Govt denies it has draft copy of housing report

27 Aug 2009, 5:29 pm   -   Source: AAP

The Northern Territory government says it's yet to receive a draft of a report on a remote indigenous housing scheme that was due over a month ago.

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The Northern Territory government says it's yet to receive a draft of a report on a remote indigenous housing scheme that was due over a month ago.

Calls emerged this week for the report to be released immediately, with opposition MPs concerned the findings are being tweaked before a "sanitised" version is made public.

Country Liberals' Aboriginal affairs spokesman Adam Giles on Thursday said the NT government already had a draft of the investigation into the $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP).

"My concern is that the government is vetting the report and that the public version will be a sanitised version," he said.

But Acting Chief Minister Delia Lawrie said the government did not have the draft document. "The CLP are wrong again," she told reporters in Darwin.

"The report as I am advised is still being finalised, and the government has not yet received it."

The NT and federal governments established the review more than a month ago following reports only 30 per cent of the money would actually go on new homes, with the rest soaked up by administration and indirect costs.

The former head of SIHIP, Jim Davidson, has also gone public with claims less than half of the 750 homes promised almost 18 months ago will be delivered under the current budget.

To date, SIHIP is yet to build a single new home.

"When the report was commissioned on July 24th, Territorians were told it would be released in a month," Mr Giles said.

"In keeping with the Henderson government's inability to deliver anything on time, the report still hasn't been released, and there's been no word on exactly when the report will be available for public scrutiny."

Earlier this week, Country Liberal Senator Nigel Scullion called for the resignation of federal indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin.

Her office has said the report is expected to be finalised soon and will be publicly released once the federal government has considered it.

"All we want to see is how much has been spent so far, how much is intended to be spent, and we will be able to nut out from that exactly what it's going to cost per house," Senator Scullion said.

The senator said he did not want Ms Macklin's office to have the time to go through the investigation and "pick it all apart". "If it's a report that says everything's great and everyone's wearing red hats, well that's fantastic, but that's not what we want," he said.

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