Page 3634 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 24 November 2021
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sector partners to ensure that we can deliver our ambitious social reform agenda, and this includes funding the full review and modernisation of the Children and Young People Act, enabling a significant suite of reforms; and investing in the completion and ongoing maintenance and improvement of the Child and Youth Record Information System, known as CYRIS, to support the work of our frontline child protection workforce and to enable reporters, community partners, young people and carers to connect more easily with Child and Youth Protection Services.
The budget includes increasing the rate of indexation for funded non-government organisations and supporting the wage increase for community sector workers, as determined by the Fair Work Commission. We continue to work with the sector to better understand what is required to deliver true sector sustainability, a process commenced by my colleague Suzanne Orr. This budget does not ignore the important, albeit less flashy, investments that are needed to strengthen the way that we support the most vulnerable members of our community.
The Healing and Reconciliation Fund will invest $20 million over 10 years to support priorities identified by the community. The Healing and Reconciliation Fund is intended to fund projects and processes identified and administered in partnership with the local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The budget includes $362,000 from the fund to support the establishment of a Ngunnawal Language Centre, an identified community priority. This builds on our commitment in the last budget to support a facilitated conversation with Ngunnawal traditional custodians about a treaty and what a treaty process could mean for them. Labor promised the Healing and Reconciliation Fund at the 2020 election. In delivering the fund, we will advance the government’s commitment under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, specifically priority reform area 2, strengthening the community-controlled sector, and the government’s commitment to achieving the outcomes of the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Agreement 2019-2028.
I acknowledge that these commitments sit alongside an array of other measures, including—I know that this was spoken about earlier in relation to the Justice and Community Safety portfolio—the establishment of an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children’s Commissioner. My colleague Minister Cheyne is leading that work, and I am very pleased to see that work reaching some practical fruition.
This budget, as I have indicated, includes funding to deliver a purpose-built facility for Gugan Gulwan Youth Aboriginal Corporation. Through this budget, the government will fund the construction of a purpose-built facility for Gugan at its existing site in Wanniassa. The budget commits $14.8 million to the construction of this new facility, with most of the funding beyond 2021-22 being provisioned but allocated for this purpose. This initiative builds on $150,000 in the 2018-19 budget for a feasibility study into this project, and $568,000 in the August 2020 economic and fiscal update and the 2021-22 budget, for early planning work and structural and services design work.
Gugan has been involved in every step of this project, and we will continue to partner with and be led by them. This project reflects our commitment to support the growth of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled sector and helps to
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