Page 3029 - Week 08 - Thursday, 15 August 2019
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utility bills, driver’s licence fees, motor vehicle registration fees and public transport fares, amongst other things. In this year’s budget, there is a total of $76.6 million for these concessions. From July this year, this includes an increase in the utilities concession, which is paid to Canberra home owners and renters on low and fixed incomes. The payment will increase by $46, bringing the total assistance with energy bills through this concession to $700 annually. We have also increased the life support rebate by five per cent, to $128 a year, and continued the pensioner duty concession scheme for a further year to give older Canberrans more time to benefit from it. The concessions program is not a high-profile part of the work that treasury does, but it is an extremely important part of the government’s efforts to support Canberrans when they need it.
With that, Madam Assistant Speaker, I believe that I have spoken on every area of my portfolio responsibilities within this directorate. Across all of my portfolios, clearly this is the number one area within the budget that I have direct responsibility for. I commend each of the new initiatives, and the great work that is being undertaken by the directorate, to the Assembly.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Justice and Community Safety Directorate—Part 1.7
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (3.47): This year’s budget for the Attorney-General’s and JACS portion really is a budget of two stories. The first is the story that the government wants people to hear, the story that is in the headlines in the budget papers, such as the one that promises “better support when it matters”, or the headlines in the strategic objectives and indicators section that promise “an accessible justice system”, “a safe community”, and “promotion and protection of rights and interests”.
We noticed, when looking at the budget papers in more detail, that there is another story in this budget. That story is one of cuts to essential services and concealment of those cuts by the government. From the first read-through, we noticed that there were numerous complex “ups and downs” in budget figures throughout the budget papers. Some of these are one-off items with explanations, for example, the costs associated with the Eastman trial, but others were not.
During the estimates hearings, we questioned the government and ministers about all of these words and phrases that were not in the government press releases and social media tiles; they are words and expressions that were exposed throughout those hearings and that exposed the true story of this budget. For example, there are several areas where terms like “reclassification” and “revised funding profile” are used. When we pushed during the estimates hearings, we found that “reclassification of grants to legal assistance services” was actually a cut of $1.138 million in the first year and $1.174 million in the second.
When we questioned wording such as “revised funding profile”, we were especially concerned about this, because the fine print revealed that this related to “Safer families—enhancing access to justice for non-English speakers”. Under questioning,
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