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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 13 Hansard (2 December) . . Page.. 4316 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

This is extremely important. We must be the only Territory or State not following these principles. It is quite disgraceful how few Aboriginal children placed in care last year were placed with Aboriginal families. What efforts were made to ensure that those children could be placed with Aboriginal families?

This year's report and last year's report referred to the important role the Gugan Gulwan Aboriginal youth centre played in the provision of youth services. I think it is quite outrageous that this centre should be listed as an important factor in the provision of youth services for Aboriginal youth when it has been left dangling in uncertainty all year wondering whether it can continue and whether its funding will be reinstated. It has been known for more than 12 months that ATSIC could no longer fund Gugan Gulwan because of cuts in funding by the Commonwealth Liberal Government.

Only in recent weeks it has been announced that the ACT Government will allocate funding to Gugan Gulwan, but only for this year. This does not offer certainty that this service will continue, even though the Chief Minister and the Minister for Education and Minister for Youth Services have known for a long time that this group needed funding. They are an important part of youth services within the ACT - so important that they have been recognised in the annual report on the implementation of the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. But these people were left without funding for all this time. In the meantime, $118,000 in youth grants was allocated, of which $10,000 was given for a small project for the Gugan Gulwan centre. We set up a youth nightclub and spent $20,000 of ACT money and $40,000 of Commonwealth money on that as a youth project, but we did not look at whether that money could have been more usefully spent to assist Aboriginal youth in the ACT.

The Chief Minister talked about the meeting on 6 August where we reported back on the reconciliation conference. She was informed at that meeting of the great need for the continuation of funding for Gugan Gulwan. It took until the end of November for this call for funding, for grants, to be listened to. It is recognised that, if young people can access education, remain within the education system and stay out of the juvenile justice system, they have more opportunity to continue in better health, with better opportunities for education and better opportunities for employment in the future. But this Chief Minister and the Minister for Education and Minister for Youth Services left this organisation unfunded for many months.

Another issue has been left dangling. We have no Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing policy. We have no strategy to recognise the particular needs for accommodation of indigenous people in the ACT. It is not merely a matter of money not being allocated through the Commonwealth system. There is nothing to stop this Government from setting up an Aboriginal housing strategy. There is nothing to stop this Government from allocating money to deal with some of the issues that arise. It has failed to recognise the needs of traditional owners of this area because it has failed to realise that Canberra is a regional centre for a number of people in the south-east region who come to Canberra for a number of reasons. There has been a failure by this Government to recognise the housing and accommodation needs of these people. The Government may have set up a house for people visiting for health reasons, but quite a number of people visit the ACT for a number of reasons and there has been a total failure to recognise their housing and accommodation needs.

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