Page 5319 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 November 2011
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that they artificially jacked up the price of a home, which the social determinants of health tell us is the most essential thing you need: a job and a roof over your head. This is the government that took the roofs from over the heads of those less well off in this territory. (Time expired.)
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health and Minister for Industrial Relations) (4.43): As usual, we had an arrogant, patronising and angry speech from the shadow treasurer, a speech that he often comes in and gives in this place. What Mr Smyth, in his arrogance, has done by trying to destroy the good work that we are putting in place with our community partners around targeted assistance is this. All of those initiatives that you just ridiculed and said how hopeless they were actually came from the people working at the coalface with people experiencing financial disadvantage.
Mr Smyth interjecting—
MS GALLAGHER: Mr Smyth, I listened to you in silence. The people working at the coalface actually made these suggestions to the government at the community roundtable. If you had had a community roundtable, I am sure they would have come and put similar ideas to you. They suggested low interest loans and spoke about the fact that banks offer them in other jurisdictions.
Mr Smyth interjecting—
MS GALLAGHER: Mr Smyth, I am trying to give a speech here. I listened to you in silence. They asked for low interest loans because people said: “We do not want handouts. We can manage, and we want to manage, on our own. But if there is a cost that comes up, an unexpected large cost that we have not factored into our budgets, we do not want to put it on our credit cards and then manage that debt. We would like another opportunity, whether it be through a low interest loan or whatever.”
The ideas that came through the announcements I made, however much they have irritated the opposition, have all come from the community partners. They are worthy of greater examination. As our community grows and develops, old ways of doing assistance—for example, targeting just concession card holders—need to be examined. That is what we are hearing from the community—that the bottom two quintiles, the bottom 40 per cent, are the people that require extra assistance. We have some data on that—not a great deal of data—and about the ACT government and how we can assist. We do know that there are about 7,000 people who live in the census collection districts that fall in the bottom 10 per cent, the most disadvantaged category in the country. We know about eight per cent live in districts that fall into the bottom 30 per cent. That is about 27,000—almost 28,000—people.
I expect that the target group for the targeted assistance strategy being considered by the panel that Gordon Ramsay will chair will be looking at those who are least affluent, so the bottom 20 per cent, but also moving out of the area where concessions are currently available and looking into disposable income and cost of living pressures on households that are doing it really tough. And there are a number of them in the ACT. It is somewhat masked on a jurisdictional basis by the relative affluence of the
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