1 . Feds build 1000th home in three months... in Rudd’s electorate
Editor of the National Indigenous Times Chris Graham writes:
As Federal Minister for Housing Jenny Macklin boasts that the Rudd government has just begun construction of its 1000th home under the Rudd government's broader stimulus package, construction has not started on a single home under the Northern Territory Intervention's housing program.
Construction has begun on the 1000th home in just three months, as part of the Rudd government's $6.4 billion national social housing stimulus package. The housing is being built in the inner Brisbane suburb of Woolloongabba, in the Prime Minister's own electorate of Griffith:
The Rudd government's mainstream public housing success comes amid revelations that the pace in Macklin's other portfolio -- Indigenous Affairs -- is nowhere near as frenetic. Construction has begun on zero homes under the NT intervention's housing program, despite federal Labor supporting the declaration of a "national emergency" in remote NT communities more than two years ago.
But Macklin shouldn't be surprised -- leaked government documents obtained by the National Indigenous Times reveal that she was warned in early 2008 that the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP) -- which the Rudd government inherited from the previous administration -- had major flaws, and that if the $700 million program proceeded it would not deliver any black housing in the Northern Territory until 2011, at the earliest:
The government was also warned that the program would drive the price of housing in remote regions up, was based on a model that led sparked a Roal Commission in NSW in the 1980s amid high-level corruption of the public tender process, and was unlikely to meet its employment objective of a 20 percent Indigenous job rate in construction.
The advice was contained in a "private briefing memo", from NSW Labor Senator Ursula Stephens to Jenny Macklin, dated May 12, 2008. A copy of the memo has been obtained by the National Indigenous Times. Yet despite the advice, Macklin approved the SIHIP process.
Now, more than two years after the NT intervention was launched, construction hasn't even begun on a single home, the government is facing accusations the program is mired in red tape, and more than $100 million of the program funding has reportedly been set aside for administration.
The full story appears in tomorrow’s edition of the National Indigenous Times.