Page 428 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 December 2008

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Investment in regional hubs is very important if we are to make good use of existing community infrastructure. This is money to begin the site works for the Holt, Cook and Village Creek developments. That would provide accommodation for many community organisations that provide vital services and need affordable and appropriate space. I have to say that using play schools and preschool venues also as community halls, providing ongoing accommodation for community tenants and building community gardens are all enlivening community development activities.

MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (9.23): The Canberra Liberals will be supporting the appropriation for the Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services and I would like to make a brief comment on some of the elements.

The big-ticket item, as Ms Bresnan said, is the $3½ million for emergency relief across welfare and community groups and carers and volunteers. While this funding is welcomed, the government seems to have stumbled across this as an issue somewhat belatedly. The Treasurer, in her presentation speech, commented that this funding is to provide urgent assistance to the vulnerable in our community who are being severely affected by the deteriorating national and international economy, which, by her own admission, she did not notice before the election.

I made the comment in passing at dinner to people who—

Ms Gallagher: You had dinner tonight.

Mr Stanhope: Did you have time for dinner?

MRS DUNNE: Yes. I am sorry, I went to two functions during the dinner break. Whilst the government was asleep and failed to notice that there was an economic crisis, people in the ACT were commenting to me before the election that one of the things that might benefit the Stanhope government was that in times of economic crisis people tend to vote for incumbents. So the electors noticed that there was an economic crisis, even if you did not, Ms Deputy Chief Minister and now Treasurer.

Suddenly it came up on you sometime after the election that, gosh, we have got an economic crisis. The minister yesterday could sit here and tell us how many times the share price index fell by 20 per cent in the run-up to the election and through the caretaker period; yet she still did not notice—and the Chief Minister still did not notice—that we had an economic crisis on our hands. As with everything, the Chief Minister comes late to these things.

The welfare and community groups always struggle—they always struggle at Christmas time in particular—to meet the needs of the vulnerable in our community. And every year the Salvation Army, the Red Cross, St Vincent de Paul and a range of other charities tell us how hard it is to meet the needs of people at Christmas. Most of the members for Ginninderra spent some time with Rotary on Saturday, packing huge numbers, hundreds, of Christmas hampers for distribution across welfare organisations in Belconnen and in the region. Those organisations know how hard it is, especially at Christmas. So it should not be news to anybody, least of all the Treasurer or the Chief Minister of the government of the ACT. Suddenly they are saying that we have to do this because it is important.


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