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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (1 September) . . Page.. 1715 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

They expend a great deal of voluntary effort in raising funds. Like a lot of other bodies, they in fact subsidise the Government. What is the reward for this? The reward, of course, is the fine service they have done. Many bodies like this one stepped in before there was an adequate range of government services, many years ago.

What is the reward coming to them now? It seems - and it is perhaps early days - that the Government is contracting the services to the cheapest tender. I put a question on the notice paper today so I will not anticipate that, but a Sydney company appears to have won a contract for some services.

Mr Moore: Anticipate away. It is not on the notice paper yet.

MR WOOD: That is right, Mr Moore. The Government, in its tendering process, seems to be going down a path of inviting groups from outside the ACT. Perhaps there is some benefit in competition, but the case that has been brought to my attention does not appear to me to bring any benefit to the ACT or to the community here. I am most uncomfortable about it, as are those who provide the services now being tendered for.

We face the problem of meeting a considerable shortfall in these services. I asked a short time ago whether we were maintaining services. That is difficult to do. The Minister has to meet shortly - and it will only be a small measure - the impost of the SACS award. He indicated to me - and at that time I did not want all the detail - that there may be some government funding to meet the additional costs to service providers of that award, but I expect that the providers themselves will have to face the squeeze. The Minister for family services has not even gone that far. He simply said it is a management problem; that is, he is saying, "We expect you to do at least what you are doing now but at lower cost. You are going to have to accommodate this increase in your costs". That means that everybody has to work harder or they see fewer people. Which one? That is a management issue. I have tracked around a lot of these bodies, as other members have, as Mr Moore has. I think they work pretty efficiently. They have worked on a shoestring for years. They have never had any fat to develop. Now the squeeze comes again. They want to service their clients. They want to provide additional services. My guess is that they are going to be made to work harder.

I suppose that in a year's time they will tell the Estimates Committee, "We cannot tell you that. That is a matter for negotiation. We will see what the outputs are". They will tell us all this jargon. We cannot get an answer now - I have not seen it thus far - on how the addition of the SACS award will affect service delivery. Maybe the Minister, who is assiduously taking notes, will be able to provide some answer for me, and particularly some answer for those people who are trying to provide the services.

What is the problem with being explicit about it? Why not tell everybody what the situation is and work through it? It seems to me that instead the pressure is going to be on an indefinable amount to put the squeeze on people. Let us see whether the Government is, as it says, caring. Let us see whether it can help provide the additional services that this community is going to need in the next year and well beyond.

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