Page 2486 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 29 June 2005
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were problems with the fence. I can recall when we became the government in 1995 it was basically a revolving door.
Of course, the minister is blessed with a very strong economic situation in the territory. When the current government took office in 2001 it inherited some very good management by the previous government and, might I say, the current federal government. We were not blessed with that in 1995. We basically did not have any money and so it was very difficult spend until such time as the economy got back into the black, which it did in about 2000.
Nevertheless, it is wrong to say that nothing happened. There were some significant improvements made, albeit with not much cash around, including some of the programs the minister talks about—year 10 certificates, the Hindmarsh Centre being established, the security of the fence at Quamby back in 1996 and, as a result of, sadly, a coronial inquest into a young man who committed suicide, the cleaning out of some totally inappropriate staff. I wonder, given the industrial relations laws at the time, whether that would have been possible were it not for a coronial inquest. It would be a pretty sad indictment if there needed to be a coronial inquest.
Back in August 1999 the facility was transferred in pretty good shape, all things considered, to corrections. As I recall, it went through a couple of ministers after that before ending up with the current minister. But, again, I do not recall too many problems. So that seemed to work well and I have got some helpful hints for the minister, which I will give to her later. Some problems, of course, have arisen in recent times and I think the minister is to be commended for getting a fair amount of money to try to sort them out.
I think Mr Seselja’s motion is worthy of support—it is worthy of support just to keep this government honest and on track in doing the things it says it will do and has committed to doing. In August of last year the Standing Committee on Community Services and Social Equity reported and made a recommendation that a working group be set up. I understand that the government accepted that in February of this year. I doubt very much if this working group would have been set up were these questions not raised in estimates, were the government’s memory not jogged into realising, “Oops, we have not set up this working group.” Had those questions not been asked we would probably be sitting here none the wiser and the working group may still not have been set up.
I think it is very important for motions like this to receive Assembly support, simply to ensure that the government does what it says it will do. The estimates process revealed that this sort of thing has happened in another area of the minister’s portfolio—that of schools. Both a non-government schools advisory group and a government schools advisory group have been set up. I think the relevant legislation was passed in March or April of 2004. And, yes, there was a three-month hiatus during the caretaker period before the forming of the new Assembly. But the non-government group was not set up until 30 March and then was not ticked off, I think, until 20 April. It did not meet until 9 May, which was after the budget came down.
According to section 76 of the Education Act, the minister had to consult with the group but she simply did not do so. She did not seem to appreciate that she needed to. Again, that shows a very casual regard of statutes and a very casual attitude to setting up that
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