Page 573 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 June 1989
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MR KAINE (Leader of the Opposition) (3.38): There are a couple of points that I would like to make in connection with the paper presented by the Minister. First of all, I would have to say that the Liberal Party supports the general tenor of the matter in this paper. There is a real problem. That problem seems not yet to have been quantified, although I do not know why when one considers that it is now some years since the Prime Minister said that there would be no child living in poverty in Australia by 1990. We are now very close to that time, yet it appears that very little has been done to quantify the nature of the problem, and I am not too sure how to address the problem without first quantifying it.
I think that I could say generally that we support the general tenor of the paper and the matters that were discussed at this conference. There are a couple of parts of the paper in particular to which I would like to refer. On page 4 of the paper a number of principles are set down. I think that those principles are very basic and should be accepted by everyone without reservation when it comes to the children in our community. I do not believe that there is anything there to which anybody could take exception. They carry on over to page 5. I would hope that this Government, in developing its program to eliminate the difficulties of children - particularly homeless children, but children generally - would use these seven principles as the basis for any action that it might take.
Also some recommendations were raised by Commissioner Burdekin. Again I think that this Government should very much take into account those recommendations when it is developing its program. I would hope, Mr Speaker, that having discussed these matters at a ministerial conference this Government would waste no time in developing a program and putting it into effect to address the problems that have been defined here.
There has been a lot of talk, a lot of discussion, about the problems of children, particularly homeless children and youth, in our community. It is time that something was done about it. Now we have a government whose sole responsibility it is to address this question; nobody else is responsible for it. I would expect to see the Minister and the Government come forward very quickly, since a lot of the groundwork seems to have been done, the principles have been determined and the recommendations are there as to what ought to be done. I would suggest that they apply just as much in the ACT as they do anywhere else in Australia. I will be looking forward with great interest to seeing some initiative from the Government, hopefully in the context of the budget that is about to be brought down, so that there is no delay. These matters should be addressed quickly, and the problem in this society should be eliminated very quickly.
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