Page 2619 - Week 08 - Thursday, 14 August 2014
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that services could be continued a while longer. According to evidence given in the estimates hearings, this meant that services could continue to be delivered, and I quote from Hansard:
… until at least November this year, and we will have to reassess towards the end of the year.
The last part of that statement is important because, even in the knowledge that the funding would not continue beyond November, the commission told the committee:
We want to maintain and increase our services to that sector of the community.
So, even in light of the reduction in the specific-purpose contract with the commonwealth, and in the knowledge that the carryover funding would run out in November this year, the commission wants to maintain and increase its service to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community. Indeed, a priority for the commission in 2014-15, and I quote from the budget papers, is to:
Improve the provision of dispute resolution and other legal assistance services to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community.
And what is the government’s response to that aspiration? Not very much, Madam Assistant Speaker.
Taking into account the special funding provided to the commission for the Eastman matter over the past couple of years and funding for so-called expensive criminal cases, the government’s funding for the commission has in real terms remained pretty much static. In addition, there has been the requirement on the commission to meet efficiency dividends imposed by the government. This in effect amounts to reduced funding from the ACT government.
In 2011, for example, the estimates committee heard that the commission had to meet staff cost savings of $300,000 in 2011-12, the equivalent of a reduction in ACT government funding of $300,000. So it is okay for the government to reduce its funding by $300,000 for an important community service, but apparently it is not okay for the federal government to do the same thing to something that was only ever intended to last for two years. It is okay for the commission to aspire to greater things, especially in relation to services to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, but it is not okay for this to be supported by greater funding from the ACT government. One could call this hypocrisy, Madam Assistant Speaker, but I resist stooping to the depths.
Unfortunately, the commission will also suffer a fall in revenue from the ACT Law Society in 2014-15. This reduction, which derives from interest earned on the society’s statutory interest account, will exceed $400,000. Obviously, the government has no control over this, but it perhaps serves to demonstrate the need for the government to take a more holistic approach to the commission’s functions. Instead of taking the blinkered-eye approach by keeping its funding static in real terms and crying foul over external factors, this government should be taking more seriously its responsibility to the people it represents. The government needs to look at the
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