"Department of Family and Community Services Budget"
- Details
- Category: Uncategorised
- Created: Wednesday, 22 June 2011 23:30
- Written by Alecomm2
Mrs BARBARA PERRY: My question without notice is directed to the Minister for Family and Community Services. Given the Minister's statement in the Sydney Morning Herald that the Expenditure Review Committee determines her budget, and given that she attended an Expenditure Review Committee meeting on Tuesday at 5.30 p.m., can the Minister confirm that the community services budget will be cut by around 2.5 per cent?
Ms PRU GOWARD: I thank the member for her question. I will not confirm that we will make the same mess of this as those opposite did. I will confirm that we no longer will pretend that the last 16 years did not exist. The failure of those opposite to bring budgets in on time ended with this State being in a horrendous situation, particularly for family and community services. Labor knew months ago what was happening in the family and community services budget. The former Minister knows because the same officials who were telling her were telling me. We on our side of Parliament know that she knew; she just walked away, put her head in the sand and let the train wreck come. We are not going to cut front-line workers because improving services, which is the O'Farrell-Stoner Government cornerstone, will mean supporting them more. From the Treasurer and the Premier we all know about the $5.2 billion black hole we are facing and we now know, of course, about the huge mess in family and community services.
The SPEAKER: Order! Opposition members will listen to the answer in silence.
Ms PRU GOWARD: Because they asked for it. We heard the shadow Minister for Community Services, Barbara Perry, on radio this morning. Did she say that $1.3 billion is the result of 16 years of mismanagement?
The SPEAKER: Order! I call the member for Canterbury to order.
Ms PRU GOWARD: That is why they were kicked out on 26 March.
The SPEAKER: Order! I call the Leader of the Opposition to order. I call the Leader of the Opposition to order for the second time. The member for Auburn will come to order.
Ms PRU GOWARD: She said, "I think the maths is really simple here."
The SPEAKER: The member for Auburn will come to order.
Ms PRU GOWARD: The shadow Minister is absolutely right. The maths is very simple: 5 per cent in funding growth and 9 per cent in expenditure growth—
The SPEAKER: I call the member for Maroubra to order.
Ms PRU GOWARD: —which means there is a huge budget hole that just keeps growing until real reforms are made. That is what those opposite did not have the ticker for: they left us with the problem of making the real reforms. They put out their hands at the Wood royal commission for money and did not address the long-term reforms that were necessary over 16 years. New South Wales now has the shameful statistic of one in 100 children being in out-of-home care, that is, 17,000 children, and we rank number one in the country for it.
The SPEAKER: I call the member for Canterbury to order for the second time.
Ms PRU GOWARD: Labor failed to transfer out-of-home care.
The SPEAKER: Opposition members will come to order. I call the member for Marrickville to order.
Ms PRU GOWARD: Labor failed to integrate services for families. It failed to be accountable and transparent about its failures. It failed to keep its budget under control. It knew that it was heading for a train wreck. It knows that $1.3 billion in 2014 is the recipe for a disaster for children and it puts them at risk.
The SPEAKER: The member for Auburn will come to order.
Ms PRU GOWARD: That is why we were elected to fix it. After all that failure Labor then decided to promote the chief architect of that failure to be deputy Opposition leader. Improving services and increasing accountability and transparency when we have—
The SPEAKER: The member for Auburn will come to order.
Ms PRU GOWARD: Improving services for children and vulnerable people in this State will mean working better and smarter. It will be even harder thanks to the mismanagement of the budget. It will take medium-term reform—
The SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition will come to order.
Ms PRU GOWARD: They did not have an idea. They just let it keep growing to the point where we have a $1.3 billion hole that is our job to repair because they walked away from the children and the vulnerable families of this State.
The SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition will come to order. (Source : http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20110623040?open&refNavID=HA8_1)
