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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 3 Hansard (9 March) . . Page.. 741 ..

MS TUCKER: Thank you. Mr Stefaniak spoke about how he believed that certain young people wanted to do this, and I am not surprised. They have to do something. They are forced to do this under the work for the dole scheme. They have to find somewhere to do work for the dole. The point that Mr Stefaniak fails to address again is what is going to be the cost of this on schools, and what will the experience be for the young people. The training component of this is being basically carried by the schools. That is what clearly came through in the committee. So it is at the cost of the schools.

Now, fine, we can say that schools should be community service organisations and take on broader community service obligations, but people in the profession are concerned about that. They feel they have too much to do already. I am very interested to see Mr Moore here in this debate as someone who appears in this place as a champion for schoolteachers. It is quite surprising to me.

There is another thing that is quite interesting about this. When we look at the detail of the Commonwealth work for the dole program, one of the criteria is that work for the dole programs have to enjoy community support. I do not believe that that has been demonstrated at all through this committee inquiry. The stakeholders are, I assume, an important part of the community that the Commonwealth is referring to. One would hope so anyway because they are the people actually working with these young people. They, of all people, one would hope, would be supportive of any work for the dole programs that they are responsible for managing.

It was quite clear in the committee that this program did not enjoy the full support of all the stakeholders. That, to me, shows a total flaw in the Commonwealth's own administration of work for the dole because I do not think they appear to have shown very much interest in what the community support was for this. I wonder what processes occurred which followed our report being tabled, and whether the Commonwealth took note of it. We did not get or hear of any formal response. I wonder whether the ACT Government forwarded our report to them to keep them fully informed of what was happening.

There are other concerns that I have about the Commonwealth's administration of the work for the dole scheme as well. In the committee we found it very difficult to get a picture of how the departments of the Federal Government work together, particularly whether or not the Federal Department of Education was consulted on whether or not this was going to be useful for young people or useful for schools. That was also of concern.

Mr Osborne has come in at this late stage and made a strong stand on this. I commend him for that. I am glad to see that he has done the work on this and that he has decided to act in the way he has.

MR CORBELL (11.38): Mr Speaker, I am very pleased to see the amendment moved by Mr Osborne this morning.

Mr Wood: It is late though, isn't it?

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