Community Housing Update No. 5 - 26 June 2008

Last week, two meetings occurred between representatives of APY and the State Government in relation to the $25 million housing offer. As a result of the meetings, leases are no longer required over all of our existing houses in exchange for the promise of $25 million.

APY will now revise the housing MOU prepared in late 2007 to provide for the $25 million offer for about 40 new houses (“new houses”) as well as upgrades of the existing houses (“upgrades”) and the building of even more new houses (“additional new houses”) if we can attract further Commonwealth money.

To secure the Commonwealth’s investment of further money into the Lands, APY will try to negotiate step-in rights instead of leases, in case APY breaches the MOU in some way. The step-in rights are similar to the way the PY KU centres are set up.

The step-in rights might need to be secured by an agreement to grant a lease in case the government parties are entitled to exercise the step-in rights. However this is very different to granting leases now.

APY will be looking to negotiate as many upgrades and additional new houses as possible. The government is likely to require upgraded/additional new houses to go into the step-in rights as well. However APY will try to negotiate a fair exchange of existing houses into step-in rights in exchange for a fair amount of upgrades and additional new houses.

APY will also be trying to negotiate a scheme so that Anangu can also purchase their houses and obtain a title deed from the government, if Anangu want to do this.

Under the revised MOU, housing will continue to be managed by the on-site OAH office and Anangu Malpas who will be better resourced to provide a better service.

As the step-in rights will affect Land, APY will begin to arrange traditional owner consultations in relation to land likely to be affected by the revised MOU. We will be in further contact about this shortly.

APY continues to try to seek information on welfare reform so that Anangu can think about this and decide if a reform program would or might benefit Anangu and their communities.

Chairperson

Ken Newman 24/7/2008