That this Bill be agreed to in principle.

I have pleasure in presenting the Children and Young People Bill 1999 .

As part of the ACT Families Policy the Government made a commitment to review the Children's Services Act 1986 ('the Act'). My Department began the reform process in January 1997, producing detailed public discussion papers as a platform for extensive community consultation.

In the child protection area proposals were also subjected to appraisal by a leading independent consultant in the field in Australia, Dr Dorothy Scott, who measured them favourably against national and international best practice standards. In framing the reforms, particular attention has also been paid to recent legislative developments in this area in many Australian jurisdictions - in the last 12 months first Tasmania, then New South Wales and most recently Queensland have enacted child protection reforms, some of which I return to in a moment.

In the area of child care licensing, reforms have been developed in close consultation with the industry, specifically with a view to implementing national standards relating to school-aged care and family day care facilities in the ACT.

The reform process has not at this stage tackled the law relating to young offenders, so this Bill reproduces Parts IV and IVA of the Childrens Services Act almost entirely. I shall mention some minor reforms later in this address.

The Bill I now present to Members honours the Government's commitment to re-write the Act as a result of the review and I am pleased to say reflects general support by the community and government-sector stakeholders for wide-ranging reforms. It is impossible to try to outline all the reform provisions in such a complex Bill in the time available to me, so I shall attempt to confine my speech to the most essential features.