Page 1190 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 9 April 2008
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to come and talk to young people about a whole range of matters at the youth conference, one of which was “your rights at work”. Presenters at the conference, as part of presenting their workshops, were allowed to provide some of their material in the show bags. So it was nothing more than that. But I looked through and it was replicated this year. There was material in the show bags from those who were hosting some of the workshops.
I think Mr Seselja has got to lighten up a bit on that. I am not sure, but I am pretty sure he is the shadow minister for youth. I think he has just got to lighten up. When you are dealing with young people, they quite often want to raise things that maybe older people feel uncomfortable about. But, really, the whole point about youth interACT and consulting with young people and the whole design of the youth conference is that young people actually design it for themselves. I do not dictate what they are allowed to talk about, and that really has allowed the conference to grow to what it is today—a conference attended by over 200 young people who genuinely think they can come and participate in free discussion.
So it is a very important principle that I hope that future governments will keep—that whatever form the Youth Advisory Council takes politicians will stay out of it, as much as we can, and allow young people, as much as they can, to determine the format of events such as the youth interACT conference and that, provided it is legal and not offensive, they are allowed to have discussions on things that might cause politicians some discomfort. I hope that other governments in here in years to come will think about that and see the worth in taking that position.
Ms Porter’s motion deals with a whole range of new services that we have provided. I think the youth mental health step-up, step-down facility is a fantastic initiative. It is the first of its kind and we are funding it here in the ACT. There are adult step-up, step-down facilities around the country, but there is not a young person’s one. It is managed by the non-government sector. It is early days, but we will keep an eye on how that goes. We will be talking to the non-government sector about whether that is meeting the needs of young people. We will, of course, be moving to the adult step-up, step-down facility as well.
I have been on a tour of Bimberi recently. It is a fantastic facility. I am not sure the young people who are going to live there will think it is that fantastic. They will think it is much better than Quamby, but they are certainly detained there against their will. But for people who will live there and for the staff who will support those young people there, it is a whole new world from the current youth justice facility. It is a fantastic initiative. It has been a long time coming, but we are almost there. We are looking to have Bimberi certainly operational in the second half of this year, with decommissioning of Quamby to occur at the same time.
So there are some big projects underway for the young people in the ACT. I look forward certainly to seeing Bimberi come to conclusion and become operational. I think that for the young people that we are trying to support and rehabilitate there, this will offer a whole new level of service, not just from the youth justice point of view, but from health and education being involved and from the facilities that we will be able to provide to the young people out there.
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