Page 3070 - Week 08 - Thursday, 25 June 2009
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that we found out that two youths had made it onto the roof, which, unsurprisingly, is not an area where they are usually meant to be. His answer was that it was an incident, not a breach, which I found to be pretty special. You would think that if he was interested in reporting on the safety, security and wellbeing of the young people in the centre he would have admitted that that was a problem or a breach rather than an incident, as he defined it. I will hand over to Mrs Dunne.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (9.19): This is an extraordinarily important line in the budget which deals with so many areas that it is hard to do it justice in the time allotted.
I will turn first to the area of women. In its snapshot on the ACT budget, ACTCOSS applauds two budget initiatives: the extension of four weeks to existing paid maternity leave arrangements and the provision of funding for diagnostic mammography services for women who currently do not meet the access criteria for the BreastScreen program. The Canberra Liberals also support these initiatives.
In relation to the extended maternity leave program, however, ACTCOSS cautions that it “will have little impact on women experiencing disadvantage, poverty and vulnerability, who are most in need of support”. However, ACTCOSS’s greatest concern, according to its snapshot document, is the failure of this year’s budget to include a women’s budget statement. Over the years, I have been critical of the women’s budget statement for its failure to address adequately the issues that one would expect. Answering questions on the women’s budget statement in estimates hearings, the minister said:
I have always found that budget statement to be fraught in terms of the content and how useful it is.
She went on to say:
I just do not feel that we have ever really got the statement right so that it is a useful analysis of the budget.
The minister continued to explain that she took responsibility for the women’s budget statement and so she was looking for a better alternative. I will be interested to see what work is done to replace the women’s budget statement and whether we end up with a more useful analysis in terms of the budget.
The recent controversy about the funding of the ACT Women’s Legal Service cannot go unmentioned. The real truth behind who is paying what to whom and whether or not the commonwealth and the ACT’s funding have increased remains unclear, and I will continue to follow up that matter. However, let me make this observation. The Women’s Legal Centre is one of those quiet achievers that fills a gaping hole in the services provided to women in our community, particularly Indigenous women. To their great credit, the staff of the centre, who, elsewhere, could be earning multiples of the salaries they earn at the centre, have decided to take pay cuts so that they can continue to provide services. This dedication and the services that they provide should get more recognition from both the commonwealth and the ACT government.
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