Page 3137 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 17 October 2006
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
they were developed in consultation with the sector, whether they reflect best practice social policy or whether they are simply the result of a bureaucratic or ministerial preference?
MR HARGREAVES: We have to take a slight step backwards with this sort of thing, which is not unusual when dealing with Dr Foskey. Members might recall that the government ran some ministerial housing forums last year. One of them was about the viability of the community and social housing sector. It was brought up at that forum by the proponents and the deliverers of service in that sector that there were too many operators in the sector doing specialist work and there was a need to start thinking about amalgamation and that there was a need to start talking about the percentage of their funds that they were spending on administration. It turned out that one provider was spending 30 per cent of the funds allocated to it on back-end services. That is just not on. It was agreed at that forum that people would go away and think about how they were going to do it.
In the context of the budget, it was determined that the ACT was considerably overmatching funds, according to the commonwealth-state housing agreement, for no good reason. The government took the decision that those funds would no longer be available, because they were clearly going to an inefficient system which was not delivering outcomes to the people it purported to serve.
There has been an imputation or an inference on Dr Foskey’s part that there is a draconian government going “whack” with a big stick and saying, “You are not getting any more money and that is the end of it. Just take that.” That is not so. When the government decision was made, I had conversations with almost all of the organisations, as I recall. Certainly, the department has been having many conversations with people around changing the way that they deliver their services because, if they do not change and do not deliver their services efficaciously, the funds no longer will be provided to them. It is not the responsible thing to do to continue to fund an inefficient system.
Most of the people in that sector have come on board. Most of the people have spoken in detail with the department. I know that funds have been put aside—about $250,000, if my memory serves me correctly—to assist people with the transition. For example, we have out there a couple of very small practitioners or providers of services, each of whom has an administrative system. It makes eminent sense for those people, without losing their speciality, to combine their administration and cut their costs by almost 30 per cent. That makes sense. That is what we are asking the sector to do.
But we can no longer afford to continue to overmatch the funds provided to that sector when weighed up against the commonwealth-state housing agreement. That is just not on. The government has done a responsible thing. It has actually responded to comments put to it in the ministerial forum last year, it has responded to the comments brought forward in the housing summit and it is assisting those organisations to come to grips with this sort of thing. We have slipped into complacency about this. There is not a bottomless bucket of money. We will be working with these people to make sure that the service they provide are delivered and directed appropriately.
Mr Speaker, I do not think I can add much more to Dr Foskey’s question at the moment.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .