Question Without Notice No. 651 asked in the Legislative Council on 10 October 2017 by Hon Martin Aldridge
Parliament: 40 Session: 1
COMMUNITY RESOURCE CENTRES — FUNDING REVIEW
651. Hon MARTIN ALDRIDGE to the Minister for Regional Development:
I refer to comments made by the minister's parliamentary secretary, Hon Darren West, at the Linkwest Conference on 20 September 2017, ''We have no plans to close any CRCs; we have no plans to reduce services in any CRCs.'' I further refer to the minister's response today to question on notice 324 in which she confirms that the government's review of community resource centres ''will focus on the function, location and value for money''. Is the parliamentary secretary misleading CRCs or is the minister misleading the Parliament about the almost 40 per cent cut in funding by this government to these vitally important regional service providers?
Hon ALANNAH MacTIERNAN replied:
I thank the member for the question. I point out to the member the parlous state of the finances and the actions that he is proposing to take today to make the state's situation even worse. Of course it is the case that we have to review expenditure. We cannot keep running stuff up on the bank card. As has been pointed out time and time again, $43 billion worth of debt was racked up over the forward estimates under the member's government. It is true. We have made it absolutely clear that we have had to review, and will continue to review, many programs. I have made many statements on this. I have set this out in media releases. I am certainly not taking the member's word on what my very esteemed parliamentary secretary said. I make it very clear that we continued with the existing procurement process that the previous government put in place—we thought that was the best and fairest way to go for the CRCs—but we indicated at the time when we entered into the contracts that come next year, there will be a review of the CRCs, which, as the member knows, were originally developed as telecentres. We note that they are very unevenly distributed throughout the community and we are seeking to understand why the need would be concentrated so greatly in very small areas while other vast areas, such as the Pilbara and the Kimberley, appear to have very few of these facilities. Yes, we are prepared. We have indicated to every CRC exactly what our plan is. Our plan is to have a comprehensive review of CRCs next year to make a determination on how we take them forward.