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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 4 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1171 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

The budget is lauded as allowing a 37 per cent increase in numbers of participants in the community midwife program. The pilot project involved 73 women, with funding being provided in 1996-97 to increase this to 175. This program has been acknowledged as highly successful, providing good value for money, as part of mainstream maternity service in the ACT. The program was so popular five months in that it was booked out nine months ahead, and there was a waiting list. What has been the Government's response? To increase the availability of this option to just 240 women. There are 4,750 babies born in the ACT each year. This means that this excellent initiative will still not be available to 95 per cent of birthing women in the ACT.

The Government also claims to be strongly committed to increasing the use of hospital in the home and provides modest funding to increase the capacity of the program from 400 to 600 people. While this is a move the Greens support, it is still a drop in the ocean compared to the estimated increased hospital throughput to 52,000. Hospital in the home is thus going to be an available option to only around one per cent of patients using the hospital's institutional facilities.

The overall lack of transparency in the budget documentation is a real problem when trying to determine what money is really going where. If it is not here, does the Government know? If it does know, why are the losers not spelt out as well as the claimed winners? The lack of sufficiently clear attribution of funds in the budget documentation leads to a feeling that much of it may be smoke and mirrors, an illusion created for an election year by a troubled government.

What is happening to housing in Canberra is also a worry. The end of the rent relief scheme is very concerning for accessibility to housing for lower income earners, particularly at a time when access to public housing is being reduced. Although the housing budget got back the $5.4m, the housing budget still had to bear the entire burden of the Commonwealth black hole contribution for the second year running and, while the gains are clearly spelt out, exactly where the money will be coming from is very unclear. The final issue I want to mention is gambling. Despite all the public attention to gambling recently and calls from the community and the Greens for the past two years for more public recognition of problem gambling, there is still no additional support in this area, although community services are experiencing very high levels of demand.

To conclude, I would like to mention the presentation of the budget papers. While there are some improvements in this year's budget papers, such as including a Government response to the community consultation process, which is a good indication of acknowledging the need for feedback after consultation, the overall lack of transparency in the budget papers is still very concerning. It is very difficult to determine what money is really going where. While winners are clearly spelt out, the losers are not so clearly spelt out, and it is still very difficult at this stage to identify many areas where announcements are new initiatives as opposed to the reannouncement of existing programs.

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