Egg all over O’Connor’s face over housing strategy

It’s no wonder that Cassy O’Connor was sacked as Human Services Minister, it appears she had absolutely no idea of what she did as Minister.

Or else, she is being deliberately deceptive.

The fact is we can’t “privatise” public housing as Ms O’Connor claims because she has already done it!

As Minister, Ms O’Connor signed two Better Housing Futures Agreements in December 2013 and January 2014 that transferred the management of almost 4000 properties to community housing providers.

In accordance with proper accounting standards, when the economic flows will not come back to the reporting entity, you can’t recognise them in your statements.

Accordingly, in both last year’s and this year’s Budget*, a total of $485.547 million in value was transferred to the community sector under Ms O’Connor’s scheme that she had signed off on.

Not only that, under the previous government the actual title to vacant land in Better Housing Futures was also transferred – again because of Ms O’Connor.

By formally transferring the title of only 300-500 of those 4000 houses, our Plan will allow the community sector to use the value in those houses to build another up to 150 homes for those in need.

We’re all about outcomes. In contrast, Ms O’Connor’s ideologically-driven opposition would see up to 150 homes not built.

* 2015-16 Budget Paper 2.1, page 98, footnote 5. 2014-15 Budget Paper 2.1, page 4.38, footnote 2.
Jacquie Petrusma, Minister for Human Services