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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 7 Hansard (24 June) . . Page.. 2271 ..
MRS BURKE
(continuing):I am very disappointed. It simply is an insult to tell Volunteering ACT to be thankful for the $50,000 and to go away and make up the shortfall through some sort of grant application. I believe that that has put an inordinate amount of pressure upon the executive of Volunteering ACT. I am just flabbergasted that a government with a strong social agenda should see fit not to give them another $50,000. They have been on $100,000.
I ask that this government look at that again. Obviously, we all benefit from the efforts of our volunteers and there would be an impost on us all if the current situation were to continue, so I urge the government to look carefully at the measure it has taken and reconsider it. I have been in touch with Volunteering ACT as I have noted the comment in the report that Volunteering ACT met with the department and was told more of the same: that $50,000 will be it and it has to make up the shortfall. I think that that is being short sighted, and I ask the government to reconsider that.
MS TUCKER
(12.05): I will make some general comments about the Chief Minister's Department and then respond to Mr Smyth's amendment. My first comments are to do with government strategy overall. I think that it is fair to say that the notion of a whole-of-government approach to sustainability is yet to permeate the whole of the government. Affordable housing is a case in point. I will address it in more detail later, but it is telling that a high-profile government project such as Kingston Foreshore has no affordable or public housing structured in it.The partnership with the community sector is a whole-of-government activity. Whilst government funds the community sector to deliver services to the most marginalised people in our community, it has been a battle over the years to fund basic award entitlements for lower rated community sector workers, but even that commitment has not been made to those at a higher level.
Every Labor member would know that the Commonwealth Liberal government has continued the work of the previous Labor government in undermining the significance of award conditions and that, thanks to Peter Reith and the Australian Democrats, awards are now bare safety nets. In the ACT public service, real wage and salary levels, established through certified agreements, are around 40 per cent above award levels. This government has made much of ensuring that the most recent certified agreement at least reassured ACT public servants that they are not falling further behind their Commonwealth colleagues.
For the community sector, after a long battle with the Liberal government and then the Labor government in the ACT, this year's budget merely provides the necessary extra funds to cover these lower award rates. It is a victory of sorts but, unfortunately, the SACS award is still massively below real public sector pay rates and employment conditions and, whereas CA increases are factored into public sector appropriation as a matter of course, any new award has to be fought for in the community sector. The result, inevitably, is that senior and developing staff are creamed off by the public sector, or by business, year after year and the sector itself is in no position to train, develop or look after those people who are driving the community sector.
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