Page 2618 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
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Mr Coe: A point of order.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Resume your seat, Mr Rattenbury.
Mr Coe: Mr Assistant Speaker, I wonder whether it is appropriate for Mr Rattenbury to be defending Ms Berry in a budget line item related to JACS.
Mr Corbell: Point of order: there is no point of order.
MR ASSISTANT SPEAKER: Thank you, Mr Corbell. There is no point of order. Mr Rattenbury.
MR RATTENBURY: For the sake of clarity, I did no such thing as Mr Coe suggested. I actually said that yesterday’s behaviour in this place was deeply regrettable. Right across the board it was deeply regrettable, and there is no place for that sort of conduct in this place.
Let me return to the matters at hand. There is a range of important matters that anybody discussing the corrections budget in this place should be discussing, and I am more than happy to take questions on them at any time. ACT Corrective Services continues to work extremely hard and show a great level of professionalism in what is a very difficult portfolio. I look forward to continuing to work with them through the coming year as we implement this budget to deliver better outcomes in the Corrective Services space.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Legal Aid Commission (ACT)—
Schedule 1, Part 1.14—$275,000 (net cost of outputs), totalling $275,000.
Schedule 1A, Part 1.17—$9,670,000 (net cost of outputs), $234,000 (capital injection), totalling $9,904,000.
MR HANSON (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (4.30): Earlier this year in this place Mr Corbell made some comments about a reduction in federal government funding for the Legal Aid Commission. He said it was $400,000 and that it would have dire consequences for the commission and its service to the community, particularly the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. However, Mr Assistant Speaker, the estimates committee was told that this was a specific two-year contract from the commonwealth which had, in effect, been cut in half. But what Mr Corbell was trying to do was to make it appear that there was something sinister about this; that it was a cut to ongoing funding and that it would have a disastrous ongoing impact on the commissioner’s ability to deliver services on an ongoing basis. That was simply wrong: it was not ongoing funding; it was a two-year contract.
I fully acknowledge that it was unfortunate that the contract was cut short, because it does have an impact on service delivery in the area targeted by that fixed-term contract. As it turns out, the commission, at the end of 2013-14, had $100,000 left over from its allocation for that year and the commonwealth allowed it to keep it so
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