Page 1452 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
lobbying the government, to be writing letters to the editor, advocating on complex and difficult policy issues when they have got a whole lot of other things going on in their life. That is why we have the community sector advocating on behalf of, in this case, low income households who are struggling with energy pricing issues.
The government seems keen to assure us that, in fact, this is already the case and that services provided by ACTCOSS and the CARE Financial Counselling Service are meeting this objective. First of all, the CARE Financial Counselling Service is all about helping individuals with specific problems. It is a debt crisis management service. It is about helping individuals with specific personal problems. It is not an advocacy organisation.
I think it would be fair to say that the community sector do not agree that they are adequately resourced to do the job that the government assumes that they can do. In their 2009-10 budget submission that was rejected by the government, ACTCOSS made a specific request to “fund a position in the ACT to engage in systemic advocacy around the needs and interests of low-income and disadvantaged energy consumers”.
The Greens would urge the minister to reconsider this, if not in this budget then at least in the next budget, because I think ACTCOSS is an organisation that understands the pressures of low income households. It has done considerable policy work in this area and produced some very substantial documents and submissions. It is clearly one of the key experts in the ACT. Resourcing them to do that job well, I think, is an investment in the social fabric of the ACT.
Speaking to Mr Corbell’s proposed paragraph (e), this is the one where he noted:
That the ACT Government Sustainable Energy Policy … is due for release … and … is seeking to address assistance for low income and vulnerable energy customers as part of Outcome Five: Maintain Equity;
Again, there is obviously no problem acknowledging what the government are doing but I think his text is scarily aspirational. For example, will the government address assistance for low income and vulnerable energy customers or will they not? Or will they just try? I am afraid this paragraph is sadly symptomatic of the government’s entire draft energy policy, a document that is full of statements like “we will consider”, “we will explore”, “we will think about”, “we might look at”. I think the draft energy policy was quite poor on that front and I am concerned that we are seeing similar sort of language brought into a motion that is all about specific and concrete things to do to try to assist low income and under-pressure households with rising energy costs.
When it comes to omitting part (3) of my original motion, as I said, this is where the real kicking comes in, where the government basically seeks to gut the Greens’ motion. It takes out all of the concrete outcomes. I think it is interesting that the feedback that we have received from both the government and the Canberra Liberals is that they cannot support anything in this motion that will cost money. It is concerning, even in financially difficult times, that we cannot even have a conversation about what we should be spending money on and where the priorities
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video