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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 5 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1742 ..

MS DUNDAS (continuing):

homelessness and reduce the incidence of women repeatedly accessing homelessness services.

The government has committed $240,000 in the 2003-04 financial year for an initiative entitled "Supported accommodation". However, this is certainly not funding for the community-based, widely accessible, non-medical outreach service that has long been identified by the community as a place of unmet need.

I am also concerned that the government has not kept its word in response to the estimates report of last year, which was to include more detailed accounts of the Office of Women, the Office of Multicultural Affairs, and other such offices in the Chief Minister's Department, so that we could clearly see the government's support for these key areas.

Support for women is sadly lacking in this budget. The delivery of the government's response to the status of women inquiry on the same day as the budget was presented shows that there was not time to fully consider the response when the budget was being developed. All but one of the recommendations of the status of women inquiry were, as the government says, supported. However, it was concerning to see that, although a number of the recommendations were supported in principle and were going to be reflected within current funding parameters, there was no new money in a number of areas relevant to women that are in desperate need.

In the area of education, primary school teachers have been crying out for more resources to help children with behavioural problems who are not able to learn effectively and who affect the learning outcomes of their classmates. This budget does not allocate enough funding for tackling behavioural problems. The counselling services will help, but most new spending is delayed for another year. We need more teachers to provide intensive support now. Also the allocation to the schools equity fund is still woefully inadequate. Schools with a high proportion of kids from low socioeconomic backgrounds need far more resources to achieve good educational outcomes.

In the area of vocational training, I was disappointed to see that CIT received only a minor funding boost and no new initiatives. CIT provides excellent vocational training for local students and the government should be looking at expanding in this area. In order to become a hub of educational excellence we need to show support not only for our universities but for the Canberra Institute of Technology.

The budget does have some positive environmental initiatives, but the government has fallen down on sustainable transport, waste management and the implementation of triple bottom line reporting. It is quite disappointing that, even though we have been working on sustainability over the last 18 months, the new initiatives in this budget could not be balanced in accordance with triple bottom line accounting measures so that we could see their impacts not just economically but environmentally and socially.

There is no funding for kerbside collection of compostable waste. The bio bin trial did go well in Chifley and deserves expansion. There is also no new funding for the Environment Commissioner, who we know is struggling to complete all the work that is put in front of him.

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