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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 5 Hansard (11 May) . . Page.. 1465 ..

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Speaker, I am happy that Ms Tucker has asked me that question because there are a number of organisations to whom they can refer clients with problems in that regard. Some of the organisations that Ms Tucker has just named are themselves organisations with a brief to assist people of the kind that Care is targeted to assist. I will give one example of that. I am aware that a number of related organisations, community legal organisations, have come to the aid of Care and, presumably at Care's request, signed letters saying that they think Care should stay as someone on the landscape.

First of all, let me make one thing clear. Care will stay on the landscape. Care receives something like a quarter of a million dollars already in other funding from Mr Stefaniak's Department of Education and Community Services to provide a range of services to people in the ACT. None of those things is to change by the decision about the legal service and they will continue. Care has asked for additional money for its consumer credit legal service to continue and the government has indicated that it has concerns about that and has said, "We do not any longer have a source of funding for that and we believe, for that and other reasons, it should not continue."

You mentioned the Welfare Rights and Legal Centre, saying that it is one of the organisations that need Care to provide financial counselling service of a legal dimension to people in the ACT. There are three main heads of expertise that the Welfare Rights and Legal Centre lists in its application for funding from the ACT as its areas of speciality. One of them is social security law. I forget what the second one is; it might be family law, but I cannot be certain. But one of those three is in consumer credit legal advice, consumer credit matters.

Here we have the Welfare Rights and Legal Centre saying, I understand, to the Standing Committee on Justice and Community Safety that Care fills a gap that they cannot fill, when they are telling my Department of Justice and Community Safety that it is one of their three areas of expertise that are the basis for their being funded by the ACT government.

Mr Hargreaves: But you cut them down by seven grand.

MR HUMPHRIES: Who?

Mr Hargreaves: The Welfare Rights and Legal Centre.

MR HUMPHRIES: Not that I am aware, Mr Speaker.

Mr Hargreaves: Look up your own report.

MR HUMPHRIES: All right, I will look it up, Mr Speaker. But the fact is that the Welfare Rights-

Mr Hargreaves: You cut them down by over $7,000.

MR HUMPHRIES: It is fairly small change in their total budget if that is the case. In any case, Mr Speaker, it does not affect overall their capacity to deal with the three main areas of activity of a body such as welfare rights.

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