Brumby's budget

The Victorian State Budget was announced on Tuesday, May 5, without too many surprises for the community services sector.

We have been campaigning for some time to see increased resources directed to child protection and out-of-home care.

We were therefore very pleased to see an announcement of $160 million to increase capacity, to offer better support to children and young people in care and to improve the response to child protection emergencies.

Most importantly, we have seen a commitment from the Brumby Government to investigate new ways to deliver care to the most traumatised and challenging children in state care.

The Government will recruit 100 new live-in carers to provide intensive one-on-one care to children who cannot safely stay in residential care with other children due to their behaviour. This will offer better chances for those children to address serious issues associated with severe abuse or neglect and it will protect other children from their potentially harmful behaviour.

Less pleasing was the lack of additional funding to support disability carers. Thousands of Victorian parents are forced to care for their children at home with very little government support. Often, these children are grown adults and their parents have been carrying out the extremely demanding job of looking after them full time for their entire lives.

Obviously, this is a challenging role and limits a parent’s ability to live their own life and fully enjoy their relationship with their child. These carers deserve greater levels of support including respite and professional help to improve theirs and their child’s quality of life.

Mental health is another area that needs significantly increased funding. While the State Government has committed increased spending to employ more mental health workers and improve early intervention measure, more needs to be done to identify those with mental health concerns and link them with appropriate services.

Anglicare Victoria’s soon to be published Hardship Survey uncovered a serious and disturbing link between emergency relief service users and serious mental health issues. It is clear from this research that many serious mental health issues go undiagnosed in the community and action is required to better identify these people and connect them with the right services.

Community Agencies like Anglicare Victoria can play a role and work together with government to meet this challenge.

Employment was a big focus in the State Budget and the Brumby Government claim 35,000 jobs will be created through new spending initiatives. However, only 25,000 of those jobs will be directly created by the Victorian Government with another 10,000 expected to be employed down the supply chain.

Regardless of how many jobs are created, it is a sad fact that many more will be lost. The Brumby Government projects unemployment will rise to 7 per cent in 2009-10 and 7.75 per cent in 2010-11.

Obviously it is important to limit job loss where possible and provide adequate safety nets where unemployment is unavoidable, but it is also vital we invest in skill development for the future and give young people and long term unemployed every opportunity to join the labour market as the economy picks up.

I was therefore pleased to see an announcement of $25 million to extend the Apprenticeship/Trainee Completion Bonus program for another 12 months. The program offers employees a cash incentive to take on an apprentice or trainee. By subsidising the cost, the Government will encourage the continued skill development of Victorian workers.

Those who do find themselves unemployed will need support from agencies like Anglicare Victoria but will also need government measures in place to ensure their physical and mental health does not suffer and they can afford basics such as housing, food and utilities.

Currently, about 37,000 people are on waiting lists for public housing in Victoria. We can only assume this number will rise as unemployment takes hold. The Victorian Government, in partnership with the Federal Government, has already committed to building 667 new public homes but obviously much more needs to be done.

Those who miss out on public housing are increasingly turning to privately run rooming houses. While some measures are in place under the health act to maintain a few basic health standards, rooming houses operate without specific and comprehensive minimum standards to ensure adequate protection and no system to register and regulate their management to prevent exploitative practices.

Without attention to these matters there is a crisis waiting to happen.

In other areas, the Brumby Government has committed $42 million to increase the water and sewage concession cap in line with rising prices. This will protect low income earners from huge increases in the cost of water but will not expand the concession eligibility.

Together with a range of other spending contained within the ‘A Fairer Victoria’ framework, the Brumby Government has patched up a number of holes in the state safety nets. But as long as there are people seeking emergency food parcels, going without medication due to cost or shivering through winter without adequate warm clothes more needs to be done.

It is important to acknowledge that many of us will ride out this economic crisis in relative comfort while others in the community suffer more acutely due to unemployment and associated pressures. The challenge we face as a community is to make sacrifices where we can and share the burden through tough times. For this reason I think it is important the federal government defer tax cuts to high income earners and compliment the State Budget by further investing in the Australian people so we can pull through difficult times together.