Page 1893 - Week 07 - Thursday, 20 August 1992
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way of overcoming those fears. The community does have rights - not that we would know it from this particular accommodation. The community in this case has been totally negated. We have to balance the rights of the people who use these refuges and those of the people in the community. If we get that balance right, everybody will be happy and the refuge will work substantially better. The children will be happier, when children are present, and those women, who often have been through a dreadful time and would not be looking for the rest of their lives to be a bed of roses, could actually become part of a community and not be ostracised.
MS SZUTY (11.32): Madam Speaker, I rise to oppose vigorously this motion before the Legislative Assembly today, which proposes to disallow the transfer of the supported accommodation assistance program from the Treasury to the Housing Trust. The Minister, Mr Connolly, has outlined the history of this exemplary Commonwealth-State agreement and the need to transfer its financial arrangements into the housing sector, where its administration already takes place. To suggest that there is any real and acceptable reason to disallow this flies in the face of logic, and I would suggest that any attempts to cancel the program would be comparable to the efforts of certain members of the First ACT Legislative Assembly and one member of this Assembly to dismantle self-government.
I speak in this debate with some degree of experience in the management of a specific supported accommodation assistance program. In my former position as director of the Weston Creek Community Service I had responsibility for the women's housing program established on the south side of Lake Burley Griffin. The women's housing program aims to assist women and children escaping domestic violence with medium-term supported accommodation. The women and children assisted by the Weston Creek Community Service are members of our community, just as you and I are, women who are just like our wives, daughters and friends. This is the very crux of the issue. The people helped by SAAP programs are ordinary people. Some experience major difficulties in their lives. Others have found themselves in changed circumstances and need support to get back on their feet.
I have heard some argument that there should be greater provision of refuge accommodation for men. I agree. But it should not be at the expense of programs that currently support women and children. I quote clause 4 of SAAP's detailed principles:
The program will be available to all sections of the community, irrespective of sex, marital status, race, religion, disability or life situations.
Funding services for men does not start by trying to dismantle worthwhile and beneficial services for women, children and families in short-term need. The SAAP program, as the Minister for Housing and Community Services, Mr Connolly, has suggested, started in 1985, in recognition that the various States and Territories were having differing success with providing services for people needing short-term assistance. People were falling through the housing assistance net, and the SAAP solution was identified and decided upon after much lobbying from women's groups, charitable organisations and concerned community members.
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