Page 2775 - Week 09 - Thursday, 26 August 1993
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However, if they were all obliged to go into residential care from government sources, the figure I have been given, again from government sources, is an estimated $1,200 per week. This is a total annual bill not of $1.6m but of $8.1m for 130 children. You can see the bargain the Government receives, even at the realistic $240 per week rate.
Faced with the obvious impossibility of keeping someone on $106 a week and the horrendous expense of residential care at $1,200 a week, I find it puzzling that the Minister would even bother, as he has indicated he is doing, to compare rates paid elsewhere in Australia. This seems to me to be mixing apples and oranges, ignoring the Institute of Family Studies definitive study and failing to accept the higher costs of living in the ACT. I suggest to you, however, that it is the ultimate cop-out in conducting a review. I believe that we have a responsibility to our own disturbed teenagers and that we should address that problem and that responsibility on Canberra grounds, not by comparisons with somewhere else, particularly when we do not even know whether the level of payment elsewhere is adequate or not for that area.
We will not achieve the optimum assistance we should be providing by starving those who want to help of the basic funds they need to do the job of foster carers. By denying these good people a realistic financial subsidy, you are not only failing them and those they seek to help; I suggest that you are also failing yourselves. The Government's commitment to assisting troubled young people, to caring and to social justice is, with the evidence of this beggarly $106, shown to be empty talk. The Government seems to see these tragic adolescents as being in Oliver Twist rather than in foster care, and it stands condemned accordingly. I think the Government has made a silly mistake in cutting back on the realistic subsidies for foster carers, and I would urge them to reconsider as a matter of urgency - and certainly before the 1 October deadline set by Barnardo's, to withdraw from the program.
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General, Minister for Housing and Community Services and Minister for Urban Services) (3.41): Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, the Liberal Party's newfound commitment to spending more money on welfare is touching. One hopes that it will continue and we will see bipartisan support for the Government's well above average effort in welfare expenditure. It is a welcome change from the approach I saw during the last election campaign, when Mr Stefaniak was running around the town speaking at meetings organised by people lobbying on the police budget and saying, "We spend too much on welfare. We can cut back on welfare and spend more on police".
Mr De Domenico: Were they his exact words?
MR CONNOLLY: He said, "We spend too much on welfare. We can get more money on police".
Mrs Carnell: Were you there?
MR CONNOLLY: Yes, I was, at a meeting at Tuggeranong last year. It is also a refreshing change from the words of Ms Lucinda Spier, who I understand is a member of the executive of the Liberal Party and currently is fronting what we affectionately refer to as the Red Hill ratepayers association; the Canberra Rates Association. What Ms Spier, a member of the executive of the Liberal Party, was
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