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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 7 Hansard (29 June) . . Page.. 2341 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

has been able to find half a million dollars for beat police but not $84,000 for a community legal service.

This appropriation, like the drover's dog, also answers only to one voice-the government's. The report of the Select Committee on Estimates raised concern about the department's "possible interest in not wishing to promote alternative legal voices which may challenge its policy position". This was said in the context of the failure to fund a number of community legal centres and a possible conflict of interest undermining the credibility of the department's policy advice on legal funding issues. This type of concern is, ironically, confirmed in Mr Hird's remarks in his dissenting report, another one of those particularly erudite dissenting reports that Mr Hird is now so famous for. In disagreeing with the committee's concerns that some fundamental issues of equity and community support have been left out of the social capital agenda, Mr Hird said:

In case the irony is missed, it lies in the fact that the government is committed to fostering strong relationships between people who know and trust each other and who have shared interests and beliefs. That is Mr Hird's definition of social capital. Presumably, those people's shared interests and beliefs are reflected in this budget. The rest, of course-those who do not have the strong relationships and who do not know and trust each other-can look out for themselves.

The Chief Minister, in the document Canberra: Building Social Capital, said that "a community with high social capital supports and includes its disadvantaged members". This came from the Chief Minister who presides over a government that passed an amendment to the Discrimination Act earlier this year to permit service providers to discriminate within their programs against people with disabilities, a government that passed an amendment to allow it to discriminate against disabled people. That amendment was moved by the Attorney and vigorously supported by the minister for health, the minister I heard tonight describe himself as the best health minister in the world, the minister responsible for disabled programs.

The same government introduced victims of crime legislation that discriminated in favour of employed victims and against unemployed victims. This was done by allowing police officers and emergency services officers, who have access to sick leave and workers compensation in the first place, to claim greater compensation than a range of other people-in fact, greater compensation than the rest of the community. So we have two tiers. There are those victims, such as policemen and emergency service officers, who suffer pain and suffering and there are the rest of us who do not suffer pain. We have this amazing circumstance where our victims of crime legislation has created two classes of citizens-police and emergency services officers, and everybody else. Women not in the paid work force but at home, unemployed people, service station attendants-they do not suffer the same level of pain and suffering as policemen and emergency service officers, in the eyes of this government.

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