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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 07 Hansard (Tuesday, 29 June 2004) . . Page.. 3000 ..

I thank members for their overall support. I guess I accept the opposition’s politicising of this issue, as they have done since it emerged. Once you take the politics out of it, stop playing the blame game and take out the idea that you want to have people sacked and all the rest of it, I think there is a shared understanding here in the Assembly of the importance of this area and of the need to get it right for the children and young people in the care of the territory. It has not been right in the past. This additional expenditure is part of making it right, but it is also a matter of changing the system. That is what the new office is all about. I thank members for their support at that level. I guess we just keep the politics going on it.

MR PRATT (12.50): I want to raise a couple of issues in relation to youth affairs. In budget paper 4 we see an increase in funding for support for young people, but with no increase in the number of youth to be supported. Would it not be a priority for the department to fight not only for an increase in funding for support for young people but also to increase the number of young people being assisted and supported each year?

The child and family centre in Tuggeranong is another welcome funding announcement. I hope that commencement of this project is a priority for the Stanhope government and that the June 2006 completion target is met. I hope that, for the sake of the children and families in Tuggeranong, it will not be delayed like the old Woden Police Station was delayed.

I am concerned that there is not additional funding for more youth centres of the calibre of that at Lanyon. I would like to see that effort replicated in other centres such as Erindale and Calwell, down in the south. Why could we not see an appropriation for funding here to perhaps reinforce the successful operation of the NGOs in Lanyon and also the NGOs working with street kids in Tuggeranong?

If we have non-government organisations already successfully running an activity, and they are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts—which means they are really motivated to do this work—why not add money to their operations by supplementing them? Do not take away from them the independence and the obligation to raise their funding; supplement them to give them a bit of a tickle along. That funding would go a long way towards improving those capabilities.

There are a lot of kids in the Tuggeranong Valley who need that support and somewhere to go to. The Tuggeranong community has been in grave need of such centres for some time. I am well aware that the aid agency I talked about before which is helping out street kids, particularly around the Tuggeranong lake area and around the Hyperdome, needs that extra bit of assistance.

These kids need special care. It is good that there are people of good heart willing to go down, round them up, give them a bowl of soup and perhaps encourage them to go home if they have homes to go to. But those NGOs are doing it extremely tough. It is very hard now for non-government organisations, at both the community and national levels, to raise funds because of donor fatigue. It is one of those characteristics of the times in which we live. I think that $2.5 million for youth at risk over four years is insufficient. I do not see it being tightly targeted to provide the best outcomes, such as youth centres, and perhaps some additional trained staff to help at those youth centres.

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