Page 2776 - Week 09 - Thursday, 26 August 1993
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saying only this week on Canberra radio was, "Shock, horror! Some of our rates money goes to welfare. This is a terrible thing. We pay too much rates because we have to pay for welfare". I hope, from Mr Cornwell's impassioned plea for social justice here, that the Liberal Party is abandoning its past record in the ACT of criticising us for spending too much money on welfare and will be joining the Labor Party and Independents, who place social justice and welfare high on their agenda.
We heard a lot about the miserly rate of $106, which is the ACT rate for the 17-year-old with hollow legs Mr Cornwell was fond of referring to. The miserly $106 in the ACT compares to the generous $91.50 in New South Wales. Mr Cornwell said that there are cost-of-living factors here. It is well known that Sydney is the cheapest place in which to live in Australia! What a joke! It compares to the generous $90 in Western Australia. We are, I must confess, slightly behind Victoria, which is $107. The rate at which foster care rates are paid - - -
Mr De Domenico: What about Mogadishu?
MR CONNOLLY: I am sorry?
Mr De Domenico: What does all that mean?
MR CONNOLLY: Mr De Domenico, this Government is trying to have a modicum of uniformity and fairness in relation to its rates of payment.
Mr De Domenico: Right. So forget about the individual needs of the people in the ACT.
MR CONNOLLY: I am glad that you mentioned individual needs. That is the basic rate of payment. What happened was that some years ago Barnardo's set up a new and innovative program known as RAFT - it was indeed a new and innovative program when it was first established - and higher rates than the general rate were being paid for people who were in special need. It has clearly emerged, though, over recent years that most of those young people who are in foster care can properly be described as having special needs. From an assessment done as part of a review of foster care payment rates in 1991, which was undertaken by the branch and the community foster care agencies, including Barnardo's and also groups like Marymead, Open Family and Richmond Fellowship, it was abundantly clear that the type of young person who was being cared for in the Barnardo's program had no more or less severe needs than the type of young person who was being cared for by Marymead or by Richmond Fellowship or by Open Family.
It was considered by the Government, and it is a decision I stand by, to be quite inappropriate to say that we would pay a high rate to Barnardo's but a lower rate to Richmond Fellowship or Open Family or Marymead for a teenager with precisely the same needs. That is clearly an inequitable approach. What we have done as a government is introduce a basic category, a standard category, for foster payment rates which, when they were set in 1991, as I have said, were very generous and compare quite favourably with rates interstate. It is always a valid basis of comparison, if a government is attacked as vehemently as we were by Mr Cornwell for being miserly and nasty and uncaring - - -
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