Ms CARNEY - 2007-08-21
Your government has $1.1bn more per year in the budget than it did in 2001, yet your long-term solution to child sexual abuse and disadvantage in Aboriginal communities which you announced yesterday provides $440 000 for a community education campaign on child abuse. As you know, that is $440 000 over five years for 73 remote communities. How does a little over $1000 per community over five years spent on educating people about child abuse amount to an adequate response?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, we have seen the Opposition Leader, with no plans and no ideas about this, simply bag elements of the Closing the Gap package. What we have done is responsibly put together a comprehensive package. It is carefully costed within our budget capacity. It is a significant package which builds very carefully on the work that we have done so far.
We are not moving from a standing start here. The Wild/Anderson report made that very clear. We have been taking steps in a positive direction in tackling those underlying causes of the problems we have seen outlined in the Wild/Anderson report. The package announced yesterday builds on that. If you single out one component of it, that is not the effect of it. It is putting all those components together and looking at the additional funds, in very many different areas, to tackle the underlying causes that lead to child sexual abuse and child abuse in our communities.
It is a large expenditure so we will be monitoring this very carefully. There will be regular reports to Cabinet. Ministers will be very keenly involved in the expenditures, and reporting to Cabinet if they are not meeting their targets, if the expenditure allocated is not adequate. We will be monitoring that very carefully. I said yesterday that it is hard to predict whether the amount allocated over five years is going to be needed in those proportions as we get, say, two or three years on. I would love to be standing here, and this parliament would love to hear, in two to three years’ time, and I am sure the Minister for Alcohol Policy would love to hear, that the problem of alcohol abuse has been reduced and we will not need to spend the funds we have now allocated on tackling that issue.
We have allocated funds against where we think the problems will be. It is a coordinated and comprehensive package. We have the ideas, we have the strategy, and it starkly contrasts with the Opposition Leader, who is left carping in the wings.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, we have seen the Opposition Leader, with no plans and no ideas about this, simply bag elements of the Closing the Gap package. What we have done is responsibly put together a comprehensive package. It is carefully costed within our budget capacity. It is a significant package which builds very carefully on the work that we have done so far.
We are not moving from a standing start here. The Wild/Anderson report made that very clear. We have been taking steps in a positive direction in tackling those underlying causes of the problems we have seen outlined in the Wild/Anderson report. The package announced yesterday builds on that. If you single out one component of it, that is not the effect of it. It is putting all those components together and looking at the additional funds, in very many different areas, to tackle the underlying causes that lead to child sexual abuse and child abuse in our communities.
It is a large expenditure so we will be monitoring this very carefully. There will be regular reports to Cabinet. Ministers will be very keenly involved in the expenditures, and reporting to Cabinet if they are not meeting their targets, if the expenditure allocated is not adequate. We will be monitoring that very carefully. I said yesterday that it is hard to predict whether the amount allocated over five years is going to be needed in those proportions as we get, say, two or three years on. I would love to be standing here, and this parliament would love to hear, in two to three years’ time, and I am sure the Minister for Alcohol Policy would love to hear, that the problem of alcohol abuse has been reduced and we will not need to spend the funds we have now allocated on tackling that issue.
We have allocated funds against where we think the problems will be. It is a coordinated and comprehensive package. We have the ideas, we have the strategy, and it starkly contrasts with the Opposition Leader, who is left carping in the wings.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016