Beam us up, Scotty!

Guess what Scott Morrison, the new Turnball appointee to the shadow housing ministry reckons is the solution to the nation's housing crisis?

(Admittedly he is new to the Housing portfolio, so it's only fair to allow him a certain amount of bluster room while he comes up to speed.)

He told assembled affordable housing lobbyists at Wednesday's National Affordable Housing Advocacy day that the main way to solve the nation's housing problems was... wait for it...

"Strong economic management"

Well if that's the case, Scotty, how come after 12 years of Liberal rule we're in the fine mess we're in?

Aren't you the party that claims the high ground on economic management?

Lemme guess, blame state governments and local councils and taxes?

The member for Cook, out around Botany Bay, didn't disappoint.

Ho hum... pass the buck round one more time ...

Mr Morrison seemed like a likeable, intelligent sort of feller. So what's he doing in the Liberal party? When addressing the lobbyists, Mr Morrison took care to pay his respects to the dedication of public sector workers when it came to housing the poor and clothing the naked and all that. But when he listed the organisations he respected, they were all faith-based.

A quick check of the Scott Morrison website shows why. He's one of those prosperous young things who workships at the Shirelive Church. In short another upwardly mobile Hillsong pentacostalist taking over the Liberal Party.

Mind you, DH doesn't mind the faithful as much as she did in her youth. You might as well believe in something other than Malthus and Darwin. Anything to keep us cheerful as we contemplate how we consumed ourselves into oblivion. Since the US meltdown, the only place the underclasses are ever likely to get a decent home is in heaven.

So beam us up, Scotty!

DH goes to Canberra for National Rental Housing Advocacy Day

Happy National Rental Housing Advocacy Day!

DH popped in to Canberra on Wednesday to sort out a few things on your behalf.

She had the best time treading the corridors of power, telling her hard luck story to any Minister who would listen, and looking incredibly important, responsible and resolute in her black trouser suit!

So anyway, let's get down to business...

A Historic Opportunity for Social Housing

Why?

Because the Commonwealth and the States are negotiating a brand new National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA) which determines how the Federal Government funds social housing.

But guess what?
The amount of money the Federal government has given the states for housing barely covers their operational costs. There's nothing in it for new construction.

And the bad news is:

• there are nearly 200,000 people on public housing waiting lists.
  And that's only because low income working families don't even bother to apply
  
• there are at least 600,000 families and singles in housing stress (ie more than 30% of their gross income goes on rent)
  
• there are 105,000 people homeless

The supply of public housing has gone down by
30,000
dwellings since 1996

Whose fault is it?

Oddly enough, 1996 is when the Howard Government got in, and proceeded to slash 3.5 BILLION out of the money they gave to the states for public housing

So,

Whadda we want?

• 30,000 additional public and non-profit housing by 2012
  
• $5 billion more than we got out of the last Commonwealth State Housing Agreement
  
• an Affordable Housing Growth Fund because we need new housing.
  About 7.5 billion over the next 4 years should be a start
  
• a separate Operating Subsidy program of $7.5 Billion
  just to keep us standing still in the same spot
  
• a 30% increase in Commonwealth rental assistance.
  This would put an extra $15 per week into the pockets of the poor buggers doing it tough in private rental housing.

When do we want it?

Over the next 4 years

When are we gonna get it?

In our dreams, according to the Leftie turned Hollowperson who DH managed to buttonhole in a corridor...

Malcolm Turnbull, Woolly Waffler

Wake up without a hangover? Miss that swollen-tongued, brain filled with cotton-wool feeling?

DH has just the cure for you.

Check out any recent interview with Poor Malcolm. His monotonous wafflings will soon have you thumping the sides of your head, clawing your earholes with you pinkies, trying to clear the sudden fog in your brains.

Dear Liberal voters, DH knows you feel encouraged by Malcolms apotheosis.

But darlings, it's about more than having a noble profile and a magisterial way of padding out a striped suit. He does look grand, ones grant you. But one does have to be able to speak clearly and explain oneself, one would have thought. Patrician vowels in themselves are not quite sufficient, surely.

Ya shoudda heard him today waffling on the Fran Kelly on the ABC.

With this guy, its one step forward, two steps back. Out pops a word from his mouth, two of them are retracted. Today's classic, a telling exchange on every level was.

Fran Kelly: Who's your favourite footy team?

Malcolm Rex: Er, well, er, I vote for the Roo, er, vote for???, ha-ha-ha, er, I support the the Roosters

He's still got nothing better to do than go on about Kevin Rudd's overseas trip.

Finally challenged by Kelly"

So what would you do if you were the Prime Minister?

Malcolm goes:

Um, err, [thinks quickly: That was a curly one. Um, what would I do??.]
Um, well, I would come back.

[... incomprehensible 2 minute waffle about markets ...]

Of course DH, can be accused of being biased about the liberal party. She is still feeling dirty about things like the way they extracted their budget surplus from the teeth of the lower orders, the children going mad in detention centres, and all the other stuff in the right hand column

Shouldn't Malcolm start by saying sorry?

... To be continued, when DH gets a chance to listen to the podcast. There will be rich pickings.

The Plight of Poor Malcolm

Heart-breaking isn't it?

Malcolm's got it all except underprivilege.

DH sympathises. She doesn't think she could live off more than $273 a week. It might cruel her claims to moral superiority.

Then there's our new Premier Nathan Rees, bignoting himself by claiming to be a garbo. Yeah right, while supporting himself through an arts degree.

Kevin Rudd's doing it tough of course, and who can forget instant Housing expert, Cherie I-grew-up-in-Minto Burton (until the family moved to Drummoyne, they say)

There's self-made landlord, Matt Brown, and who knows, or dare ask, what hardships the likes of Joe Tripodi and
Eddie Obeid have salted away offshore.

Kiama Karma: It's not the undies that undid Matt Brown

Ex-Housing Minister Matt Brown's karma caught up with him yesterday. As Swamiji Semi-Detached Houso teaches us: "He who encourages the riff-raff to dob on their neighbours, shall himself be dobbed in by his parliamentary colleagues. And if he's not careful he may be reincarnated as a lower life-form, such as a real estate agent".

While Housing NSW's compassionate leftist hand invests heavily in community development, ex-Minister Brown's punitive Rightist hand undermined hard-won trust by encouraging public housing tenants to act out their petty resentments against their neighbours. Only recently, Mr Brown proudly trumpeted the number of people who had denounced their fellow housos to the "Housing Police" in the early days of the Tenant Fraud amnesty.

Mind you, there's a lot to be said for casting out from our midst these BMW-driving silvertails with their bizarre fetish for cross-dressing in trackie-daks and slumming it in sleazy low-rent ghettos. They should be corralled in Vaucluse or Pymble where we can keep an eye on them!

But then again, it's not for nothing that the Mighty Bronzed Oz despise dobbers. Nothing undermines our great traditions of social capital accumulation (that's "mateship" to the non-latte-drinkers amongst us) more

It's not the undies that undid him

But it's not the undies that undid Matt Brown in DH's eyes. What a man does to unwind in the privacy of his Ministerial suite on his own self-funded sofa is his own business. If keeping the lid on such antics wasn't the civilised media norm, we'd have heard a lot more, for instance, about how a certain Minister from one of our barbarous neighbouring states earned the moniker of "Swizzlestick". But admittedly, that particular politician is believed to be sufficiently talented to be worth preserving.

No, the true award for tastelessness came with the parading of first Matt Brown's niece and then his hapless child for the media, in the sad belief that this would somehow make things better. With such poor political judgment, it's no wonder that the man left no visible mark on the housing portfolio, other than to parrot his illustrious mentor Joe Tripodi's tenant-bashing catchphrases. And to rush Australia's most discrimatory legislation through Parliament, the extraordinary "Tenant Fraud Amendment 2008" which makes the NSW Department of Housing into the state's, and maybe the nation's, only government department with the powers of criminal prosecution.

With such acumen, the Minister will make a grand real estate agent. While holidaying in Kiama recently, DH thinks she found just the shopfront (left) for a start-up.

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Oh, alright, alright, so DH was given notice by her higher self recently. Well, she can hardly be expected to stay silent in the face of taunts from her fan-base (all 1 of him) that she was going soft on Housing Ministers.