Page 3147 - Week 07 - Thursday, 30 June 2011
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and it is an area of health care which remains underfunded. It is also an area that does not receive the focus it should, as dental health is crucial to a person’s overall health, particularly for older people.
The Council on the Ageing submission on the respecting patient choices program was also unfunded. Ensuring older people are aware of their choices if they become ill is important. The Greens would like to see greater promotion of this program, which is an existing program in the ACT government, especially to older people. It is important to provide older people with that information so that they are aware of their options. It is a very good program. We just hope that it does receive increasing resources so that more older people can access it.
MR COE (Ginninderra) (12.52 am): I will be speaking to the Community Services Directorate line item of the budget in my capacity as shadow minister for youth. Whilst Mrs Dunne has already touched on a fair portion of the broader youth portfolio with regard to Bimberi, in her capacity as shadow minister for children and community services, I would like to touch on a few other areas. One is related to youth justice. It is with regard to a program which is listed in the budget on page 107. It is a program which is designed to help reduce the rate of reoffending amongst young people.
I note that $450,000 or thereabouts has been allocated over the next four years, but I do not think it is clear how these funds are going to be spent. I do not think it is necessarily going to be enough to meet the demand. That is not to say that we are calling for more funding, but we certainly want to make sure that the funding in the youth area of the directorate is working as hard as it possibly could. It seems to me that this particular line item in the budget has not been thought out as well as it could have, and I hope they do the work and research that are necessary to ensure that that $400,000-odd is spent as effectively as it possibly could be and to ensure that any future money which might be allocated to that area is also spent in a prudent way.
I note that around $500,000 for the next four years has been spent with regard to transitioning young people from out-of-home care. This is something which is a welcome initiative. But we have to remember that there are many other issues, as flagged by the Youth Coalition in one of their reports on the budget—in part 2 of their budget review. I think it is well worth the government looking into some of those concerns raised with regard to that out-of-home care package.
Broadly on the youth portfolio, I think it is very important that we remember that, whilst there are some issues which are exclusively related to young people, there are many broader issues that have a profound impact on young people’s lives—things such as the cost of living, things such as housing affordability, things such as the availability of public transport, things such as the availability of education. These are all core youth policy areas. We are not necessarily going to see it in a budget as it relates to youth, but they are core areas of government decision making which affect the quality of life of young people. We need to ensure that we have a very broad approach when we are considering the welfare of young people in this city. We should not simply look at the line items in a budget such as this; we should look at all the areas of government which do have an impact on young people.
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