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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 7 Hansard (19 October) . . Page.. 1844 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

This motion seeks to allow the Social Policy Committee to closely examine the benefits and drawbacks of contracting out the Kaleen Youth Shelter services. Contracting out, on the face of it, may appear to be a smart option. We get more services for less money, but what are the benefits? Kaleen Youth Shelter is a crisis accommodation shelter for young people. It is staffed by people who have shown a deep care for the young people they serve. These staff have not been given a real opportunity to develop the service they would like to, because this Government, as the previous Government did, has consistently refused to fund them adequately. It is a fact that the day programs that the Government now says need to be implemented immediately could have been offered by the staff months ago, as there are a range of facilities at Kaleen that are not being used.

Furthermore, Richmond Fellowship have told us that they would have been more than willing to offer a day program, and indeed over the years they have put in several submissions on day programs for Kaleen, only to be told that Kaleen was a crisis centre and did not need such programs. Mr Speaker, the kids clearly need the opportunity to be involved in activities during the day, and the Government could have offered those programs either through Richmond Fellowship or through using the existing staff and resources at Kaleen.

So what is this all about? Why the sudden great urgency to resolve this situation? The obvious answer is that the young people who use these services need as much stability as possible. They do not need to be mucked around by the uncertainty of not knowing who is going to be caring for them; nor do they need industrial disputes and people fighting over them. So why has this Government created the instability? The staff at Kaleen are doing a good job, and have been doing a good job for a long time.

If the Government wanted to reduce costs, there are a variety of mechanisms they could have used; but instead they said, "Let us contract out the service". The resulting industrial chaos and instability for the young people involved are hardly surprising. The Government has acted prematurely and without thinking the issue through, and now they are blaming the staff. They are saying that unless the issue is quickly resolved the young people will suffer. But it was the Government that caused this problem. So let the Government solve it by saying that they will not contract out this service; that they will work with staff and unions to reduce costs and improve services; that they will work with the staff and Richmond Fellowship to provide a day program. That seems to be the quickest and fairest result. If the Government agrees to do this, then the Greens will withdraw their motion.

There is another fundamental issue about wages. Richmond Fellowship will offer staff a flat rate of $26,000 a year. For some people, perhaps a single person with no dependants, this might be a livable wage. For many it is not. Indeed, for many the wage of $26,000 is below the poverty line. So contracting out services to organisations that do not pay reasonable wages may create a whole new set of social problems stemming from low income families unable to pay for the escalating cost of living. The issue of contracting out services to the community or private sector is a big issue that needs much greater consideration and debate than this Government is offering.

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