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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 4 Hansard (28 March) . . Page.. 915 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

something on which everyone agrees. Basically, Mr Hird's actions in preventing us from having that discussion were a very serious challenge to how our committee process works and I find that very regrettable.

I will now deal with some of the issues that we have raised in our report and, where appropriate, I will refer to the dissenting report as I go through. As I said, we have made recommendations which refer to process and work that needs to be done by the Government. On matters dealing with expenditure, we have made specific comments. As I said, we have been prevented from making recommendations on these matters in this case. A general comment I would make is that, once again, underresourcing and unmet need in the Education and Community Services sector were common concerns of many witnesses and many submissions. The Government's response to these claims was totally unsatisfactory and showed that little understanding exists in the Government in terms of the realities for community service workers and providers in Canberra at the moment.

Another general comment that I would make about unmet need and the resourcing of the community sector relates to Mr Hird's dissenting report. It is extremely regrettable, I have to say, that Mr Hird made the assertion that the committee's recommendations have not been tested. What is it exactly that Mr Hird is saying here? He says:

that is how committees work -

We tested information that came to the committee by sending all the submissions to the Minister for an alternative view. The Minister had the opportunity to respond in writing, and did so, to concerns raised by the community sector. The public hearings were recorded and broadcast and, from memory, a departmental person was present at all times; so there was an opportunity for the Minister, which he took, to respond to what came before the committee.

The most regrettable thing about this matter is that there appears to be an implication that the community is lying, because Mr Hird said twice that we had not tested the evidence. I am looking forward to hearing Mr Hird say how he thinks we could have tested the evidence of the members of the community sector who gave their time to talk to the committee about the reality of their working lives and their experience with the services that they deliver. I look forward to hearing how Mr Hird thinks that that should have been done, apart from offering the Minister and the department an opportunity to give an alternative view if they have one, which they really did not do in their response, particularly on the issue of unmet need and underresourcing.

When we asked the Government for details of their analysis of this issue, they could not give them because they have not done one. We did get from members of the community sector an indication of unmet need through some data that they had collected. I have to say that the underresourcing and unmet need issue is not new to this committee. I am

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