Page 2136 - Week 06 - Thursday, 8 June 2017
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believe that we need a rolling program aiming to increase community and public housing stock by at least 100 properties per year, with a longer term goal to ideally achieve 10 per cent of our housing stock as public and community housing, to ensure that we can provide for our growing population.
We welcome the investment in feasibility studies for an older persons housing facility for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, for accommodation for people with high and complex needs and for an additional Common Ground facility. We were central to the development of Common Ground in Gungahlin and we know it works.
We welcome the significant investment in the children and youth protection service and out of home care system. It is important to strengthen our response to the most vulnerable in our community, the children and young people who are not safe in their own homes. We must ensure that our responses provide them with the stepping stones they need to go on to live productive lives, to engage with the education system and to participate fully in our community. We must also ensure adequate and appropriate supports for parents with a disability so that, if the only challenge to their parenting is their disability, they get the supports they need for their children to remain safely with them.
The Greens welcome the investment in the Office of LGBTIQ Affairs and A Gender Agenda. The LGBTIQ community still experiences discrimination on a regular basis, both institutionally and socially. We hope to see real changes as a result of this investment. In particular, the specific funds to improve access to services for trans, intersex and gender diverse people are welcome as this group experiences disproportionate disadvantage and discrimination. The ongoing investment in the Safe Schools Coalition is welcome and in line with our unequivocal support provided for this initiative. It is vital that we work to ensure inclusivity for LGBTIQ young people in the school context.
We welcome the investment in the Office of Disability to ensure that there will be ongoing oversight and policy input under the NDIS. As the first jurisdiction to fully integrate the NDIS, this is particularly important. However, we need to be sure that people with disability who are not eligible for NDIS supports are not left behind. We hope that this office will assist with providing advice on gaps in the system and proposals to remedy those gaps as well as ongoing policy advice to the whole of government.
We welcome the investment in supporting greater social inclusion by funding training, awareness and infrastructure upgrades for community organisations. However, we note the limits of spending $200,000 over four years. We also welcome the commitment to develop a disability justice strategy, a Greens’ commitment in the election campaign and an important way to address the systemic disadvantage that people with disabilities experience in our justice system.
People with disabilities are more often negatively impacted when they are a victim of crime, as well as when accusations have been made against them. They are disproportionately represented in our prison population and have an increased
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