Page 2500 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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and families, but a higher proportion of those students are disadvantaged or come from marginalised communities. Of course, a much greater proportion of parents and students are affected by the flow-on impacts of these changes. The closure of shopfronts and the slashing of bus services, for example, have had tangible social impacts on just these people, with flow-on consequences for government and community services.
The Community Inclusion Board is probably the body best placed to conduct some of this analysis of the impacts on community services and the community sector of last year’s budget. While I have already expressed my regret that such an analysis was not conducted prospectively prior to the 2007-07 budget or even prior to this most recent budget, it is even more concerning that there is no funding built into this budget to closely monitor and evaluate the impact of the decision to benchmark funding against the Australian average, which we understand the secret functional review was asked to do. (Second speaking period taken.)
One of the priorities of this budget is “continuing to implement the final phase of the whole-of-government ACT homelessness strategy”. Last year’s ill-considered budget hit the agencies involved in its delivery very hard, and it is still hitting them. It is stupid and self-serving to pretend otherwise. It is worth looking closely at how these cuts are affecting the strategy’s capacity to deliver long-term—in other words, meaningful—outcomes.
The functional review apparently judged ACT SAAP services as less efficient than those in other states because they did not process as many people. Those services are now being run much more tightly to this department’s agenda. After the cuts, service providers no longer have the time to ensure that the people they see get their kids to school, talk to the right bit of the Centrelink bureaucracy and actually sort out a few issues so that they can move out of emergency housing into something more secure. In the eyes of the functional review, that kind of support was inefficient, so the no-wrong-doors policy, which is so clearly about being able to demonstrate more bed nights for more people, is putting inappropriate people into refuges—pushing people out when they have nowhere secure to go.
Speaking of delivery, to help us understand how government policy, shaped by the functional review, is working, I ask the Community Inclusion Board to deliver its promised poverty impact analysis of the strategy. I think it would find that this numbers game is delivering worse outcomes in the long run. It is no longer helping people out of poverty. It is moving towards a night shelter model, which is about a bed, a shower and a bowl of soup only. I do not see how the government can be proud of that. Maybe that is why we are yet to see the inclusion board’s report. It is certainly not mentioned.
Finally, I was extremely disappointed to see that the renew community infrastructure community grants program was discontinued. This was a very good initiative and helped solve a problem which many community organisations face, which is that generally infrastructure is not an allowable project for community grants to fund. Given the high cost of infrastructure, such as IT and so on, it then made it very difficult for community groups to build, maintain or purchase key pieces of equipment or even build a storage shed.
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