Public Housing

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI (14:50): My question is to the Minister for Human Services. Can the minister provide an update on the government's public housing building and sales program?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:51): I thank the honourable member for her question on something that I know the Labor Party should have an interest in because they have displayed a variety of positions over the years in terms of what their attitude is—

The Hon. C.M. Scriven interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: The deputy leader is out of order.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: —towards the public housing stock, as I have just been remarking on. They did actually treat the Housing Authority portfolio as an ATM to go and raid for whatever pet projects that they wanted, and they don't like to be reminded of that. When we came to office, financial viability sales had been placed in the forward estimates by the former government, so we saw a peak in 2013 when nearly 600 properties were sold. I would just like to refer to some comments which were made by the Hon. Jack Snelling in a radio interview when he was asked about the Mid-Year Budget Review. He said:

The problem that we've got is we have a very high public housing stock compared to interstate and that's just an historical thing.

This was on FIVEaa, so the interviewer, Mr Byner, said:

…isn't that a good thing?

Mr Snelling said:

…no, it isn't…because…tenants in public housing don't get Commonwealth Rent Assistance and tenants in private rental or indeed community housing do.

He then went on to say:

I think if we were to be at the national average and I am not saying that's where we'd go…it would bring us down to probably around 30,000 [properties].

In a subsequent interview, when he was interviewed by Mr Byner, Mr Byner said:

…you told me you were going to reduce the amount of public housing from 45,000 to 30,000. You're still sticking to that?

Mr Snelling said:

Yeah, indeed.

So there we had it, in very clear terms, that that's what the Labor Party position was. Under this government, we have managed to reduce the viability sales to one-quarter of what the Labor Party had. We then have the shadow minister who goes on radio regularly and signals that Labor is going to increase social housing and doesn't indicate how that is to occur, so Labor has done one thing in government and says a very different thing in opposition. We know that the former government sold off approximately 7,500 properties to the value of about $1.5 billion, so we do look forward to the Labor Party policy being clarified in this regard.