Page 1331 - Week 04 - Tuesday, 27 March 2012
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I think it might have been better. I commend Ms Hunter for the attention she has paid to the youth programs and to the abysmal failure of this government in the tendering of the youth programs, which is a running sore and source of contention across the community sector. It is a disgrace, responsibility for which needs to be sheeted home to this minister for the mismanagement and the fundamental failings of this system.
When the Canberra Liberals held their most recent community sector roundtable the messages were loud and clear that the community organisations who were involved in the delivery of community services needed support from the government, not hindrance. They believed that they should be monitored and evaluated but they should be monitored and evaluated on their outputs. There was a whole lot of auditing of processes, of paperwork—multiple audits. Members of community organisations were saying that they were being audited out of existence. But no-one ever looked to see what their outputs were; it was all process driven. This is everything that is wrong with this government.
I have had recent conversations with a number of community service providers in the area who are still scratching their heads trying to work out what went wrong and why things went so badly wrong in the tendering out for youth programs. The Canberra Liberals were warned during our most recent community sector roundtable that things were bound to go wrong, and everything that we were told would go wrong has gone wrong.
I think that the highlight of this is the ludicrous situation where one of Canberra’s most respected community sector organisations was excluded from the tender process because essentially they failed to tick a box. No-one ever came back to them and said: “You didn’t tick this box. Perhaps you might like to have a think about whether that box needs ticking or not.” No-one ever came back and said: “Have you made a mistake? Is this an oversight?” This is how you work with people who work their tails off for the community. You have some bureaucrat there saying, “No, you cannot even get in on the ground floor,” because there was, literally, one box that was not ticked.
We now have the ludicrous situation that in Tuggeranong, in this minister’s electorate, there are no ACT government DHCS funded programs for young people. But there is coordination; there is a coordinator. There is a coordinator because the government went around and said, “You missed out on the tender, so we will give you a little bit of kickback here and we will give you a coordinator job.” So there is $120,000 out there to coordinate services that do not exist.
This is what this minister does: she fails. She is a dud and the services provided by her department fail the people of the ACT. She is not on top of her brief enough to say: “This is just not good enough. We need to go back to taws, do this properly and ensure that there are not gaps in the service.” That requires leadership from the minister. It requires a minister who is interested in things other than media opportunities.
A joke went around my office the other day. One of my staff was looking at the government newsletter about jobs and he said: “Here’s a job in the disability and community services department which essentially boils down to looking for media
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