Page 1517 - Week 05 - Thursday, 12 May 1994
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This is not the first time that I have been asked by distraught parents to help them regain their children from the clutches of the Family Services Branch. On the last occasion, as the Minister, Mr Connolly, would know, he would not provide me, correctly, with information in this Assembly, but he promised me a confidential briefing. I was visited by Family Services officers who proceeded to tell me that I would be told nothing because of the Privacy Act. We are dealing with a branch that misuses the law in order to keep itself unaccountable. I believe that, instead of encouraging rapid growth in the Family Services Branch, this Government should undertake an urgent overhaul of this group of public servants who are playing God, and give back to parents the rights and responsibilities for their own children that they used to have before the social engineering nannies took over.
Family Services Branch
MR LAMONT (Minister for Urban Services, Minister for Housing and Community Services, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Sport) (5.11): Madam Speaker, I regard the diatribe that we have just been unfortunate enough to have foisted upon us by Mr Cornwell as one of the low points of my two-and-a-half years in this Assembly. Mr Cornwell knows very well the provisions in the Acts that govern the provision of information in this Territory. What Mr Cornwell has failed to acknowledge this afternoon is that, through the processes that have been put in place, the person he referred to has been reunited with her family in appropriate circumstances and in a manner consistent with the procedure recommended by the Community Advocate, who has been involved in these circumstances. For you to drag this matter through this Assembly in the way you have, Mr Cornwell, is to act in the most reprehensible manner I have seen. You have, in my view, absolutely no concern or consideration for the individual concerned, or an understanding of the facts. It is very obvious that you would rather expose individuals to ridicule and to persecution through whatever format you wish to choose in order to grab a headline. It is nothing short of the grubbiest act I have ever seen you perform, Mr Cornwell.
Family Services Branch
MR CONNOLLY (Attorney-General and Minister for Health) (5.13): Madam Speaker, I will briefly enter this debate. Mr Lamont has very forcefully put my outrage, so I will not join in restating those positions. I would remind members that only yesterday we debated in this place amendments to the Children's Services Act relevant to the operation of Family Services in these types of cases, and the Community Advocate Act relevant to the operation of the Community Advocate in these circumstances. As Mr Lamont said, this case that you are referring to, Mr Cornwell, involved both the Family Services Branch, acting under the Children's Services Act, and the Community Advocate, acting under her Act.
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