WA: Indigenous housing needs $540m upgrade - WA govt

AAP General News (Australia)
12-10-2008
WA: Indigenous housing needs $540m upgrade - WA govt

PERTH, Dec 10 AAP - Aboriginal housing in outback Western Australia is in urgent need
of a $540 million upgrade, a government audit has revealed.

The audit found more than 90 per cent of the 2,400 houses the audit team inspected
in remote Aboriginal communities in WA needed upgrade work.

The report estimates it will cost on average more than $225,000 to bring each house
up to standard, equating to a notional total cost of about $540 million to upgrade the
full housing list.

WA Housing Minister Troy Buswell said the findings were "frightening" but were not
a surprise, given that many of the houses were more than 50 years old.

"The cost estimates for a major upgrade of every single house are frightening indeed
and beyond the state government's capacity in the short term, because it would not end
there," Mr Buswell said in a statement on Wednesday.

"A lot are to be found in small clusters in out-of-the-way places where the standard
of essential services is also often an issue.

"Before we could ever set out to bring every property up to scratch, we would first
have to take a hard, honest look at the sustainability of some of the smaller communities
involved."

The audit, conducted in consultation with the federal government, was the first of
its kind in WA.

Four audit teams took six months to physically inspect 2,400 houses in 130 remote Aboriginal
communities spread throughout the Kimberley, Pilbara, Gascoyne and Goldfields regions.

The houses were built over a period of 50 years and for much of their lives were left
to fare under sporadic or non-existent maintenance programs, the WA government said.

Many were built before the wind-up of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission
(ATSIC) in 2005 in the days when the Commonwealth practised a 'build and abandon' approach
and left responsibility for ongoing repairs and upkeep to individual communities, it said.

Mr Buswell said he hoped the federal government will commit some of the extra $900
million promised for indigenous housing at the recent Council of Australian Governments
(COAG) meeting, which would allow an early start to be made on a staged refurbishment
program.

AAP mn/maur

KEYWORD: INDIGENOUS WA

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