Page 483 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 17 February 2016
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I believe the ACT is a caring place. It is a place where we look after the people in need in our city. We still have people in poverty in Canberra, and that is something that I think surprises many people in this city. We in this place get an insight into it because we get invited to a range of events. We have exposed some of the issues and therefore we have a special responsibility to make sure that we are getting this right. And this government is intent on ensuring that the concession schemes in place in the ACT are going some way to support people through difficult times.
My colleague Amanda Bresnan also worked to ensure that people who cannot afford to pay their fines would be able to pay them off over a number of payments, rather than in a single lump sum. Her legislation was passed in the last Assembly, and this is now a standard offer to people who cannot afford to pay their fines. It gives them options to work their way through repaying it over a period and I imagine this has now stopped quite a few people losing their drivers licences over the years.
If Mr Doszpot was truly concerned about people in need, people who cannot afford to put three square meals on the table, people who cannot afford to get healthcare appointments, let alone pay for them, he would not be questioning the need for this review the ACT government is undertaking. He would be supporting the government’s plan to ensure that assistance is targeted to the people who need it, and of course this includes pensioners and seniors.
The Greens believe that this review is a sensible thing to do, and it is the responsible thing to do. We need to make sure that our rebates and waivers are truly helping those in need and are not accidentally going to support people who do not actually need the leg up. And it is well worth referring to the paper released by the government at this point which does flag a range of options. It is important, I think, first of all to note the opening sentence in the paper:
The ACT Government wants to ensure that the ACT Concessions Program is targeted to help those who need it the most.
That is the very first line of the discussion paper. I am perfectly comfortable with that. That is what we should be doing.
But it is interesting to go through the paper. There are ideas in here that will be debated. That is the exact point of putting the paper out and seeking community feedback.
If you go to page 11 of the paper, for example, it is one example that shows the percentage of households accessing the water and sewerage concession by quintile. There are five income quintiles. One is the lowest, five is the highest. As you would hope and expect, most of the concessions are going to the lowest quintile. The vast bulk goes to the two lowest quintiles. But there are people in the fourth and fifth income quintiles who are receiving concessions. That begs serious questions. Do they actually need the assistance or should we be targeting that assistance to people who, frankly, need it more? To be in the highest income quintile and be receiving concessions from government defies logic.
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