Page 1891 - Week 06 - Thursday, 5 May 2005
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Anyone who has been affected by, or has had friends or family affected by, mental illness will be disappointed to hear that this budget fails to allocate any additional funding to mental health services, with the exception of one program to help people returning from New South Wales correctional facilities. Community groups, including consumer and provider representatives, have been urging the government to substantially increase funding to mental health services. These calls have been ignored.
I welcome the additional $482,000 allocated to the family violence intervention program over the next four years. This is a successful program that has been widely recognised as good practice. I also welcome the $13 million for individual support packages for high-needs children and young people, as well as the additional $11 million for more care and protection staff and the $2.9 million for the establishment of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander unit in child and youth services. Nonetheless, I am dismayed by the continued growth in the need for crisis responses and I feel that it is really important to start investing more in prevention through family support programs. There is no additional funding for family support programs, despite the recent review of this program and the development of the children’s plan.
I am also concerned about the extraordinary amount being spent on the consolidation of the accommodation for the Office for Children, Youth and Family Support. Although this may be linked to a recommendation of the Vardon report, commonsense would say that spending nearly $5 million on this is extravagant, and I would be surprised if the same outcomes could not have been achieved more efficiently.
Further evidence for my argument on lack of prevention is noticeable through the budget allocation towards our youth. There is $40 million for the new Quamby Youth Detention Centre and $1.3 million for staffing at Quamby—initiatives that we applaud—and yet only $3 million for the individual support packages and $415,000 for community support services, and virtually no funding for youth dealing with mental illness, drug addictions, homelessness, or cultural and linguistic differences.
The Quamby Youth Detention Centre is certainly needed, but we must not forget to support our youth before they hit absolute crisis point or find themselves in Quamby. Our youth are our future, and even worse than continual tight budgets is the case of failing our sons and daughters when they are crying out in need and, in doing so, contributing to the crisis and future health and social problems they will face.
The ACT Greens welcome the increased funding of just under $8 million over four years to increase preschool hours to 12 hours per week per child, particularly if this is to be implemented in a flexible way that allows parents to choose the most appropriate format for participation for their child and does not force children to attend for two full days a week instead of the current pattern of half-day attendance.
We also welcome the allocation of additional funding to SCAN—funding to support access and participation needs of students with a disability—to meet the needs of increasing numbers of students with a disability, and the allocation of student support funds that will provide funding to government schools to give children and young people the opportunity to access and participate in school activities regardless of economic circumstances. We are disappointed that there are not more student support initiatives.
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