Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Government Service Delivery (Senator Arbib) to a question without notice asked by Senator Milne today relating to the Nation Building and Jobs Plan.

I rise to note an answer given by Senator Arbib, the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Government Service Delivery. In particular, I want to talk about the rollout of the stimulus package. In so doing, I note that the Greens supported the stimulus package to enable the money to be spent around the country on school buildings and on social housing. I am particularly pleased that there has been a big injection of funding into social housing. That being said, in the negotiation of the stimulus package, the Treasurer, Mr Swan, signed off on a series of agreements with the Greens and one of those related to energy efficiency, and I want to read it to the Senate. It has the signature of Wayne Swan, the Treasurer, on it, and it is dated 12 February 2009. One of the paragraphs reads:

The government commits to ensuring that social housing built under the second stage of the package includes appropriate draft proofing, solar hot water heater or equivalent, energy-efficient glazing and a water tank.

Now I want to move to the affordable housing proposal for 23 Arthur Street, Evandale in Northern Tasmania. I asked the minister how it is that that proposal can be approved when it does not meet the rules that the Commonwealth set regarding energy efficiency as agreed with the Greens as a condition of passing the stimulus package. It has no access to public transport and essential services. I can tell you that Evandale in Tasmania does not have a public transport system serving it. There are very few shopping facilities, except for a convenience store and a post office. The medical centre has one doctor, and he is not accepting any new patients. There is a real crisis in terms of GPs in Northern Tasmania.

What we have here is the prospect of locating this affordable housing where it requires total reliance on the use of a private car, with the closest shopping centre with supermarkets a 34 kilometre round trip. To access government services or hospital facilities, you have to go further still. That means you are putting people into a situation where they do not have access to services and you are locking them into further poverty in that they have to use private cars all the time.

This was discussed as part of the package. In terms of the actual housing, why is it that the government signed on to an agreement with the Greens saying that all these houses will have these particular energy efficiency features but now we find that that is not what is being proposed? The people of the town have the right to ask: how is it that the government said that these things will be part of the layout, environmental planning, design et cetera but that simply has not happened? All we have from the minister is a rave about how much money has been spent on schools and affordable housing.

Australians have a right to be very concerned after the complete mismanagement of the insulation scheme and the Green Loans scheme. Since the Commonwealth required the states to abandon their planning laws at both a state and level, these buildings are being built outside the planning system. We have an example in Shoalhaven. Units which would never have been given the green light had they been proposed by private developers are being built there. Two-storey blocks are rising in areas otherwise allowing only single-storey housing. The units are away from shops and there is little space for parking. There is worry about the whole thing. You have here a situation in which you are cramming lots of units onto a block in a way that never would have been permitted under the local government scheme.

You also have a situation in which schools—for example, St Luke’s Grammar in Dee Why—have withdrawn their development applications from the council and had the work approved under the government’s fast-track school buildings scheme. They were not going to be able to get what they wanted to do approved, withdrew it, put it through the stimulus package funding and it went straight through because nobody had an opportunity to comment or object to the planning scheme. The St Luke’s principal has said—and I realise that this was quoted in the press; it may not be true—that she knew that the work would be unpleasant for neighbours but when it was finished it would be fantastic. I am worried that in a few years time we will have substandard buildings as a result of this package. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.