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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (13 May) . . Page.. 1256 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

maybe disability housing would not have received any money at all. The same could be said for the HACC services. The increases look quite fabulous; but, characteristically of a lot of this budget, it looks good on the surface, but do not dig too deep. You might find that it is quite hollow. For our HACC services increase, it is just the hollow log that is needed. With that increase of $0.9m for HACC services, of course, we have to wait for tonight to see what Mr Howard and Mr Costello are going to do, because it is Commonwealth matched funding.

It is good to see within the children's services budget recognition that there could be an increase in services required following the introduction of mandatory reporting. It would also be good if there were some recognition of the need for continuing training for people working in that area. There is an increase for substitute care places, but there is no mention of the fact that we still do not have any Aboriginal care workers in the ACT, and in some of the placements that are made we do not follow Aboriginal child placement principles. With the increase in funding for substitute care places, where is the support for families? Those children who come under the attention of Family Services are in families. I think, as a community, we should be looking to care for the whole of the community, not bits and pieces.

I now look at some parts of the housing budget. It is an interesting budget indeed. We have $34m in capital works - a similar amount to that available last year. The $9m for Condamine Court is 25 per cent of that $34m, but it has been announced again and again that that is Commonwealth money through the better cities program. We have no detail of what the capital works money will be spent on, apart from the information on finishing projects already started. It would be interesting to know the detail on capital expenditure. As is mentioned elsewhere, expenditure on capital works has good flow-on effects and it creates jobs. In the building industry, as is known, it would be good to have new jobs being created.

Mrs Carnell: That is what Kick Start is for.

MS REILLY: Yes, but that is the other magic formula to be found. Let us find the jobs that come from Kick Start. You have been so quiet previously that it is hard to know where you found them. You have been so shy that it is hard to believe.

I go to other parts of the housing budget. There is an increase in maintenance money up to $19m. There is already an allocation for maintenance in the current budget. At times it is hard to recognise that there have been allocations, because ACT Housing has been shy in expending this money. At the end of March there was an underspend of $6.5m, although I think we were assured by the Minister that they would get round to spending it pretty soon. For people who are waiting for their houses to be painted, who are waiting to get windows repaired, who are waiting for cracks in the walls and cracks between the floors and walls to be repaired, an underexpenditure of $6.5m - nearly 50 per cent of the maintenance budget - is very disheartening. It makes you wonder whether our biggest landlord in the ACT is picking up his responsibilities for taking care of the stock under his control when he can be underspent by that amount at

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