Page 4510 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 14 October 2009
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What can be done to assist those most in need? ACOSS recommend a national anti-poverty plan to take coordinated action across all levels of government to reduce poverty and alleviate its causes. They also want an increase in the rate of the lower social security payments and additional employment assistance for the long-term unemployed to get them back into work. This would be in combination with the maintenance of the minimum wage to reduce poverty in working households and increased access to affordable housing by an expanding investment in social housing and improvements to rent assistance. This would all need to be underpinned by improved affordability of essential health and community services.
Within this motion today the Greens have proposed a measure that will provide substantial reassurance to those in the Canberra community that are working tirelessly to try to match, with limited resources, the increasing demand for their services. With the removal of community funding programs, which provide assistance in alleviating poverty, from the one per cent efficiency dividend measures in the 2010-11 budget, organisations can effectively plan with a degree of certainty how they will assist into the next financial year Canberrans who are doing it tough.
Within the recently published ACOSS report, the Australian community sector survey 2009—of the 518 respondents who answered a question about the three most important issues facing their organisation, 76 per cent reported inadequate funding or insufficient resources as a major issue facing their service. Of note also was that 85 per cent of respondents disagreed with the statement that government funding covers the true cost of delivering contracted services.
The second commitment within this motion addresses the importance of the inclusion of a poverty impact analysis as part of the triple bottom line framework. This will mean that before major decisions and policy directions are set we can be assured that potential poverty impacts are identified for the modification of decisions or the introduction of measures to ameliorate any of the identified impacts.
Therefore, I thank the government for its support of this motion and the commitments within it. I believe that many people will welcome the Assembly’s commitment to eliminating poverty or attempting through this motion to set us on the way to eliminate poverty within the ACT.
I would also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge the Reverend Gordon Ramsay, who is in the gallery today. Gordon is the co-chair of the Anti-Poverty Week ACT facilitation group. I thank him for the tireless work he does year after year with those most in need in the Canberra community. It is great to see Gordon and the committee have really set up a great week of activities that highlight the impact poverty has on families and individuals, and highlights the issue around children. In the previous two years I was a co-chair of the Anti-Poverty Week facilitation group in the ACT. I am very pleased that it is in good hands and that it will continue, not just this year but in the coming years, to highlight this important issue.
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Treasurer, Minister for Health, Minister for Community Services and Minister for Women) (6.13): I thank Ms Hunter for bringing this motion forward today. The government is happy to support this motion around
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