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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2011-09-27 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

HOUSING TRUST

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (16:22): Today I wish to raise a number of aspects arising out of the announcement by the South Australian Labor Party that it is going to have the Hon. Jay Weatherill as the next premier, come 21 October. Today, we are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the South Australian Housing Trust. Let me say that Sir Richard Butler, former Liberal premier of this state and architect of the South Australian Housing Trust, would turn in his grave if he were here today hearing about the continued announcements by this Labor government, and in particular the then minister Weatherill.

Many of you will remember, on 15 March 2007, how he announced that he was going to give the people of South Australia an opportunity to buy a South Australian Housing Trust home. In the small print on the bottom was his real announcement, which was that he was going to flog off 8,000 Housing Trust houses, 800 a year over 10 years. Sir Richard, we say sorry to you for having the foresight to set up such a magnificent legacy for South Australia only to find that minister Weatherill has started the carnage of this great South Australian state asset.

So, here we are with an ever-increasing demand for social and public housing. We have had an unprecedented amount of money thrown at us from the federal government for housing and yet this government decides that it is going to flog off housing.

Minister Weatherill was also the architect for householders with shared water meters having to pay water rates. Last week we find, as a legacy of that great policy, 90 year olds getting water bills. Minister Rankine announced publicly last week that she will make sure this is looked into and fixed up. What happened today? We got a call from the same 90 year old to tell us that she has another bill. That is the policy of this government.

Disability funds: we knew what happened with minister Weatherill. Under his regime, what does he do? He makes these annual announcements, shoves the money over to Julia Farr Centre. Why should the people who needed the disability equipment not get their entitlement and their services as they should have, as should have occurred directly in the application of those funds? No: he has to stash it away in some other body that has no charter whatsoever to be able to make provision for those services. So, yet again, the disability sector waits.

Then, of course, he was the great architect of the housing affordability bill. I spoke for seven and a half hours on that bill. The government pushed their way through and said it was very important that we have 15 per cent of all developments for social housing. What happens? We read in the paper on the weekend that the Clipsal site, a premier site that is going to be for the great development under this government, is at risk of not being able to have any affordable housing.

Why? Because it is not financially viable. What are we going to end up with? Perhaps a 10-storey building with an apartment on each, or are we going to get a room on top of a garage? Is that what the social housing tenants of this state are going to get? More likely, I suspect, an exemption will be given to this development because it just does not work.

That is the legacy that minister Weatherill has left us, not to mention the restructure of the department that he oversaw, encouraging all the stakeholders to come together. What is happing now? We are having another review because the whole thing is a stuff-up and we need to be able to relook at that. Sadly, of course, Monsignor David Cappo, who was supposed to give us a report on disability in this state by June, obviously has been spending too much time on his overseas holidays, because we did not get the report on time. We are still waiting for his review of what should happen under the Disability Act, in particular, the service delivery of disability provision and programs for South Australia.

The Weatherill model, the Weatherill formula has failed in Families and Communities and, as a consequence, the people who are the sickest, poorest and most vulnerable in our state continue to be either without service or with inadequate service. Here we have today the house of horrors, that disgusting case that South Australia has considered the most vile torture of children—21 children in total—and the minister who was responsible at the time for referring that for review is not even here to explain what happened and why it was not announced to the people of South Australia that they would be doing nothing until all the criminal proceedings are finished.

What happens today when he has an opportunity to tell South Australia the truth of that? What does he do? He lets the minister stand up and answer for him—minister Rankine, not always a great choice, I would have to say, to protect you—and to hide away from the people of South Australia was an absolute disgrace.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Thank you. Member for Bragg, thank you very much.

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