Page 3149 - Week 10 - Thursday, 15 August 2013
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that there is no longer a need to make a donation. As all members in this Assembly know, that simply is not the case. It is incumbent on the minister and her directorate to manage the expectations of the local community as this scheme goes live locally.
The enhanced service offer, part of this year’s budget, is another piece of the puzzle that is DisabilityCare. The feedback I have received about the first round of grants has been that in some cases people are finding it difficult to navigate their way through the application process, and there has been quite some misunderstanding around the types of services and assistance or aids that can be applied for.
Just a couple of weeks ago, I met with members of the Canberra Blind Society. They told me that they were spending a great deal of time assisting their members and people that they assist to apply for the grants as the paperwork is too difficult to understand. I think that it would be reasonable to conclude that there are many within the community that have not applied for these grants simply because the process is too hard or complex. I only hope that this process is improved and properly reviewed and revised in the lead-up to July 2014.
The new reforms will impact the sector in a significant way, and much of that impact will be felt by the service providers themselves. This means a new way of doing business for them and the sector. Readiness is crucial to the success of the rollout of the scheme in the ACT. We cannot allow smaller service providers to be lost as an unintended consequence of this reform.
Another issue that has become obvious to me throughout the budget process is this government’s failure to stick to its strategy to improve the employment prospects of people with a disability, particularly within the ACT public service. In 2011 the then Chief Minister, Jon Stanhope, outlined a strategy that would seek to increase the number of people identifying as having a disability employed in the ACT public service from 327 employees, or 1.6 per cent of the total public service, to a total of 655 people, or 3.4 per cent, by 2015. Where are we at currently? We are far short of the target set down for 2013. We are currently at 375.
Whilst the government are quick to tell the Assembly that they are doing all they can, I feel that it is incumbent upon governments to lead by example in this space. If the public sector is proactive in creating a workplace where individuals with a disability can make a positive contribution, the private sector will surely be quick to follow. If the government is not going to regularly review and refresh its approach to meeting its targets, there is little point to setting them in the first place. In my opinion, the government have dropped the ball in this area.
I would like to turn now to the Indigenous affairs portfolio. I start by noting that funding for Indigenous initiatives is spread throughout the entire budget. Therefore it is often a difficult, if not impossible, exercise to ascertain the exact amount of funding directed at programs and initiatives as a whole. I note that this issue has again been highlighted by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body on a number of occasions.
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