Page 1706 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 4 June 2014
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and will support them to end the cycle of homelessness, for some people for the very first time. This project is bricks and mortar; it is concrete and it is real. It is well underway in the Gungahlin town centre, and this budget provides the recurrent funding that will add to that bricks and mortar contribution that has already been made. This is in real contrast to the uncertainty we see in the homelessness space that has been created by the federal budget.
I am appreciative that we have seen a one-year extension on the national partnership agreement on homelessness, but we have seen no outyear funding for that in the current federal budget. There is real uncertainty right across the housing and homelessness sector as a result of the federal government’s budget. There is a real policy vacuum at the moment. I assume the minister is still working out the final policy direction in which he wishes to go, and I am certainly very keen to engage in discussions with him about that because we have got some very successful examples here in the ACT.
I am very conscious of the fact that the outcome of the federal budget is one of uncertainty. I am certainly hearing that from the NGOs working in the sector, those people who look at the policies of governments at the state, territory and federal levels very closely, and nobody really has a clear sense of where housing and homelessness policy is going. The sooner we can resolve that the better. I hope clarity will be provided as soon as possible from the commonwealth minister so that the community sector and state and territory governments can start to plan around what I suspect may be a significant change of direction. Certainly some of the measures highlighted in the commission of audit represent a very significant change. The lack of confirmation of any of those in the federal budget means there is uncertainty out there, and that is something we need to move past.
I am also very pleased about the way public housing has been discussed in this budget, and I welcome very warmly the words of the Treasurer about our need to renew public housing and to accelerate the renewal of that public housing. Clearly there has been a significant amount of media speculation about that, and I am concerned. I have had feedback from some of the public housing tenants across the territory about that media speculation. I can assure people of two things: one, the government is committed, as the Treasurer underlined in the budget presentation yesterday, to maintaining the number of public housing properties in the ACT. Second, for those tenants reading media reports, they can rest assured they will not be required to move until they have had very clear advice from public housing. They should not worry about the media speculation; they should focus on the fact that Housing ACT has a very clear program of working closely with tenants over a sustained period of time so they have real clarity about what they are doing. I think we will come back to that issue later today under the motion Ms Lawder will move.
One of the other areas I am very pleased about in the budget is the recurrent funding provided to the Aboriginal Legal Service, money that was originally intended to enhance the work this vital and well-evaluated service provides. I am sure this money will be even more welcome in the current environment as the federal budget strips funding from community legal services left, right and centre across the board, not just from the Aboriginal Legal Service but also from groups like the Environmental
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