Page 2503 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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rain on people’s parades, I think that we should be very careful to ensure that the well-intentioned beginning does not peter away and that the memory of the person we are trying to mark is not somehow shown a lack of respect because we have not got a clear idea how the scholarship will be administered and how it will be funded in a sustainable way. (Second speaking period taken.)
In conclusion, I want to make some comments about the youth detention centre, which is now called the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre. So some of Quamby is now Bimberi, and. I want to comment on the way this has changed. Those of us who have been around for a while would remember that some time ago a large amount of money was set aside—admittedly, for the most part not spent—to upgrade Quamby and then it was eventually decided that Quamby was un-upgradeable.
But there has still been a fair amount of money—an extraordinarily large amount of money—spent on a demountable building in the last couple of years. Then the minister went to cabinet and got $20 million, which was then doubled to $40 million, for the new centre. It was eventually decided to put the centre at Mitchell and it is now being called Bimberi. I note that the money has now gone to $42.5 million; there is an escalator factor in the funding.
I have to pay credit to the minister, who seems to be much more successful than the Attorney-General in getting money for detention facilities. He does not have an escalator in his funding and the result is that we are getting fewer and fewer beds for more and more money at an increasing cost per bed. I notice that that $40 million for a 40-bed facility boils down to just slightly more than a $1 million a bed, because it is $42.5 million.
I note also that the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre will provide Gungahlin with its first swimming pool. There will be a swimming pool at the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre while residents of Gungahlin do not have a public swimming pool. There is one at a health club, but there is not a public swimming pool which is accessible to people who cannot afford the health club rates and fees. I hope that we might be able to have some negotiations whereby the people from Gungahlin can arrange weekend access to the only publicly funded pool in Gungahlin. Maybe there will be visitors’ time.
Generally speaking, this is an extraordinarily difficult and fraught area. It deals with families at their most difficult times and when they are their most vulnerable. I would like to put on the record my general satisfaction with the progress of things but reiterate my concerns about the decline in the workforce, which is something that we have to be vigilant about, the lateness of the legislation—it is well and truly overdue and it has been an extraordinary long time in coming to fruition—and, in particular, the high proportion of children of indigenous origins who are in care. This is something that we as a community need to do more about.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (9.01): One of the issues with this budget is being able to identify the commitment of resources—that is, staff and funding—by the Stanhope government to indigenous affairs. If you asked whether anyone knew where indigenous affairs appeared in the budget, you would basically get blank looks, because indigenous affairs is included in output class 3.2, community affairs, under Disability, Housing and Community Services, lumped together on page 198 with
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