With the budget in deep deficit, you’d think the government would jump at accessing a pot of federal funding to fix the accommodation problems for the most vulnerable people in public housing. Wrong! says JON STANHOPE & KHALID AHMED.

“The ACT Government is committed to an accessible and inclusive ACT, where people with disability can fully participate in all aspects of community life. 

“A key component of this commitment is ensuring people with disability have access to safe, suitable and affordable housing.”

That’s the opening statement of the ACT Government’s submission to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and Administration’s Inquiry into Specialist Disability Accommodation Service Delivery by Housing ACT.

Unfortunately, the government has apparently not seen fit to spare a Legislative Assembly Committee from its dodgy propaganda. 

The government’s own data and actions are simply not consistent with its submission. We will come to the story of the inquiry and what it highlights later, but first to the government’s record.

The relevant data, which is sourced from all jurisdictions, is published by the Productivity Commission in its annual Report on Government Services. The dataset we refer to is comparable across jurisdictions and over time.

In 2025, 71 per cent of the housing stock in the ACT met the acceptable minimum standard, the second lowest rate in the nation, ahead of only NSW. Tasmania had the highest level of stock meeting the minimum standard at 84.4 per cent.

The “acceptable minimum standard” does not mean an ordinary average dwelling but is one with a minimum of four functioning facilities and no more than two major structural problems. The functioning services that count towards a dwelling being of acceptable standard are for (a) washing people; (b) washing clothes; (c) storing and preparing food; and (d) sewerage. The measurement is a very low bar, well below the social norm of acceptable housing.

For households with a member with a disability, the commission reports that just 65.1 per cent of households were in a dwelling that met this minimum standard. This again is the second lowest of all jurisdictions with Tasmania the highest at 82.3 per cent.

The repeated claim by the ACT Government of a commitment to ensuring people with a disability have access to safe and suitable accommodation is hollow and indeed risible when a third of the households which support a person with a disability are living in a dwelling that does not meet the accepted minimum national standard.

Notably, the other identified disadvantaged group, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, do not fare any better with just 64.9 per cent of dwellings in Canberra occupied by them meeting the minimum accepted standard.

The overall poor condition of housing stock compared to other jurisdictions, and the relatively poor condition of the stock allocated to households with a disability were not unexpected and could not have come as a surprise to the Chief Minister Andrew Barr or Housing Minister Yvette Berry. 

We have previously written about a trend decline in both aspects based on the previous reports, which ironically occurred during the period when there was not one but two allegedly progressive ministers overseeing the housing portfolio, namely Ms Berry and Ms Rebecca Vassarotti (Greens).

Keeping a roof over your head is hardest here

Our fellow columnist, Hugh Selby has written on personal accounts of vulnerable tenants housed in unacceptable conditions.

Is it too much to ask ACT Housing keep tenants safe and dry?

One is entitled to think that with the budget in deep deficit, and notwithstanding the skewed priority afforded to trams and theatres, that the government would jump at the opportunity of accessing a pot of federal funding to fix the accommodation problems for the most vulnerable people in public housing and our community. Wrong!

It emerged during the 2024-25 annual report hearings in November 2025, that people with a disability and disability advocates had raised concerns about their ability to have modifications made to Housing ACT properties despite funding being available in their individual NDIS plans. 

Ms Berry advised the committee, inter alia, that certain “issues” had been identified in the management of disability accommodation modifications by Housing ACT and that she had referred the matter to the Auditor-General.

From the information publicly available, Housing ACT registered as a Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) provider in 2017, and 112 people were registered for the SDA program. The registration expired in December 2025 without any funds having been accessed or utilised by Housing ACT. 

We are at a loss to understand why NDIS funding set aside for accommodation support was not accessed by the ACT Government especially given the pathetic state of the dwellings available to the numerous Canberrans with a disability. We refer below to Minister Berry’s position, which we find quite bizarre.

Chiaka Barry, Liberal Shadow Minister for Community Services moved a motion on December 3 calling for an inquiry by an appropriate committee, arguing that the minister had not provided details of the referral to the Auditor-General to members of the Legislative Assembly, and that any inquiry by the auditor would be limited in its scope if it did not provide affected tenants an opportunity to highlight their concerns.

To the surprise of some, the government supported the motion for such an inquiry by an Assembly Standing Committee. Notably the government’s support followed the revelation, during the debate on the motion, that the Auditor-General had declined to conduct such an inquiry. 

Interestingly, there are several damning reports by the Auditor-General, on various issues, which ordinarily would see a minister or even a government lose the confidence of the legislature, that have gone unnoticed.

The inquiry was told during hearings in early May of uninhabitable dwellings with mushrooms growing in spaces where water has seeped into the walls along with leaks through light fixtures. On the other hand, the Territory may have lost up to $10 million in unused funding.

Minister Berry appearing before the committee reportedly said: “I get all trying to find a gotcha moment and make all kinds of allegations against us and I’d say, in this circumstance, there may have been some opportunities that we would still have been unable to unpack on accessing funding.” 

She also advised the committee that Housing ACT signed up to the program probably not completely understanding the challenges behind it. 

With respect to the minister, no one needs to try for a gotcha moment when she has stumbled from one faux pas to the next, and from one scandal to another.

Berry is wrong, Barr grabbed cash for the tram 

One does not need to look further than her denial that the proceeds of the sale of public housing were directed to tram fund , or the claimed investment of $700 million in public housing that did not occur, or the scandalous public housing renewal programs that she later claimed were not meant to grow the stock, or the forced evictions of elderly women and disabled tenants that were found to breach their human rights.

Panel accused of prejudging tenant’s eviction

The minister’s evidence before the committee is remarkable in that she, in effect, asserts that her officials were incompetent and failed to understand the program they signed up to.

It is also a matter of record that having signed, they failed to implement the program. That failure is, however, ultimately attributable to the minister.

The minister’s response to the failing suggests that they would not have signed up if they knew the complexity of the program.

While that may have saved her from the embarrassment of not having drawn on a dollar of the funds available in the program, it would still not improve the living conditions of the disabled tenants with mushrooms growing throughout their home.

Seriously, how hard can it be to identify how many and which of the Housing ACT tenants with a disability are eligible for NDIS, and of those tenants eligible for SDA? It is surely a simple and low-level exercise without any policy complexities.

Notably, Greens MLA Laura Nuttall was able to determine how many of her constituents were eligible but had not been able to access funding. Ms Berry has a whole directorate at her disposal.

We await with interest the committee’s assessment of the bizarre position taken by the minister in relation to this distressing failure.

Jon Stanhope is a former chief minister of the ACT and Dr Khalid Ahmed a former senior ACT Treasury official.