Page 843 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 22 March 2017
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years and a great deal of effort to produce. But the lack of action from this government is resulting in a major community organisation being forced to fold for the want of $110,000.
Once again I quote Mr Stanhope, and I certainly do not want to make it a precedent but, at least on this issue, we are both committed to SHOUT:
The ACT government, with a budget of $5 billion, can’t fund $120,000 to support children with brain injuries, women with breast cancer, children with cancer? The consequences for our community and our society are quite dramatic.
The ACT government has lost its direction, and in the aftermath of its 2016 election success it seems it has also lost its soul and its conscience. SHOUT are the epitome of the quiet achiever. They go about doing their work assisting hundreds of families on a daily basis, providing valuable services in a myriad of ways, all of this done 52 weeks of the year for 47 groups; groups that are all at risk of going under with the ACT government’s abandonment of SHOUT. It is disingenuous for the minister to plead that it is not the decision of the ACT government for SHOUT to close. What choice did the SHOUT board have?
My motion calls on the government to commit financial assistance to SHOUT until at least 30 June 2019, to recognise that abandoning SHOUT will have massive flow-on effects for dozens of other groups and they too will face a similar future, and asks the ministers for health and disability to work with community organisations like SHOUT to enable them to continue their work with ACT self-help groups.
There is nothing in my motion that is unreasonable to ask of any government to provide for our community. What is unreasonable is that this government feels it is perfectly acceptable to let down a vulnerable sector of our society. What is unreasonable is for the Canberra community to have a government that shunted SHOUT back and forth between directorates and ministerial offices for well over six months with no answer, leaving them in limbo. What is unreasonable is for a minister to dismiss SHOUT’s calls for help as premature and panicking for no reason, when two weeks later we found ourselves in a debate not about how SHOUT will continue its work but about whether it will at all.
The reason that I wanted to be a member of the Legislative Assembly is to give a voice to those who may not be in a position to do it for themselves. Today I stand here on this side of the chamber to lend that voice to some of Canberra’s most vulnerable. Today I call on and implore the government to stand with me to do the same by voting for this motion. I commend my motion to the Assembly.
MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Community Services and Social Inclusion, Minister for Disability, Children and Youth, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister for Workplace Safety and Industrial Relations) (10.42): I start by seeking leave to move the amendments circulated in my name together.
Leave granted.
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