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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 5 Hansard (8 May) . . Page.. 1763 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

not always hopeless in that we do this work and you see the same recommendations in committees over three, four, five or six years and finally something is picked up.

The Greens believe that building on research work and evidence is a really important shift in the way government is done here. I commend the government for that, but I think it is going too far to say that social sustainability has been given the priority it ought to have. Social sustainability is about people having a real stake in how their society works and knowing that and the community sector is a vital tool towards that understanding. Many small organisations in particular, although they may not have the efficiencies of scale, do support in a very effective way the qualities of participation, creativity and flexibility.

This budget provides funds up to the SACS award for only the lower grades of community sector workers when the award is Peter Reith's version of an award. For example, in the ACT public service the award for an ASO2 is $23,000 to $25,000, but the certified agreement is for $48,000 to $55,000. For the ASO6 level, the award is $35,000 to $40,000, but the agreement is for $48,000 to $55,000.

In summary, on this brief survey, ACT public servants are paid, rightly, at roughly 37 to 47 per cent higher than their award rates, but there is no extra money even to bring the wages up to this safety net level for grades 5 to 8. It is almost impossible for the community sector to retain staff when their wages are so much lower than the alternatives available to their staff by working in government. Particularly when the community sector is running government projects, the government has an obligation to fund those projects adequately to ensure staff with high skills, experience and dedication are able to stay in the job and able to eat, live securely and so on. Without adequate funding for wages, staff are overworked and become burned out and in the end services suffer.

The government commits, in budget paper 2, to move from purchaser/provider to a cooperative model for funding community services. That is welcome and in line with the compact into which the sector put a lot of good faith and work. It is also very welcome that performance reporting will be aggregated to feed back into policy and needs analysis. That is a significant shift and the government is to be commended for picking it up. I know that that has been asked for over the eight or nine years that I have been here. We have been asking for that for a long time.

Mr Wood: You weren't grey then.

MS TUCKER: I have not been here for as long as Mr Wood. He has been here much longer, as has Mr Cornwell.

Mr Wood: It shows on me.

MS TUCKER: It shows on me, too. The sector may need some assistance to work with this feedback, but it is a welcome recognition of the importance of feedback, closing the policy loop. It is good to see funding for maintenance and repairs and minor capital works for community facilities in government facilities being planned for.

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