Page 3175 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 18 October 2022
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and Torres Strait Islander children, young people and families becoming engaged with the child protection system, as well as meeting their needs within the system. The budget delivers against a number of key recommendations of the Our Booris, Our Way review. This includes the establishment of an independent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s commissioner, led by my colleague Minister Cheyne; funding for two lawyer positions at the Aboriginal Legal Service New South Wales/ACT to establish a care and protection legal advocacy service, led by my colleague Minister Rattenbury; and, as I outlined earlier in this speech, important funding to support the development and transition of services to community controlled-organisations in the service system.
This budget continues our government’s important long-term agenda to target support early, where we know the lifelong outcomes of our investments are strongest and the lifelong budget impacts are, in fact, the lowest over the long term. We continue to achieve this through partnerships and we will continue to strengthen those partnerships with the non-government sector, the Aboriginal community-controlled sector, carers, families, children and young people, led by evidence and by lived experience. I commend this part of the budget to the Assembly.
MS DAVIDSON (Murrumbidgee—Assistant Minister for Families and Community Services, Minister for Disability, Minister for Justice Health, Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Veterans and Seniors) (10.54): We all want an accessible, inclusive Canberra. COVID-19 exposed inequality and barriers to accessibility and social inclusion across our community. As we continue to strengthen the community, there are a number of budget initiatives that will empower our whole community in this work. As we come out of the worst of COVID-19’s public health restrictions and the associated economic impacts, it is important that we have a plan for social recovery for everyone in our community. When our community is challenged, it is often our community sector who best understand the specific needs of those most impacted and are the first to respond to social recovery needs, such as food relief and emergency accommodation, mental wellbeing and social isolation, and rebuilding community connections.
We saw throughout the past few years the sense of belonging and connection and a hand of kindness that was extended by individuals and organisations across our city to support those people having a hard time. We also recognise that the ACT government has a role in providing support and resources for our community sector and our broader community so that those people stepping in to help know that we are doing this together. We know from research into the aftermath of the 2003 ACT bushfires, as well as eight other major disasters around Australia and the world, that social recovery is most effective when it is community led and government supported.
This budget includes funding of $250,000 this year and $150,000 in 2023-24 to complete the development of a social recovery framework. This will enable us to co-design the framework with the community so that we can better understand the sector’s ability to respond when disaster strikes and identify what the ACT government can do to better support our community.
In addition to this new initiative, we continue the technology upgrade fund this year, next year, and the year after that, to support our community sector in maintaining and
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