clancy O’Donnell, Vanessa Lassemillante, Nathan Lewis, and Joanna Wells; trombones: Cedric Dos Santos, Shaun Pearson, and Matthew Holt; electric bass: Matthew Fong; piano: Jennifer Proft; and drums and percussion: Cameron Jackson, Dylan Bennett, and Jeremy Ho.
The Darwin High School Stage Band has enjoyed a great deal of success since it was formed. Aside from being invited to perform at a number of DEET and community functions they are currently the holders of the School Jazz Band and Open Jazz Band Section of the North Australian Eisteddfod. It was a real pleasure to hear these young people play with so much enthusiasm. The Darwin Aviation Museum was a great venue. There were guests from interstate and overseas and nearly everyone commented on what a great outfit they were and just how professional they are. I commend these young people and their teachers for all the great work that they do.
But there is more, because from apart from the Stage Band there is another large performing ensemble at Darwin High and which is regularly asked to perform at school and community functions, and that is the Darwin High School Concert Band under the direction of Janine Matheson from Darwin High School. It performs a wide range of music from television themes, movie themes, songs, contemporary arrangements, and new arrangements of more classical music. The students in this band, numbering approximately 60, are mainly in Years 10, 11 and 12 although some of the more advanced students from Years 8 and 9 also play.
The Concert Band is the holder of the A A Riley Shield for the North Australian Eisteddfod Secondary Schools Band Section and regularly performs at a variety of functions. The instrumentation of this band is different to the stage band as it includes the clarinets which give it a whole new sound. The very committed and highly skilled students in these bands are about to embark on their very first interstate tour in September where they will perform at secondary and primary schools as well as civic venues in Sydney, Wodonga and Melbourne. The Stage Band is also part of this tour. The Concert Band rehearses for 1 hours each week. Once again, we have young people learning music, committed to music, and playing very well and going interstate. I wish them well.
As well as the Stage Band and the Concert Band there is also the Darwin High School Wind Symphony under the direction of Alana Bryett from Darwin High School. To ensure that the band program continues to flourish at Darwin High a junior band was formed two years ago as a means of training and developing the younger students’ skill in a performing ensemble. The natural progression for these students is to progress to the Concert Band. Instrumentation of the wind symphony is same as the Concert Band and consists of Years 8 and 9 students with some of the older students assisting during rehearsals. After many hours of rehearsals and work on the fundamentals of playing in a large performing ensemble, this group of young talent gave an inspiring performance at this year’s North Australian Eisteddfod, gaining a highly commended in the secondary schools section.
I commend Darwin High School and all the bands at Darwin High School, the teachers who are training them, but particularly the young people who show such enthusiasm and love of music.
On 31 July, I attended the Bus Roadeo. Imagine yourself aboard a bus in peak hour traffic on the Stuart Highway. It is the end of a working day and everyone is rushing to get home. Suddenly, the car in front slams on the breaks. A collision looks unavoidable, but in the twinkling of an eye, your bus driver deftly taps his brakes and veers out of harms way. Tactical skills such as these are a key component of bus driver training. Once a year, drivers gather to test their abilities at the Northern Territory Bus Roadeo competition. The best performers then have the chance to compete in the National Bus Roadeo, which has been held annually since 1990. In 2001, it was held at Casuarina Square.
This year’s NT Bus Roadeo was the fifth since 1999, with the finals held at the Darwin Bus Services’ Armidale Street premises, as I said, on Saturday, 31 July. Darwin Bus Service driver Dave Magree took out the competition, with the very low score of 285, followed by fellow Darwin Bus Service driver Carolyn Brumby, with a score of 340. Both drivers will represent the Northern Territory at the upcoming National Bus Roadeo to be held in Brisbane on Sunday, 24 October. Hopes are high that the Territory will place well in the competition, which is open to spectators and expected to attract up to 16 competitors from around Australia.
What is a Bus Roadeo? As the name implies, it is a competition in which bus drivers compete on a course with up to 12 obstacles designed to test drivers to the limit. The obstacles include routine tasks such as right-hand turns and stopping, as well as more hair rasing challenges including the ‘Diminishing Shoot’, ‘Serpentine’ and ‘The Wall’, which is a braking test. The Roadeo course aims to reflect actual driving conditions and situations encountered by bus drivers in their day-to-day work. Skills tested include vehicle control, passenger comfort, traffic regulations, dress standards, driver safety and efficiency within a competitive time frame. The competition is run on a system whereby points are accrued as faults are incurred over two rounds. In other words, the lower the score, the better the outcome. To ensure a level playing field, the one bus is used by all drivers.
Participating drivers and organisations report real benefits from the roadeo series, ranging from improved driver skills and staff motivation through to community education and marketing. The events also provide an environment for team building between government and private bus operators.
It was my pleasure during the roadeo to jump behind the controls of a bus and go through the course. Whilst I did not do it at the same speed as the professional bus drivers, it was a real eye opener to me. I have said before that I have driven trucks, but I have not driven a vehicle where the wheels are actually behind me. It is an interesting course. You go through a bit of a wiggle-waggle between obstacles and if you hit some of the plastic poles, you lose points. You go around a round-a-bout, and it might sound easy, but when you have such a large vehicle you have to very careful where you place your wheels. As well as that, you have to speed towards a wall and stop in time. It is a false wall so you do not crash through it; there are bricks painted on it. Of course, I took it very easy and stopped with plenty of space, but the precision of bus drivers comes down to millimetres. That is how they measure and differentiate between the different bus drivers and their skills.
You also have to stop at a bus stop and let the people off. One of the judges in the bus is in a wheelchair, and if you stop too suddenly or accelerate too quickly or go around a corner too quickly, and they move around in their wheelchair, they will take deduct points.
I had a go and that is about what it was and when I got off the bus at the end all the drivers cheered because I had a go, not that I did all that well.
Mr Wood: Do they still have the mirrors on the bus?
Dr BURNS: Yes, they have mirrors and they also have security cameras.
Mr Wood: No, after you finished driving, were there still mirrors?
Dr BURNS: Yes, there were mirrors! It was a fantastic thing. I have a list of the drivers who competed. These are in order from first to ninth: Dave Magree from Darwin Bus Service had the lowest score; followed by Carolyn Brumby, Darwin Bus Service; Sam Chungue, Darwin Bus Service; Rosinia Couturaud, Darwin Bus Service; David Alm, Darwin Bus Service, Aaron Blash from Buslink, followed by Andrew Martin, from Buslink, Mick Kerrod from Darwin Bus Service, and then Jim Gallacher from Darwin Bus Services. I commend all the helpers there and everyone had a great time. It was a lot of fun. Amongst the army of helpers were Geoff Baker, manager of Darwin Bus Service, Gary Weh, Guido Merlo, Brett Hunter, John Nash, John East, Jean Baker, Ben Johnson, Helen Coulter, Jan Post, Joel Couturaud, Peter Fowler, Gary Chapman, Aaron Nash, Bruce Action, Judith Action, Stephanie Alm and Jasmine Alm. Thanks to all those who helped.
They were also having a reunion that night of bus drivers, and there was the history of buses in Darwin which was very interesting. They are a great group. I commended the bus drivers because they do a very hard job. They are dealing with the public all the time and, as we know, the public can be very discourteous. From time to time, we have negative reports about bus drivers but, in the main, 99% of the time, bus drivers do a fantastic job. They are concerned about the safety of their passengers. They are concerned about punctuality of the bus service, and the quality and standard of the bus service. Once again, I commend the drivers from both Darwin Bus Service and Buslink.
At the end of last term, I was pleased to provide Quiet Achiever book vouchers to Sean Hartley and Remy Fowler of Jingili Primary School, and at Moil Primary School, to Gunalini Packiakumar in Year 5, and to Brendan Downes and Jarod Luis of Year 1, who shared a voucher. At Wagaman Primary School, Thomas Hinz in Transition and Clayton Heit in Year 7 were both noted for their consistency of approach to learning, and the quiet and determined manner in which they seek to do well.
Other achievers around the schools in the Johnston electorate were David Kruse, who has been participating in the Australian Football U13 national competition in Adelaide; Callum Maclachlan’s selection in the Under 16s Northern Territory Basketball Representative Team which played in Perth in July; Liam Maclachlan, who was selected in the School Sport Northern Territory Basketball Team in August, and Under 14s Northern Territory Basketball Representative Team in September; Liam and Madeleine Birch were selected to represent the Northern Territory in Cross Country Running in August in Canberra, and I certainly wish them well; Stephan Dippel, whom I have also complimented personally, was selected to represent the Northern Territory in the Under 15 Rugby League Carnival held in Adelaide in June; Tellie Geranis was selected to play soccer for the City Cluster team later this year in Gove; and Leonello Harrison, who has been selected to play for the Northern Territory Under 13 Australia Rules Football team in Adelaide in August.
Also compliments to some Territory Young Scientists from Moil Primary School who received awards for their effort and terrific work. These were: Iona Watson, Rachel Quong, Sau-ching Leung, Mitchell Aldridge, Chloe Wallent, Reina Shean, Lucy Anderson, Indi Mansfield, Alys Shanahan, Nikki Kastellorizios, Jonathon Dyer, Isabel Bruekers, Eliza Jongue, Maryann Lu, Natalie Freak and all of the 5-7 Kellam Class.
The 2004 Australasian Schools English Competition saw a Moil Primary School student awarded the State Medal for achieving the highest mark in Year 7 in the Northern Territory and South Australia. A special congratulations to Iona Watson for a fantastic result. High distinctions were also awarded to Iona, Marion Caraher, Gareth Dickens, Thomas Pisel, Briana Harding and Mollie Harding.
To all those students from the schools in the electorate who have won prizes, or been selected in representative teams, all the best and congratulations, and just a word of encouragement for those still waiting for their prize and still trying to get representative duties for the Northern Territory, hang in there, train hard, apply yourself and I am sure you will get there.
Ms CARTER (Port Darwin): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I was pleased to hear the member for Johnston speak tonight about the Darwin High School band. It is, indeed, a great band. However, I was attending the Darwin High School school council meeting earlier this month, and it was disappointing to hear the troubles the Northern Territory School of Music is currently facing, because it is with the great assistance of this school of music that the Darwin High School band achieves the success that it does.
Recently, the Northern Territory music school has relocated. Part of the deal of relocating was that the government would reimburse its removal costs. Unfortunately, to date, those costs have not been reimbursed by the government. The end result is that the School of Music is having to contemplate reducing some of its services to groups such as the Darwin High School band, and to Darwin High School. Therefore, I hope the minister, in his keenness to support the Darwin High School band, will be able to liaise with his ministerial colleagues to hurry up the cheque to pay the money for the promised reimbursement of removal costs.
On another matter, today in the Chamber during Question Time, we pursued an issue with regard to Total Recreation. I am going to speak on that tonight. Over the last month or so, I have been doorknocking my electorate. It actually surprised me that a number of constituents raised with me the issue of Total Recreation. Quite frankly, up until only recently, I was not aware of the scope of the efforts and the support that Total Recreation provides to Territorians. It has been a very interesting learning experience for me.
Total Recreation was established 11 years ago in the Northern Territory, and it provides a service to people with a disability to enable them to interact more fully with the community via activities such as sport like bowling and basketball, and recreation such as artistic performances, shopping, dining out, and tours - all the things you and I take for granted in life. Funding for Total Recreation is provided, primarily, from the Department of Health and Community Services.
The amount of funding provided and the levels given vary depending on your source of information. However, around $200 000 a year appears to be provided by the Department of Health and Community of Services. I could be corrected on this, because I have been given different amounts by difference sources. The Department of Sport and Recreation provides about $58 000 a year. Other sources of funding for Total Recreation come from their own fundraising, which they find difficult given their limited staffing and the high workload that they have. They do some of their fundraising. Clients also have to contribute financially to the activities they become involved in. Total Recreation has five dedicated staff, four of whom are full-time, and they provide a seven-day-a-work service, which is a great thing to be doing, particularly as a number of staff, even though they have tertiary qualifications in sport and recreation, are paid what I would describe as fairly low, at about $35 000 a year. Yet, they are still able to provide a seven-day-a-week service to their clients. I suspect the reason they do that is because of the personal dedication they have towards the people with disabilities whom they assist.
Over the last few years, the numbers of people in our community who wish to use a service like Total Recreation has increased. I suspect we have more people with a disability, proportionately, in our community now, and so there has been an increased pressure on Total Recreation just in numbers. Over the last few years, Sport and Recreation funding has been cut from $69 000 a year, which it was a few years ago, down to $53 000 a year. Because their funding is so tight, at approximately $250 000 a year, the loss of $16 000 has had an impact. Also, part of the funding that is provided by the Department of Health and Community Services is tied funding. It is $40 000 a year that has to be used specifically on eight seriously disabled clients, so there is very little flexibility within the funding once you add in some of the costs that the agency faces.
In order to deal with this, Total Recreation over the last few years has actually had to contract its client base by stipulating that instead of clients being aged from seven years to whatever, they have had to reduce it to only accepting clients who are nine years old or older, and then recently they have had to reduce that further to only accepting clients who are eleven years of age or older. It has been very disappointing for the staff essentially to not be able to provide a service to younger children, children of the primary school age. As I said, the demand for services is also increasing with the numbers of people with a disability living in our community. Of course they would see the success of Total Recreation and celebrate, for example, the success of the blind lawn bowlers, and the member for Johnson recently added his support to that here in the Chamber.
We are all aware of the good work that Total Recreation does and even people with a disability, I believe, would be seeing that and thinking, ‘I would like to get involve with that, too’, which has added to the increased demand for services.
What Total Recreation needs is an increase in their core funding to cover things like administration, wages, and rent, not to have specific grants that are tied to a specific things - although that is great and you do need that - but the increase in funding they need needs to be flexible to cover their admin costs.
Total Recreation is a wonderful organisation. I do commend the staff and its supporters for the work that it does. Today in Question Time we had a number of Total Recreation staff and clients and carers here in the Chamber, and it was great to see them here. It certainly fired all of us up and we had a fairly heated Question Time. I found it a bit hard to follow from time to time what was actually being said. But I certainly got the impression that the Minister for Sport and Recreation and his department seemed to give a commitment to reinstate a payment of $11 000 a year which had been cut. The Minister for Family and Community Services gave a commitment to meet with delegates from Total Recreation and their clients and their carers to discuss their needs.
As I say, what is required is at least an extra $40 000 a year of untied funding. I realise that after Question Time today the Minister for Family and Community Services held an impromptu meeting with the people from Total Recreation and that was great to see. I certainly hope that as a result of that meeting there has been something decided that is going to help Total Recreation maintain and hopefully increase the services which it provides to the people of the Northern Territory. I hope both ministers have been able to come to the party with that. If that is the case, I congratulate them for it.
Mr WOOD (Nelson): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, I concur with the remarks made by the member for Port Darwin about Total Recreation. I think she summed it up very well.
I would like to cover a few diverse issues tonight. One is about a singer in the rural area who will be competing tonight in Australian Idol. I do not know how many people she has had to compete against but she is down to the last 30 competitors. According to what I have here from the Litchfield Times she beat over 50 000 people to reach the final 30. Christie Green is a great singer. She is only a young lady. She used to sing at Taminmin High School; that is where I first heard her to sing. Her mother, Robyn Green, is a famous singer around Darwin, especially gospel-type singing. I gather Christie likes R&B, gospel and soul music. She has a wonderful voice and you would be amazed at the range and clarity of her singing.
Unfortunately, Australian Idol is on tonight on Channel 10. The problem is we cannot see it in the Northern Territory. Those of you who know about Australian Idol to advance further you need to have a lot of people vote for you. We cannot see her singing, except on Imparja or SKY Channel, unfortunately it is going to be very hard for Christie to advance further into the finals. What we are hoping is that people will see a young lady from the Northern Territory, an Aboriginal lady from the Northern Territory, who has so much talent and lives so far away from the mainstream music industry, that they may say: ‘We will support her regardless of whether we support someone from our own state’.
I am hoping tonight that we will hear something. I was talking to Christie’s mother this afternoon. Unfortunately, Robyn’s father died this week, which has made it a bit hard, because Robyn and Christie are in Sydney and the father died while they were there. I rang Channel 9 and asked them if they could at least broadcast the results of Australian Idol because we will not see it otherwise. Hopefully, they will do that tonight so we can find out how she went. She is a great talent and I hope she can make it to the top because she will do well. She comes from a great family.
Now for a little plug for a book that we have in the rural area: The Rural Business Guide was brought out by Nicola Allsop. It is her second attempt. It is a professional little book that this lady has attempted to publish for the second year. She has done it to try to promote rural business. Naturally, it is a venture for her as well. She is hoping to make some income out of it, but if anyone wants to know anything about businesses in the rural area, this is a great little book. If anyone wants to see me about getting some copies, I can help you out. It is professionally done. I had a phone call from Wayne Zerbe today who said he is amazed at how professional it is. Perhaps the Palmerston Regional Business Association may be promoting it as well. Well done, Nicola.
We had the Mango Ball not so long ago at Berry Springs, and I did mention that that was a success in itself. $3000 was raised from that Ball and it went to our local St John Ambulance. The Mango Ball was a fantastic night. A lot of money was raised on the night and a lot of money was raised by selling raffle tickets. People like Cheryl Owens, Lyn Berryman, Jinx Smith and a number of others who belong to the Mango Ball Committee, recently presented Greg Payne, from the local St John Ambulance Brigade, with a cheque for $3000 for them to buy more equipment. That is a great story and it shows you people who enjoy their primary industry as well as helping the community, and it was a great effort.
I should mention that some Japanese students arrived here today. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend. They are part of an exchange program with Taminmin High, and I was disappointed that I was not able to be here. I congratulate Taminmin High School on the work they have done in developing relationships between the rural area and Japan. It certainly reaps benefits for both sides, and much of the thanks and praise should go to Kim Rowe, the Principal of Taminmin High.
I have said before that Taminmin High is a good school. At times, in the media, it receives some bad publicity that is not always warranted. There are times when it should have far more credit for what it does. Good stories include Christie Green, the exchange students from Japan, and their work in VET courses and primary industry courses. All those things are great. The have a new choir under Tanya Ham. It is a terrific choir. Unfortunately, they have suffered from the cuts to the Northern Territory Music School. I might be raising that again tomorrow. The member for Port Darwin also raised it. I believe there is a solution to it brewing, but I will have to hear from the minister a little more about that.
The last thing I would like to say tonight relates to the issue of the animals at Tipperary. We had a censure debate yesterday, and I just remind people of what I said last night, and I am quoting from Hansard.
- I am seriously concerned about what has happened. I will not vote in this case. I will rest my case until I hear some more details about this matter, because there is a lot more to come out yet which we need to hear about. I am concerned about who made the decision to prosecute, and what that advice was, and I am concerned about who made the decision to drop the charges. Who did the checking? Who did the background before these charges were first introduced? I am concerned about public comments made as well which I have here from various media files.
I am grateful that I was given the opportunity for a briefing on the whole saga. If it was not the whole saga, it was certainly a fair bit of it, because the briefing went for an hour and a quarter. It was a very detailed briefing. It certainly gave me another viewpoint on the whole situation. I am not going to say what was said in that meeting, except to say that I think that there is another side to this story. I am not saying that may not have been mistakes made, or that there may have been things that could have been done better. However, I would ask the government, and I realise that there is a case before the court before the minister, to come out and explain to the Territory public exactly what process occurred. One way for that to occur would be to ask the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, under Standing Order 21A, which says:
- (1) A Standing Committee of Public Accounts to consist of five members shall be appointed at the commencement of each Assembly.
(2) The duties of the committee shall be –
And if I go to (d):
- (d) to inquire into and report to the Legislative Assembly on any question in connection with the public accounts of the Northern Territory—
This would be a great opportunity for the government to say, ‘This is what we did’, and allow the Public Accounts Committee to question the public servants who were involved, to find out what process they took to come to the stage of charging the owner of the animals with breaches of the act. Those public servants normally cannot speak in this Chamber, but they would be under privilege, they could give the details that I heard yesterday at the briefing, and it would allow both opposition and members of the government to question what happened. If the government does not have anything to hide - and I do not say that in a negative sense; I am just saying that if you want things to be out in the open so the public understands it, because there has been a lot of publicity in the newspaper about it and I heard another point of view last night, and I think that point of view really needs to be out in the public arena for debate. When I say the ‘public arena’, the Public Accounts Committee would be the ideal place for it to occur.
I am saying to the government, ‘Would you please look at this option?’ I could move a motion at the next private members’ day that such and such a thing happened, but I think it would hasten the process if the government would do it. We do have these committees. They are not just there for the opposition to try to score points off, and to get members of the government up before it. They are there so that the parliament as a whole can seriously analyse issues that are of concern to the public and to the parliament. I believe there is a real opportunity for the government to say that it believes in open and accountable government. We know there are some issues. There are issues of taxpayer funds being used here. There are issues of what the chronology of the process was and why it occurred.
I understand there are some matters before the court, but I do not think all those matters, necessarily, will stop this committee hearing exactly what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. I ask the government to seriously consider putting this matter before a parliamentary Public Accounts Committee.
There is the other issue of the minister’s statements that he has a court case ongoing. Perhaps one can look at those statements in light of what I heard yesterday and, maybe, have a slightly different opinion. However, to some extent, when it comes to the minister making a statement, he has to take some of the rap - whether it is good or bad - for what he says. I am not sure that would come into the inquiry. It may come into an inquiry, but I imagine, because the minister has a court case pending, he may not be able to speak on that matter. However, I certainly think, leaving that aside for the time being, there is plenty of room for an inquiry through the Public Accounts Committee. That would enable all members of parliament to hear exactly what happened and make their own judgment; to question the public servants and the minister. That would make for a far more transparent and open process to find out exactly what did happen.
Mr KIELY (Sanderson): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I would like to talk about a great new community that is emerging in our northern suburbs and throughout Darwin - and throughout the Territory for that matter. That is the African community. The Africa Australia Friendship Association meets in my office on a monthly basis. I had the pleasure of going to one of their functions.
The Africa Australia Friendship Association was established and incorporated in 2000. It started with a small membership base. The association’s membership now exceeds 100, involving people who have come from countries in the African continent such as Sudan, South Africa, Ethiopia, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Tanzania and Gambia. You can see that there is a wealth of countries represented.
The association’s main purpose is to provide a social and cultural support group to its culturally diverse members, as well as assist new African arrivals to the Northern Territory. To achieve its aims, the association provides a forum for the promotion of Africans, and undertakes cultural functions, sports and educational activities. I praise the association for working together as one group to maintain their cultural and linguistic heritage, and for encouraging active participation amongst its members. Although a relatively new association, it demonstrates a strong sense of purpose, cooperation and commitment to its social and cultural goals.
This year, a dinner dance was held on 10 July 2004 at the Portuguese/Timorese Club in Marrara. This is a social event that enhances and understands appreciation of each others cultures in a relaxed, informal way. I had the pleasure of representing minister Vatskalis at this function, and it was great. It was a very vibrant function and quite well attended. I saw quite a number of people whom I know assist the new arriving Africans into our community, particularly the teachers from the Intensive English Unit at Anula Primary School. They were there helping out. There were people my wife, Marie, works with. It was a fabulous all-round do.
Jeff Gaskell, whose wife is part of the committee, whom I had the pleasure of working with and now works at Charles Darwin University, I believe, was MC, and he did a fabulous job. He has a wonderful couple of girls and they are quite talented. It is a great all-round family which is really extending out the welcoming hand to the new arrivals. It is wonderful to see in this place of ours that we still have that spirit of inclusiveness, while people are still able to maintain their strong cultural identity.
It is events like this that highlight the culture and diversity that makes the Territory such a great place in which we live. We see it at all our different cultural events that we all attend - the Filipinos particularly and the Greek cultural events which everyone says are just fantastic, although they have come in for a bit of a caning by some non-tolerant members of our Chamber here. However, that is the way it is. It is we Territorians who have the rare opportunity to participate in many great events such as this that people in other places can only dream of.
The Territory is truly a multicultural society. It is this society that the Northern Territory government really does help support and we will continue to support activities and associations aimed at benefiting not only the Darwin African community but enriching our whole community. We do this through different forms of sponsorship and assistance to the ethnic communities. Funding under the Ethnic Affairs Sponsorship program, I am pleased to advise the House tonight, has increased from last year’s $697 000 to $770 000 for 2004-05.
These sponsorship funds are aimed at assisting ethnic organisations such as the Africa Australia Friendship Association to undertake innovative projects, and to maintain and promote cultural and linguistic diversity in the Northern Territory. In fact, the Territory government, through the Department of Ethnic Affairs, helped out at that function with a grant of $1900; money well spent, I thought, to help maintain the African cultures - and I use the word cultures - within the community.
Functions such as this and such associations as this cannot function without a strong committed committee. I would like to put forward the House’s gratitude and thanks to Mr Charles Pitia the president; Ron Smith, the vice president; Casmel Taziwa, treasurer; Mack Chawala, secretary; Barh R Nyondy, assistant secretary; James Justo, student representative; Bekele Mekonnen-Rabo, a member of the committee; Mille Mogga, another member; and Frederica Gaskell, the publicity officer.
There are also many associations and organisations around town that help the Africa Association. The main needs of new African migrants when they came into our community is the capacity to learn the social and welfare systems in the areas of health, youth, employment, police and law services. There are plenty of organisations that are mainly funded by DMIA, the Department of Migration and Indigenous Affairs, to support in these settlements. These are Anglicare Refugee Migrant Settlement Services which looks after migrants and refugees from non-English speaking backgrounds; the Melaleuca Refugee Centre, which assists with the initial settlement of refugee families only for the first six months and thereafter the Anglicare settlement services take over; the Multicultural Council of the NT which will have a new service in probably six months to assist migrants from the Horn of Africa, countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia.
The Africa Australia Friendship Association is very keen to provide settlement to its new migrants and has been involved using volunteers within their communities. The Africa Australia Friendship Association started almost three years ago, as I have said, and have achieved a lot in promoting cultural heritage and they do this through food, fashion, artefacts, traditional music and dancing, and through their annual dinner dances. Some of their achievements have been the Cultural Connect Band which performed during the first dinner dance and was picked by the local artist who promoted them nationally. They were among the first ten groups who were nominated nationally to showcase their rap music. Other performances that have occurred through volunteer work have been the African drama, Refugee Life, which was attended by 300 community members. The Anglicare Refugee Migrant Settlement Services Program has been involved in working closely with the Africa Association in developing other youth programs in the areas of youth leadership skills and development.
I congratulate those groups which help the Africa Australia Friendship Association; they are doing a great job. It is wonderful to have this new and emerging community which will only further enrich the lifestyle of the Territory. It should not be forgotten that the old peoples of the Northern Territory and the new peoples of the Northern Territory are what makes it the place that we want it to be. I do not hold with the views that any one group is better than any other group. We are all in this together and it is incumbent on all of us, particularly those of us in this House who have welcomed these communities and look to progressing our society.
Ms CARNEY (Araluen): Madam Acting Deputy Speaker, I wanted to talk tonight about a matter that has consumed much time from the Attorney-General’s office and, in particular, his press secretary. I am referring to the release of files of two public servants for use in a personal injuries proceeding. Members will recall that, during the Estimates Committee, I asked the Attorney-General certain questions about why these files were released, apparently in breached of the Information Act. The Attorney-General refused to answer my questions.
I also asked the Treasurer as minister for public employment and, to his credit, the Treasurer spoke to me afterwards. The Commissioner for Public Employment, Mr Kirwan, and the minister and I spoke during a break during the Estimates Committee. The minister asked Mr Kirwan to get back to me about this matter. Mr Kirwan said that he did not know anything about it. This was notwithstanding the fact that Mr Kirwan had received two letters from the plaintiff’s lawyers Morgan Buckley – one dated 6 April, the other dated 13 April; both faxed and both marked in bold, specifically: ‘For the attention of John Kirwan, the Commissioner for Public Employment’. I showed Mr Kirwan those letters; he had no knowledge of them. That is curious to say the least.
I did not receive anything from Mr Kirwan, nor did I hear from the minister’s office, although I had an expectation that I would hear from Mr Kirwan. After raising these important matters during Estimates and not receiving any answers or hearing anything from anyone, there was a media release. Essentially, what I was saying was there was an aroma of skulduggery about the release of these files for use in legal proceedings. I knew then that I was onto something because there was a flurry of media releases from the minister’s office. You always know when you are on a good thing, when you get two or three media releases issued from the government. You can smell that you are onto something.
Indeed I was. I knew I was, because what happened in this case was quite improper. I will come back to that shortly.
I should say at this juncture that the plaintiff is a constituent of mine. One of the public servants is her husband, who is also a constituent of mine. I raised this matter not only on their behalf, but also because there are some very serious issues involved in this case. We will be hearing more of it in due course. I say again, there is an aroma of skulduggery about what happened in this case and the Territory’s public servants should be very concerned indeed.
In one of the three media releases issued, the Attorney-General, instead of dealing with the issues and seeking to provide what amounted to an intellectually and practically satisfying result, went off half–cocked and said that I had a vested interest in the case because I acted for the plaintiff. He alleged that it was outrageous that I had not disclosed that. The Attorney-General is quite wrong; there was no vested interest. It was the case that, prior to entering politics, I did act for the plaintiff, and have not done so since entering politics.
There is no vested interest when a member of parliament puts things to a government minister about pretty much anything but, in particular, on behalf of two constituents. I might say I never acted for the husband of the plaintiff. The husband of the plaintiff was one of two public servants who had his personnel files obtained without proper regard to the law. There was flurry of media releases; they were just too hysterical for words, and even journalist talked to me about that. Perhaps the minister’s office can learn to settle itself down a bit, because no one took any notice.
The minister then, in one of his many media releases, said that he welcomed a finding made by the Information Commissioner about the release of these files. That was misleading. It was untruthful, because there was never a finding made. I actually spoke to the Information Commissioner on 14 July. I took contemporaneous notes of my conversation, and he said: ‘I certainly didn’t make a finding’. Why it was that the Attorney-General, the Territory’s first law officer, issued a media release and then did radio, and said, with confidence, that the Information Commissioner had made a finding in this matter is a cause of great concern. The Attorney-General was skating on very thin ice at the beginning but the ice was getting thinner. The Attorney-General misled Territorians when he said there was a finding. There was not a finding at all made by the Information Commissioner.
The Attorney-General then proceeded to do a number of somersaults, it seems to me. He just could not quite make up his mind as to which way he was going to go, but what he was resolute about was not answering the very serious questions that I raised on behalf of these two public servants.
I have a copy here of the transcript of proceedings in the Supreme Court, dated 8 April 2004. I will start with page 1. I will then turn to the final page of this transcript. The plaintiff and the public servants were represented by a Mr Meldrum QC, a silk from Melbourne. This 100 or so pages of transcript is about how it was that these files were obtained and were provided to the Supreme Court. For the sake of non-lawyers I should include an additional bit. The files were obtained without the issue of subpoena. In other words, there was no lawful basis upon which the files of these public servants could be obtained. They were apparently obtained by request. Someone rang someone up and simply asked for those people’s files. That is not what is meant to happen, and there are all sorts of rules and regulations to protect people’s personal information, and all of them, apparently, were breached.
The files having being delivered by someone to the Supreme Court, the plaintiff’s lawyers were able to look at those files. What happened though, was that, after the files were obtained, the defendant’s lawyers - the Northern Territory government’s lawyers - instructed by the Attorney-General and/or his delegate, sought to issue a subpoena in relation to the files. In other words, they got the information improperly, then they issued a subpoena in order to give their actions some form of legitimacy. Mr Meldrum, on page one of the transcript, says:
- We say the subpoena is an abuse of the subpoena process, because to have records and to put them out of your possession and then to subpoena them, is an attempt to get them into court under the colour of subpoena, which is an improper use of subpoena.
Throughout the application to set aside the subpoena, Mr Meldrum made a number of submissions about how the release of the files was, ‘a breach of the law’, and, ‘a reckless disregard for the law’. But the issue was, always, the plaintiff’s solicitors were applying to set aside the subpoena. Around one hundred pages of legal argument took place. Then her Honour, Justice Thomas, concludes and makes a decision at page 98 of the transcript, the final page, and she says:
- I will give a ruling now on the matter which was argued yesterday relating to the issue of two subpoenas. I am not persuaded that the issue of the subpoenas in respect of the personnel files of [Mr X] and [Mr Y] is an abuse of process. The plaintiff’s application to set aside the subpoena is refused.
The fact is that the Supreme Court was never required to rule on whether the files were obtained improperly. The Supreme Court, Her Honour Justice Thomas, was only required to rule on whether the subpoenas were an abuse of process. For a number of reasons, she found they were not. However, the issue as to how these files were obtained and whether they breached the Information Act or, indeed, the Public Sector Employment and Management Act has not been resolved. Arguably, this matter should go before a court, specifically for this purpose.
Why this whole incident smells is that the Attorney-General went to, I would say, hell and back to ensure that the people involved - my constituents and another person - did not get an answer as to why their files were obtained. The Attorney-General did not tell Territorians that he instructs his solicitors and/or his delegate. Therefore, the buck stops with him. Who did request these files? I have had some correspondence with the Information Commissioner and he has advised me that he does not know how these files were obtained, or who obtained them.
All of this is pretty slippery. Notwithstanding things like the Information Act brought in by this government, when the Attorney-General stood in this place and assured people of the Northern Territory that nothing would be obtained improperly, everything would be right and their rights would be protected, this is just one incident of two people’s files being obtained. It is on the nose, and it just should not happen. However, what is most disturbing is that the Attorney-General just does not get it; he apparently does not think that this is very serious. The fact that he issued three, almost hysterical, media releases on one day indicates to me that he is on a loser and will do almost anything to ensure that I back off. I will not back off. The Attorney-General will be hearing much more of this.
I note with interest that my letter dated 9 July to the Attorney-General remains unanswered. I wrote to him and said that the reason I had been asked to do so is that my constitutents are not satisfied with the response the Attorney-General has made to date. What I can say, also, is that the Information Commissioner, in his letter to me of 16 July, says that he proposes to meet with officers of the Department of Justice and the Office of the Commisioner for Public Employment to ascertain the extent of existing rules, policies and guidelines related to the use or disclosure of personal information in litigation, and to discuss whether additional measures are necessary.
This is not simply the member for Araluen having a lot to say about this issue. The fact that the Information Commissioner acknowledges that there is something in this suggests to me that the Attorney-General really is ducking for cover. He has done himself a disservice in the way he has responded to my correspondence and public calls. For a bloke who probably regards himself as a bit of a straight arrow, his conduct has been disgraceful. It has been absolutely appalling. As the Territory’s first law officer, he has an obligation to ensure that the laws he introduces, the laws that govern all of us in the Northern Territory, work properly. If they do not, he needs to come in here and say there is a part of this act that we need to fix.
It is not okay for these two public servants in question, or indeed any public servant in the Northern Territory, to have their files obtained simply upon request - no subpoena - without their consent. No one knows how they got them, but we do know that the government lawyers were instructed by the Attorney-General and/or his delegate, and suddenly these files landed in the laps of the government lawyers. That is not appropriate for any government; it is outrageous. I repeat that there is an aroma of skulduggery about this matter. I would like the Attorney-General to answer my letter of 9 July truthfully and no doubt we can discuss this on another occasion.
Ms MARTIN (Chief Minister): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, in the middle of all the exciting exhibitions and events taking place in Darwin this month, and there certainly are - the Darwin Festival is terrific and I am looking forward tomorrow night to going to Jonas Salt and on Saturday night to Tin Hotel, two wonderful local productions headlined for the Darwin Festival - I would also like to draw attention to a fantastic exhibition I went to at the Charles Darwin University gallery. It opened on 14 August and is there for a week. It is from the Nauiyu Community at Daly River.
The exhibition was curated by Merrepen Arts coordinator, Kate Podger, featuring painting, print making and glass from 15 artists. The artists included Patricia Marfurra, Anne Carmel, Marita Sambono, Christina Yambeing, Gracie Kumbi, Aaron McTaggart, Mercia Wawul, Molly Yawulminy, Louise Pandella, Benigna Ngulfundi, Malcolm Wilson, Larissa Miler, Karen Warloo, Wendy Longmirr and Olivia Marranya.
At the exhibition I caught up with Charles Darwin University’s Vice Chancellor, Helen Garnett, and we both agreed that the exhibition was a wonderful opportunity to buy some excellent artworks from the Daly. There was good support for the exhibition from staff and the community, Russell Lilford from VET and the staff from the School of Creative Arts and Humanities including Marina Baker and Judith Ahern. We were joined by Professor Ann McGrath from the Australian National University together with Sonia Smallacombe, head of the School of Australian and Indigenous Knowledge Systems at CDU. Sonia has been involve with a joint ANU, CDU and Yale University project culminating with a visit to the Territory to visit Nitmiluk and Kakadu. Professor McGrath said that the organisation by Sonia from CDU had been exceptional, and the event an opportunity for much useful professional and collegiate discussion.
It was a wonderful exhibition and it is always good to hear about exciting initiatives at CDU. The opening also offered me the chance to have a chat with some very old friends, Doreen and Jack McTaggart, long time Territorians and proud grandparents of Aaron McTaggart who was exhibiting at this exhibition. It was good because one of the last times I was at Merrepen, down at the Daly, I had the opportunity to purchase one of Aaron’s beautiful prints and they are quite extraordinarily beautiful.
There is a very strong tradition of print making in the Daly area, also canvas, textiles and now they have added to that. They have a kiln and they are doing glass and this exhibition has some of their first early glassmaking at it. If this is early glass, what they can do is going to be extraordinary. They have only had two firings, but beautiful glass wear and certainly a very creative community. It was a wonderful afternoon all around. Congratulations to Kate and the artists for an excellent exhibition and it was terrifically curated.
On 6 July, I attended a picnic in Damoe-Ra Park in celebration of the historical contribution made by women in the Territory. The picnic was an event marking the opening of the Tribute Pathway, and the public celebration of the Tribute to Northern Territory Women. I initiated the Tribute to Northern Territory Women on International Women’s Day in 2002 to give Territorians the opportunity to recognise, celebrate and commemorate the achievements of outstanding Territory women and their contribution to the economic, social and cultural life of Territorians. Over 200 people attended to witness the opening of the commemorative pathway. Among the crowd were several of the Tribute recipients and their families including 2003 recipient Cynthia Molina and 2004 recipients Joyce Chin, Fele Mann and Norma Grant. Damoe-Ra Park is a fitting venue for the Tribute Pathway as it was chosen in 1992 as the site to commemorate, in perpetuity, the significant role women have played in the Territory.
Territory women artists designed and installed the commemorative pathways. The 2003 mosaic was designed and inlaid by Sharon Brissoni-Bevan, which is complemented by a border painted by Larrakia artist, June Mills. The 2004 pathway, featuring a pebble mosaic, was designed and constructed by Techy Masero. The remarkable artworks are an ideal way to honour and remember these women. Both June and Techy attended the picnic.
Picnickers were welcomed to the park by Mnage a Trios, a string trio, followed by Welcome to Country by Yvonne Odegaard and didgeridoo playing by Eddie Kitching. I then opened the pathway after which the Juniper Tree Dance Company performed a dance Lake Surprise based on the story by Warlpiri woman, Janet Long Nakamarra. The dance was choreographed by Gary Lang who is a member of the Larakia Tribe. A series of banners were displayed at the picnic featuring the tribute recipients. These art works were designed by Dunnart and First Class in Graphic Design. The banners, along with a collection of commemorative posters, tour with the Community Cabinet and will be on display in libraries across the Territory to ensure that all Territorians have access to these women’s fascinating stories.
The images and stories will also be available as a permanent web installation at the National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame in Alice Springs and on the Office of Women’s Policy web site. This web site is devoted to commemorating these extraordinary women and to give depth to histories of each recipient. It will feature information and photographs of important events in these women’s lives as well as oral history audio files and will be a vital historical and educational resource.
Too often, the contributions that women make are undervalued and unacknowledged. This makes events such as the Tribute and the picnic, which value and acknowledge women of the Territory both past and present, a vital part of our history. The tribute and the women who are being honoured will be a source of inspiration and encouragement for future generations.
I also wish to speak tonight on three Central Australian events and attractions that I attended over the last couple of months.
The Beanie Festival: of the many quirky, quality events that Alice Spring’s people specialise in, the Alice Springs Beanie Festival has to be one of the most surprising. Visitors probably do not know what to expect and, certainly for my first Beanie Festival, I did not, but I am sure they are surprised at the quality of the entries, the huge attendance and support from the community and the excited buzz that emanates from the doors of Araluen while the event is on.
Beanies of all different shapes are for sale, but the real focus is on the exhibition. It really has to be one of the best textile exhibitions in this country, with sculptures - made out of beanies, of course - that inspire, challenge and even make you laugh outright. There were beanies topped with animals and flowers, beanies of Leunig characters, beanies made of natural materials and beanies so delicate that they really would suit a princess in the traditional manner. The Leunig beanie was fantastic; it was a traditional beanie with a Leunig character knitted and stuffed on top of it. It cost about $300 so it was a serious effort. I do not think it really meant to be worn but as an object d’art, it would have been just superb. I was going to ring Michael Leunig and say: ‘Michael, there is something in Alice Springs you need to buy’.
Some of the assorted statistics: 2834 beanies were on display made by 260 people, including interstate and some from New Zealand, Japan and the USA; over $50 000 worth of beanies were sold in four days; and over 3400 visitors went through the festival doors in those four days. I attended with a visitor from interstate who decided that this Beanie Festival was the best thing he had ever seen and he was buying beanies for daughters, his wife and people he thought might like them. He probably made a substantial contribution to that $50 000 over the four days. Mind you, I made a contribution as well!
The Beanie Festival has been written up in Vogue USA and Vouge Japan, Australian craft magazines, Lonely Planet, Explore Australia, Qantas and Virgin inflight publications, many interstate newspapers and weekend shows and on the Today show.
However, maybe one of the best stories about the Beanie Festival is hidden behind the scenes. Festival volunteers spend months prior to the festival working at communities teaching women how to make beanies and encouraging them to put in entries. One concrete result of this is the creative output of the Ernabella women, who have now exhibited in Sydney, Adelaide and even in Japan as a result of Beanie Festival funding and support.
The Beanie Festival is totally run by volunteers, too many of them to mention by name, but I certainly thank them all. Having done my first Beanie Festival this year after hearing about it for years, it really is the most extraordinary experience. You cannot believe how many beanies are on sale. When you think about the numbers, nearly 3000, there is a beanie for everyone. One of the beanies I purchased was made by a French nun at Yuendumu. It had beautiful bead work and was a combination of knitted bits and beads. It is quite beautiful and cost me all of $20. You can get a bargain and you can spend a lot of money on a beanie.
I would like next to talk about another extraordinary Alice event, and that is the Voyages Camel Cup. About 6000 visited this year’s Camel Cup organised by the combined Lions Clubs of Alice Springs. This event goes beyond the quirky to being quite mad, but still within the professionalism and quality one comes to expect from events in the Centre. The event recipe starts with the unpredictable, moody camel, and then adds to the mix riders who have to be a little crazy, and vocal, happy and involved spectators. It does make for a great day.
I am pleased to announce that the Chief Minister’s Cup was won by a particularly beautiful camel called Othello, owned by Camels Australia and ridden by Neil. He was closely followed by Longreach and Crikey. This event is experiencing something of a resurgence in interest, partly due to the excellent sponsorship and support given by Voyages Hotels and Resorts. Indeed, this year, almost $20 000 was raised for charity from the event, which is an outstanding result.
This is much more than a local community event. It has become one of the icon events on the tourist calendar, and gives one more reason why the industry can promote Alice Springs as a fun place for an outback holiday. In fact, I met a group of people and it happens that I went to school with one of them. Her husband wanted to meet up with his three brothers who lived in different parts of the world. They all decided, having just seen some advertising about the Camel Cup, to meet in Central Australia, and they were having the best time. There was one from Europe, one from America, one from Sydney, and they were all there in Alice Springs. It was lovely to see my old friend, Jenny, having the best time at the Camel Cup.
It was again organised this year by some extremely hard working volunteers. About 12 people are on the committee, and some of them put in more than a full time effort into ensuring this event is a success. Our thanks to them and to the newly amalgamated Lions Club of Alice Springs for a job well done.
Finally, after walking on two sections of the Larapinta Trail, west of Alice Springs, I am more determined than ever that the West MacDonnell Ranges National Park will become one of the great tourist icons of the region. The trail has to be one of the most beautiful walking trails in the world – wonderful scenery, complemented by birdlife, wildflowers and an occasional glimpse of our normally nocturnal animal life.
My two sisters and I walked Section 10, which is about 15 km from Ormiston Gorge to Glen Helen, and then Section 12, which is up Mt Sonder, that is 16 km there and back, but much of it quite vertical. So, of a trail of about 230 km, we did about 30 km, but a wonderful 30 km. We did not rough it. We stayed at Glen Helen Resort - thank you Dave and Sue Churchett. It was a terrific time to stay there. I met a number of people along the walk who were doing the whole walk, so they had everything they needed on their back. It probably takes you about 15 or 16 days to do the whole walk, but there are businesses in Alice Springs who will drop your food off at various designated points, so you do not have to carry all your food with you. You can find various ways of experiencing the Larapinta Trail – a day walk, a fortnight walk, or you can do it in luxury with established camp sites, and certainly do it without anything more than a day pack on your back. Mind you, those who were carrying the full gear, by midday they looked a little sad occasionally when you ran into them. I think just tired, and their legs were tired.
The Larapinta Trail will never be walked by huge numbers of people, but it is critical as a hook to ensuring the rest of the world knows how spectacular the ranges are. Just as most people do not walk the whole Cradle Mountain Track in Tasmania, they visit the start and do day walks and strolls in the region.
Similarly, the Mereenie Loop sealing, which includes both the Glen Helen Loop, which is Namatjira Drive, as well as Larapinta Drive, means that this part of the Ranges will become even more accessible and popular, and much easier to market on the international stage. I would say to anyone who is feeling a bit weary with the world, as occasionally we do, that if you want to go somewhere where you can see forever, on that classic clear day, then the top of Mt Sonder is the place to do it. It is beautiful. It is quite extraordinary. You can see Gosses Bluff. I am sure on the very clearest of days you could probably imagine you could see Uluru, it is a bit far. It is just the most extraordinary view, and a really energising view, of a beautiful area of Central Australia, and that added achievement that you have walked a long way and reached the top of Mt Sonder.
The Larapinta Trail is one of the world’s best, and I am certainly very keen, as Tourism Minister, to publicise it.
Motion agreed to; the Assembly adjourned.
Last updated: 04 Aug 2016