Gabrielle Upton, the Minister with responsibility for the NSW Housing portfolio, apparently decided the report and its recommendations were not in line with current Liberal policy, which is to sell all government-owned assets so as to minimise the role of government in supplying universal equity of access to services such as roads, hospitals, schools, and housing for the people of NSW.
The federal coalition’s housing policy, as released on August 19, 2010, is to have fewer people in public housing. This is to be achieved by enhancing opportunities for home ownership and establishing an affordable housing voucher scheme for eligible people to access the rental housing market. Minister Upton is advancing this policy.
The Minister, it seems, has forgotten Winston Spencer Churchill’s Liberalism and the Social Problem series of speeches as published in 1909.
The Minister chose to release a Social Housing in NSW discussion paper on November 18, 2014, some 40 days after the release of the Select Committee’s report. The announced scope of the discussion paper is very different from that of the Committee’s inquiry. The closing date for feedback on the discussion paper is February 20, 2015, some 17 days prior to the deadline the government has to respond to the Legislative Council report and its recommendations.
It has been suggested that the true purpose of the release of the Minister’s discussion paper was to buy time while the Minister’s sales program for public housing stock across the Inner Sydney area was proceeding. The Minister’s release of a Social Housing in NSW discussion paper post release of the NSW Legislative Council Select Committee’s report, with a closure date prior to the deadline for the government’s response to that report, is open to an interpretation of disrespect for both the Select Committee and established parliamentary process.
Perhaps the appropriate feedback to the Minister’s Social Housing discussion paper would be: Implement the 41 recommendations contained in the NSW Legislative Council’s Select Committee report on Social, Public and Affordable Housing in NSW.
