Page 3260 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 18 October 2022
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rough sleepers, domestic and family violence, and food services, to enable a better focus on the wellbeing outcomes and ensure that responsive services are delivered to Canberrans in need. These initiatives contribute to the wellbeing domains of housing and home, and significantly contribute to safety, social connection, health, identifying and belonging, and living standards.
This is in addition to the total of $1.646 million that was committed from the ACT’s $50 million COVID response fund to support specialist homelessness services, as part of the government’s commitment to addressing homelessness in the ACT.
There is more work to be done. The government is also progressing with a strategic partnership process, working with the homelessness sector and other key stakeholders to plan for the future of homelessness service provision in the ACT.
I can assure those opposite that we are working to provide adequate and secure funding for frontline services working in this key area. We look forward to continued collaboration and engagement with the sector, as we work together to ensure that Canberrans get the support they need. Collectively, we are working to design a homelessness service system that provides support that is accessible, responsive and addresses the core reasons that have led people to homelessness. We are working together towards having a future where homelessness truly is rare, brief and non-recurring.
I want to quickly respond to some of Mr Parton’s comments. I want to be clear that the ACT Greens went the last election, and they will go to the next election, with an unashamedly ambitious agenda around homelessness and housing affordability. As we did at the last election, in future elections we will outline clear election initiatives. If we have the privilege to be a governing partner, we will be clear in our plans regarding what we seek to achieve through the parliamentary term in areas, including housing, in any parliamentary and governing agreement.
We do not resile from our ambitious agenda, and we will work across the parliament to achieve it. This budget progresses our agenda significantly, and future budgets will as well.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Canberra Institute of Technology—Part 1.13.
MR MILLIGAN (Yerrabi) (5.40): I want to talk about my shadow portfolio responsibility for skills and address a number of concerns that have been raised with me over the lack of new provisions in the ACT budget for the VET sector. There are lots of big promises here; but, when you investigate, they seem to be empty promises. Page 67 of the budget outlook promises $240 million in new funding for education and skills. On page 70 there is an announcement of $126.3 million for apprenticeships, but when you dig a bit deeper into the budget, you see that there is a little game of smoke and mirrors.
Yes, there is another $31 million for the CIT campus; I will say more about that shortly. There is $4.2 million for a website refresh, whilst the $126 million promised
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