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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 5 Hansard (3 May) . . Page.. 1453 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Consequently, in order to meet the needs of people trapped on the fringes of our society, the government must ensure that it can work effectively with community partners. Unfortunately, bridging the divide between government and the community sector is not at the heart of the approach of this government.

Mr Speaker, I would remind members that community organisations are dealing, and have been dealing over a number of years, with increasing demand on their time and services. They are dropping further behind the rest of society in staff conditions and resources. For example, it would be interesting to see how much rent CTEC could have saved if it had moved into facilities such as the Griffin Centre or Gorman House rather than shifting to A grade or premium accommodation at the Brindabella Business Park. Perhaps the Legislative Assembly could meet in a community venue just so that everyone in this place could get a sense of this other divide.

A concern I have in regard to these tightly targeted budget initiatives, where they are built on such partnerships, is that the upshot for people working in the community sector is likely to be increased pressure and more limited capacity to respond with flexibility.

On major initiatives, the same general concerns emerge. It is pleasing to see the government allot $2 million for additional disability services and to enhance the quality of existing services. Cynically, one could argue that such an investment is simply a pre-emptive response to the ongoing inquiry into services for people with disability in residential care. Even presuming a more thoughtful intent, I would remind members that the inquiry is a result of ongoing concerns about the quality and stability of staff, the poor pay and working conditions offered to permanent and casual staff, inadequacies in service provider and funder/purchaser arrangements and the government's general approach to group housing for people with complex needs. It is not as if the service providers, advocacy groups, clients and carers have been unable to contribute to decisions regarding planning, priorities and funding.

It seems that the government can find the investment in community services when there is a crisis but is unable to work in collaboration with its social capital partners to develop a more thoughtful approach. I would like to have seen additional funding in this budget for service providers to enhance the delivery and evaluation of services, support for existing advocacy services to provide independent feedback and a review of consumer complaint mechanisms right across the human services sector. The fundamental issue remains, however, that the bottom line for all community partners is to fund them to adequately deliver the services they are committed to. It is not going to be an integrated approach to say, "We are going to check on the monitoring and quality assurance mechanisms and improve them in the area of service provision" unless you acknowledge that perhaps some of the issues are a result of underfunding and undersupport for the services themselves.

In this context I have to ask what exactly $400,000 and $600,000 of Building Community Capacity initiatives will do for community service. Will these sums allow them to pay their staff adequately? Will they fund them to address any shortcomings found in last year's audit of community services infrastructure? What if the audit report-presuming it has been completed, which we do not know-finds that there are pressing occupational health and safety problems? And will the disability service

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