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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 6 Hansard (17 June) . . Page.. 1624 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

question of its announcing this as the biggest single injection of funds into employment programs since self-government; but the Government did not announce that it was only two years ago that this same Government took $3m from employment programs. It is very convenient to say that this was part of Labor's forward estimates; but this Government made a choice which meant cuts to this area.

In the legal area, there were a number of important issues that the committee examined, including the new custodial facility and whether or not this would be private. Obviously, there will be a need to discuss this further. Privacy legislation was something that I raised. I am very pleased to see a recommendation on that in the committee report. The Commonwealth has pulled back from taking responsibility in this area, even though at one time last year it claimed that it would. We know that the Privacy Commissioner is developing a voluntary code - it is not out yet - which could actually be used as a blueprint for States or Territories to develop legislation. It is, as Ms McRae said, a very important area because Liberal governments, and Labor governments for that matter, are very keen to push public work into the private sector. It is absolutely essential, therefore, that there is appropriate privacy legislation in place to cover the private sector.

Another important issue that came up and that was pursued during the estimates process was the domestic violence project coordinator. I am very pleased that there is a recommendation about this as well, and I hope that the Government will reconsider its position to proceed with the Bill without having the domestic violence project coordinator in place. It is absolutely clear from the Community Law Reform Committee report that, when it designed the domestic violence intervention project, it had in mind two components of that project. One was the council and one was the coordinator. So, it is quite peculiar that it could be decided by government that one of the recommendations was not appropriate, after five years of work by the Community Law Reform Committee. I do not think the committee thought up that idea lightly. There are resource implications in that. Maybe that is why that particular aspect was not taken up. But that is just not good enough if we are going to see a serious commitment to prevention of domestic violence and protection of women in domestic situations - and it is, of course, mostly women who are needing protection.

I was away for the Health day, but I have read some of the transcripts. Other members were dealing with issues there, which I will not go into now. Education and Children's and Youth Services also confirmed for me that we need an inquiry into services for children at risk once again. Funding for substitute care and mandatory reporting, I believe, is not taking into account the need for the support to be available in the community. So, we will be pursuing that further in the Social Policy Committee.

Also, in relation to the alternative education facilities and the new proposals by the Government to replace SWOW with two alternative programs, it is quite clear that there is no additional funding and no recognition that those facilities might actually need to be slightly more resource-intensive than the general school facilities. Considering that we have seen two of the main off-line programs fold because of resource problems and teacher burnout, once again it does not look good for the Government's real commitment to this area of providing choice of educational opportunities for people in the ACT - young people who are often at risk as well.

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