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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 4 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 942 ..

MR CORBELL (continuing):

The Minister over there is looking at me, absolutely flabbergasted, and well may he be, Mr Speaker, because, when it comes down to it, his failure to stand up for the interests of youth centres is a stunning indictment. His department, and presumably he himself, made the offer of three years; but he does not seem to carry much weight when it comes to handing out the money. Ultimately, it was the Chief Minister who overrode him, yet again.

Mr Stefaniak: Oh, dear me! Oh, mate, Enid Blyton could not write it better for you.

MR CORBELL: It is becoming embarrassing, Bill. Every time something happens in your department that the Chief Minister does not like, you roll over, and she just sends in her adjutants and tells your department what to do. Mr Speaker, this simply is not an acceptable way to run a department, and the youth sector in Canberra deserves to be seriously concerned. They deserve to be seriously concerned because they have a Minister who simply does not stand up for them. Why? Mr Speaker, why do youth centres in Canberra get treated by two different rules? Why do youth centres that all meet the same criteria get treated by two different rules? Why are Civic and Woden singled out? It is just not fair, Mr Speaker. It is simply unfair, and it simply comes down to a matter of political spite.

There are a few other issues I want to address in this debate, and the first is this: Woden and Civic provide essential services to young people. Woden and Civic deal with young people who are at the very margins of our society - people who are homeless, people who have left the education system and people who are unemployed. Many of them face problems with drugs and crime. They are people at the margins. They are people whom we, as a community, must be prepared to assist to get them back into our society and to find meaningful, worthwhile roles within our community. Youth centres are part of the way of achieving that. But youth centres cannot operate properly unless they are given some security of tenure, and unless they have some confidence that the programs they provide are going to be there not simply on a year-to-year basis but on a more continual basis, which is why the Government makes an offer of triennial funding for all except Civic and Woden.

Mr Speaker, I have been alerted to the fact that the Civic Youth Centre has just received funding from the Commonwealth Government for literacy programs; funding to employ a literacy officer to assist young people who are not in school to get some assistance with their literacy skills so that perhaps they have a bit more hope of finding a job and perhaps have a bit more hope of feeling that they have enough confidence to go back into the education system. Mr Speaker, how long is the Commonwealth department's funding arrangement for? Three years. Three years, Mr Speaker, is the funding arrangement from the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth has no concern with Civic. The Commonwealth recognises the importance of giving Civic some continuity so that they can continue to provide effective services to young people. Unfortunately, it is the sort of continuity that this Government, through political spite, has decided is not appropriate for those two centres, and those two centres alone.

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