Page 1365 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 10 May 1994
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I assume that it has been cooperatively resolved by virtue of the introduction of this legislation. The Bills, as the Minister points out in his presentation speech, clearly establish the Director of Family Services as the statutory officer responsible for all aspects of child protection service delivery, but they also give the Community Advocate some ongoing role in overviewing the functioning of child protection services in the Territory.
I note that the legislation makes a number of changes to the composition of the standing committee which oversights these matters, the Children's Services Council. Despite the fact that substantial responsibility for the day-to-day conduct of particularly prosecutions in this area is transferred to the Director of Family Services, there is still an ongoing role for the Community Advocate, particularly in respect of initiating reviews of court orders, an annual process of working out what has happened in the Territory in this regard and monitoring child protection services generally - a sort of oversighting role - and advocating for the rights of children. I am not entirely clear as to how advocating for the rights of children operates in the light of the responsibility of the director to actually advocate in court. I assume that the advocacy referred to there is advocacy at the community level or perhaps into the ear of government. Whatever it is, the Minister might be able to clear that up when he speaks in concluding this debate.
I have consulted with agencies operating in this sector, and they appear to believe that this is a vital solution to the problems they have encountered. They have mentioned another problem which I thought I might raise. We have plenty of time in which I could do so, so I thought I might.
Mr Lamont: You have no MPI today, so take as much time as you need.
MR HUMPHRIES: There is no MPI. We let you off today. We thought we would give you a holiday for the first day. There is the ongoing problem of the annual reviews by a court of orders of care that are made in respect of children. If a child has been placed under foster parents, that is a permanent order of the court, as it were; but there is a provision that requires that to be reviewed annually. I am advised that that annual review has caused a number of cases to be reopened and caused some hardship and heartache in the case of many children who are actually under those orders. Because there is a requirement for an annual review, there is almost an expectation that, for example, a parent who has been deprived of custody will come forward to the court and try again to argue a case on the matter.
I accept that there should always be a right to challenge an order on the basis of some good ground; but it is arguable that an annual review might actually cause an issue to arise which is not actually there, which has been generated merely by virtue of the 12 months having elapsed since the last time the matter was in court. I make the point in passing that I would hope that the Government could give that matter some consideration and, by discussion with the various agencies and others working in this field, might assess whether such provisions should be modified to perhaps require some positive action on the part of a party to initiate this annual review rather than to have it happen automatically. However, that is beside the point. The Bills before the Assembly today serve a useful purpose, and I hope that that will be a process whereby we can ensure that child protection services in this Territory operate as efficiently as we can possibly make them.
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