BY CUTTING more than $1.1 million in funding for YMCA Katherine over the next three years, the federal government has failed to uphold one of the key priorities of its Indigenous Advancement Strategy program and put the lives of some of the region’s most at-risk children in jeopardy.
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Despite the government unveiling funding worth $860m earlier this month, several organisations in the region offering specialist youth services - including YMCA Katherine - are facing bleak futures after receiving paltry allocations that will render them unviable.
There was no way every organisation that applied for IAS funding could receive what it asked for, but the government has made a tremendous error by not spending time on the ground to determine how critical some are to building safe communities.
Even the most inept bureaucrat should have been able to see from their Canberra office that slashing all but 20 per cent of a remote organisation’s funding would sound its death knell, yet there has been no in-person consultation to determine what the human impact of the decision would be.
Some of our most vulnerable youth literally rely on organisations like YMCA Katherine for survival.
Unfortunately, their lives do not have a quantifiable value on a financial statement.
It may sound melodramatic, but if even one at-risk youth in the Katherine region decides that taking their own life is their only option because they no longer have access to services decimated by the IAS funding announcement, the government will be left with blood on its hands.
