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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 11 Hansard (4 November) . . Page.. 3533 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Also, Mr Osborne, just in relation to the centres: We fund approximately 130 different community organisations which provide a range of services to the ACT's young people. Some 20 major youth services are funded through SAAP. Sound management and accountability processes are in place to monitor and evaluate the way those organisations use the funds provided. In this particular instance the department is talking to the board. If there are any procedures there which we think could be used across the sector to further improve the situation, naturally they will be actioned. But might I say that in instances like this - and I would certainly hope these are incredibly rare occasions - I suppose you can never provide a complete guarantee against deliberate improper activity, if indeed there has been such activity at the Southside Youth Refuge. We do await the police investigation in relation to that. I can comment no further on that. But if that were substantiated, I suppose you could never have a complete guarantee.

MR SPEAKER: Do you have a supplementary question, Mr Osborne?

MR OSBORNE: Thank God for Hansard, Mr Speaker, so that I can work out tomorrow what the Minister said. My supplementary question is this: When were you made aware of the problems at the centre - on what date?

MR STEFANIAK: I would not have the exact date, Mr Osborne, in terms of when I was made aware of the problems at the centre. I received a detailed report which I looked at in, I think it would have been, early October. I think there was some mention made of the fact that there was a problem there perhaps earlier than that, but I do not have the exact date in relation to that. I could try to ascertain that for you if you like.

MS REILLY: My question is to the Minister for Housing. Minister, it has come to my attention from a number of concerned ACT citizens that your Government and ACT Housing may be implementing discriminatory housing policy. Is the Minister aware that a person who has one adolescent daughter and has access to an adolescent son has been refused allocation for appropriate property and has been offered only a two-bedroom house? Women with children who are waiting months in refuges to be allocated housing are being refused appropriate allocations, while men in shelters with only partial access to their children have been allocated appropriate properties within weeks of going into the refuge. It has also become apparent that a number of people are jumping the queue on the priority waiting list, seemingly at the whim of whoever is doing the allocations. Does the Minister support the wait-turn priority and allocations policy of this Government and ACT Housing?

MR STEFANIAK: Ms Reilly, as you know, there are procedures in place. You have come to me on a number of occasions seeking urgent intervention in the case of certain of your constituents when there were real problems. There are also a lot of mechanisms in place in relation to persons who have a complaint. I think it is very important that things like the priority waiting list are dealt with appropriately, as with the normal waiting list.

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