Page 2768 - Week 08 - Thursday, 24 August 2006
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supplementary funding, I am going to have to take it from somebody. Would they like to tell me who that person is? I make the same offer to Dr Foskey. If she reckons she wants me to give more money to ACT Shelter or to ACTCOSS, then she can stand up in this house and tell me which one of the housing providers I am going to take that money from.
I have a distinct amount of money. This Assembly appropriates it for that line. I have no more money than that. I cannot spend money that is not appropriated. It has to come from within that line. Dr Foskey can stand up here and tell me who is going to miss out for me to give out the money. Until she does that, we are going to continue on our merry way.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.15—Department of Justice and Community Safety—$159,335,000 (net cost of outputs) $103,143,000 (capital injection), $101,331,000 (payments on behalf of the territory), totalling $363,809,000.
MR STEFANIAK (Ginninderra—Leader of the Opposition) (12.53 am): I move amendment No 2 circulated in my name [see schedule 1 at page 2828].
I will speak firstly in relation to JACS and then about the amendment. I will start with a couple of areas of congratulations to the government which it is only fair to mention. The first is that, after much evidence that the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions was understaffed, some action has been taken. An extra half million dollars was allocated there, which will see several additional staff. That will greatly help that office, which has been understaffed. It is having some real problems with a lot of complex court matters, including having to deal now with the totally unnecessary Human Rights Act and things like that. I note that the extra staffing there is a positive move.
My colleague Mr Pratt will have more to say in relation to police. I congratulate him on his great efforts over the last 2½ years or so in pointing out to the government how badly understaffed our police service is. I am pleased to see some improvement there—not as much as we, the AFP or the AFPA would wish for but at least an improvement. Mr Pratt can take a lot of credit for forcing the government into that. If anyone in the government had the sense to back that, good on them as well.
There are, however, a number of concerns in relation to the JACS budget. Sadly, the greatest concern is in relation to the prison. I must say that in recent months I have found very few people indeed who want to see this prison built, certainly at this point in time. In fact up until today, when I went to a colleague’s farewell at lunchtime, briefly—and there were a number of lawyers there—I do not think I found anyone, even including police, whom I spoke to, who thought a prison should be built at this time. There were a couple of lawyers I talked to today who still thought it was not a bad idea. But no-one in the community, apart from them, in about the last six weeks has said that this is a good idea. There are other pressures in the ACT budget—obviously, pressures the government has largely brought on itself but pressures nonetheless. Those pressures are, of course, in such areas as education in particular. There is, I think, substantial doubt about the case for an ACT prison. It is certainly one of the largest, if not the largest, capital works projects in the history of ACT self-government.
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