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Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 502 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 16 August 2022 by Mr P.J. Rundle

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

PUBLIC HOUSING — NUMBER

502. Mr P.J. RUNDLE to the Minister for Housing:

I have a supplementary question. I thank the minister for that response. Can the minister clarify for me what actually happens to those 422 properties that are not returning?

Mr J.N. CAREY replied:

As I explained, they can be part of the renewal projects. For example, Subi East has vacant community or social housing that is beyond repair. It is the intention of the government to do a major new renewal that will actually deliver more social housing in the total Subiaco precinct. Where we do have voids, they can be part of the renewal programs. They may be demolished, but because they are on such a large block, we can build three units. It does not make sense if it is beyond repair and refurbishment. I want to put this on the record because it is important: what we have seen from the opposition is a complete distortion of the data on the vacancies. I read what Steve Martin said. He said —

� we discovered there were 1 800 vacant social houses —

The SPEAKER: Sorry, member. Are you referring to the member in the other place?

Mr J.N. CAREY: Yes, Hon Steve Martin.

The SPEAKER: Excellent. That is a great improvement.

Mr J.N. CAREY: He said —

� we discovered there were about 1,800 social houses � vacant. Now, that appears to be twice as many from a year ago. There was a media report � of about 900, so � it's doubled � and if you look at the numbers � the numbers don't lie.

However, the member got it wrong. He did not compare the same data statistics. The number of vacancies did not double. The member for Vasse said there are 1 000 rough sleepers on the streets. That is wrong. The member for Cottesloe said there were over 500 rough sleepers on the streets. Again, we need to refer to the Ruah data, which says that there are 280 rough sleepers on the streets. We do not want to see any rough sleepers, but there are clear datasets. The opposition is deliberately going out of its way to distort basic data. But it gets worse. Opposition members dropped to the lowest of the low, claiming that I am personally responsible for 100 homeless deaths—the member for Cottesloe made that claim on Twitter. This is what we are seeing from the opposition. It will use any means possible to distort data like the member for Vasse, like the upper house member, Hon Steve Martin, and like the member for Cottesloe did. It is simply getting basic facts wrong on housing and homelessness. The homelessness sector knows this: I take this responsibility absolutely seriously. We are using every lever we can to accelerate the delivery of social housing and we are making a substantial investment of $225 million in homelessness this year.