Page 1882 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 May 2005
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will spend more than $103 million on vocational education in the coming financial year and, as the papers themselves say:
Compared to the 2004-05 estimated outcome, this represents a decrease of $2.1 million.
Whoops! Did I make a mistake? Decrease? No. There it is in graffiti blue on page 16 of budget paper 2: this government is reducing resources to vocational education and training. What more can I say? What an extraordinary decision from such a caring, compassionate, consultative government!
Mr Speaker, I do commend the government for boosting funds for disability services, particularly for individual support packages. Minister, well done. The additional $3 million is very welcome and targets a significant need for a number of families in the ACT. I note, however, that this government has reduced the support it provides, through its community service obligations, to subsidise taxi fares for people with disabilities. Poor old Mr Hargreaves obviously needs some help in understanding community service obligations. Again, I have to ask: where are this government’s priorities?
On the one hand, the Treasurer said in his budget speech that the government will enable more people with disabilities to live more independently. On the other, this government reduces the capacity for people with disabilities to do exactly that—to live independently through being able to travel to and from their homes by taxi to receive specialist support, to go to the shops, to visit and to do all the other things that those of us without such disabilities take for granted. This is a mean-spirited decision from a mean-spirited government.
In housing, with a looming underspend of quite significant proportions by Housing ACT, we are prompted to question the commitment of this government to maintaining the quality of its public housing stock. At this juncture it would seem that there could be millions of dollars not spent from the maintenance budget, but you cannot find out from the minister. We are now aware that there could be around $10 million of missing funds for public housing—an election promise broken.
How could we forget the $10 million fire safety debacle of a couple of years ago? Has that all been spent yet? I do not think so. I do not think this government has its eye on the ball on public housing, and it will be the people living in public housing accommodation who will suffer.
This budget does not appear to do anything extra in relation to the appearance of the city and its environs, apart from the imposition of a discriminatory city heart tax and the proposed hike in rental fees imposed on outdoor cafes. There appears to be nothing additional in this budget to tackle the increasing problems of graffiti and other vandalism that is rife across the territory.
Of course, it is always the poor old department of urban services that will bear the brunt of the job cuts while we see the Chief Minister’s Department has 17 executives out of 217, and the priority project unit in the Chief Minister’s Department has four staff and $2.2 million to spend all on its own.
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