Page 2492 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 22 August 2006
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are trained. That is primarily because people need to earn a reasonable income at certain times in their lives. The community sector lacks sustainability.
I am glad to see the task force report finally made public. By delaying the release of the report, the government has avoided pressure to fund the implementation of its recommendations this year. The viability of many of the community services and their capacity to work together is being further eroded in the meantime. In the short term, that might suit the government but, in the longer term, it will not. I look forward to its full response to the task force report.
There have been big changes in the business and economic development portfolio, and I am sure the Liberals will expand on this. The cuts in Business ACT staff by two-thirds appear drastic.
The cessation of the Small Business Commissioner is disappointing. Professor Schaper was only given a year. From my meetings with him, he seemed extremely enthusiastic and keen to develop his role. I well recall the scoffing when his position was created and this government’s emphatic reply that it was an important position that would deliver real benefits to small business. It seems very clear to me that either the government was just making it up at the time and it was all hot air or it did not know what it was doing, or both.
In the context of supporting small business, I note the comments made by the minister for education at a consultation meeting in Gungahlin. Hall public school supporters—or was it Belconnen?—raised their concern that, in closing the school, the ACT government might be sounding the death knell to the shops and, thus, much of the life in the village. The minister’s response was that he is not here to support business.
Even if the ACT government has got rid of most of its business support, it is obliged to consider the impact of its other actions on businesses and communities. The big budget-related initiatives in this area are the ACT Skills Commission and the Live in Canberra campaign. It is worth questioning what increased effort the government is putting into training our own residents in areas where there is a skills shortage. Importing skilled labour may be needed but we should also be looking to the long-term utilisation of our current residents, particularly those at risk or currently enduring unemployment and underemployment.
I will return in more detail to these issues under education, but they run across government. Cutting CIT funding and pushing it into a university model with the University of Canberra will disadvantage those students who cannot afford a HECS debt and who need more immediate work-related, post-school options, particularly in Tuggeranong and Gungahlin.
We have seen several full-page advertisements projecting the government’s rationale in its disputes over schools and teachers’ salaries. It is another of the Howard government strategies that this government has picked up. While significant cuts are being made to portfolios like housing and homelessness, there has been an increase of $469,000 for the communications section in the Chief Minister’s Department, including $100,000 for additional corporate overheads due to a larger staff complement, despite the department as a whole losing 500 staff, or as near as we can guess. Perhaps it is no surprise.
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