Page 2670 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 15 August 2017
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This is but one example of an area that needs crucial attention. I can name many others that have been ignored for too long. There is the lack of appropriate change facilities at many of our public sportsgrounds. A drive around the suburbs will demonstrate that many sporting clubs now use containers as a way of storing their gear, containers which have been vandalised and become an eyesore for the local community. I could go on, but the list would be too long.
To maintain transparency in the budget in this important portfolio area, we call on the government to act. I agree with the committee’s recommendation that, rather than a broad number being included as part of output 2.4, city maintenance and services, a separate budget line be maintained for sporting and sportsground facilities management which will include detailed line items for the costs and incomes associated with maintenance, lighting and other usage charges, irrigation, capital upgrades, capital expenditure, user charges income from sportsground facilities management and employee expenses resulting from sportsground facilities management.
I turn now to my shadow Indigenous affairs portfolio. Over the last little while I have had much to say on matters pertaining to this portfolio, but this is because the government’s ongoing failure in this area gives me much to be concerned about. I acknowledge again that this is a difficult area; I am not oblivious to the many areas of disadvantage, even intergenerational disadvantage, which are experienced by Indigenous Canberrans. But with the small numbers involved, not enough is being done to work with appropriate Indigenous organisations to overcome some of these significant areas of disadvantage.
Of course, this government would like you to believe differently. During budget week, the government released a glossy brochure which detailed the funding that would be spent on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander initiatives. The numbers seemed staggering at first glance—$21.6 million on the arts, a $12 million facility for Winnunga, just over half a million dollars for families, $100,000 in seed funding, $5.3 million for through care, $3.2 million for the AMC and $5.2 million for community legal centres: a total of just over $42 million. But as with many things that concern this government, the devil is always in the detail, a detail it is good at hiding, ignoring or perhaps wishing would go away.
Let us start with the arts, which falls in this directorate, and probably the most significant promise, $21.6 million. You may be wondering what this will be spent on. I can now inform the Assembly that the actual number is much lower. The specific funding for engaging with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts and culture is $400,000 over four years. That is $100,000 per year for specific Indigenous funding: not $21.6 million, not even two per cent. We call on the ACT government to give the breakdown of arts funding for ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-specific programs and grants, not as part of an overall budget.
This is not the only figure that does not add up, but I will reserve future figures for my responses to the appropriate directorates. Needless to say, the total spending on the Indigenous community is substantially less than the $42 million claimed by this
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