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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (1 May) . . Page.. 1309 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

The government is determined to assist families in the growing areas of Canberra. To this end, some $4 million in capital costs have been allocated for a child-care centre to be built in Gungahlin. It will also allow a further facility to be built in Canberra after an assessment of need is conducted.

Early intervention is also important for students. Funding of $357,000 over four years will be provided to allow government schools to better tackle the growing number of student management issues. An early intervention unit will be established, as will a program of professional development for teaching and administrative staff. More than $200,000 a year will also be allocated to establish a Support for Students at Risk program to help those students at risk of dropping out of school, and $450,000 will be provided over two years for a sport and recreation program for young people at risk. This will focus on young people aged between 12 and 25 years who are at risk of homelessness, substance abuse, being victims of crime or becoming involved in the juvenile justice system.

Early intervention is equally important in public health. We have allocated almost $1 million over four years to support national disease control. The program will provide proactive strategies to enhance food safety as well as treatment-based support programs and air-quality control measures.

Nearly $0.5 million has been allocated over four years to provide for a newborn hearing screening program for the screening of all babies in the ACT before the age of three months and to ensure the availability of intervention by six months.

The government is very proud to be allocating almost $2.7 million over four years to the territory's Health Promotion Strategy. Embracing the concepts of both social capital and disease prevention, the strategy will expand our healthy city activities, ensure our health protection service has a health promotion focus, introduce a health promotion web site and provide a health promotion recognition scheme.

At least one in five ACT children between the ages of 14 and 17 currently smoke, with the proportion in some age groups being closer to one in four or even one in three. We will provide $200,000 a year for a youth smoking and health program in an attempt to reduce the carnage caused by smoking. There will also be a $100,000 upgrade to the cervical cytology register and $215,000 will be provided for the replacement of an ageing ultrasound unit for the breastscreening clinic.

Early intervention also applies to our correction system. We will allocate $1.48 million a year for intervention programs to help prevent prisoners from reoffending after their release. Reducing recidivism is no easy task-but that should encourage us to do more, not less.

Some $0.5 million a year will also be allocated for mediation services to resolve neighbourhood disputes. It will build on a trial project undertaken in Tuggeranong in 2000 by the Conflict Resolution Service.

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