Page 4154 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 21 September 2011
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(a) submit any and all reports directly to the Legislative Assembly; and
(b) if the Assembly is not sitting when reports of the Public Advocate are received, the reports may be sent to the Speaker or, in the absence of the Speaker, to the Deputy Speaker, who is authorised to give directions for its publishing and circulation.
I was proposing to move to amend my motion to delete paragraph (2)(a), which reads “by close of business this day, table the letter from the Director-General appointing the Public Advocate of the ACT to conduct the investigation noted above, including the terms of reference”, because the minister tabled this letter in question time yesterday. But when I acquired a copy of it from the Clerk’s office I realised that the minister had tabled an unredacted version of the letter. In at least two places, the letter names the organisation and puts in the public domain the name of the organisation—something that I have been criticised for inadvertently doing. So I am not going to remove that part but rather call upon the minister to withdraw the one that she tabled yesterday and to table a redacted version before it gets out into the public again.
That said, this is a very serious motion and it again leads to questions about the competence of this minister. I ask the question: does the incompetence of this minister know any bounds at all? Once again we find ourselves considering the failures of this minister. Sadly, this time it is a failure in the care and protection system.
We have previously dealt with a litany of failures over the last year or so of this minister’s tutelage of this department. We have seen failures that affect the most vulnerable people in our community. We have seen failures in the childcare sector where children and even babies are in a system that their families cannot afford; that is just about money. We have seen failures at the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre, where children and young people have been exposed to bullying, physical abuse and inadequate security. We have seen failings in the grandparent and kinship care program, where grandparents, sometimes in their 70s and 80s, are looking after their grandchildren, with little or no government support but with a convoluted system of red tape.
Now we have got children and young people who for all purposes have no family because the territory is their parent. But this is a territory that as a parent is complacent about their welfare. As their parent, the territory expects these neglected and abused children and young people to sometimes live in accommodation with no beds, no hot water, inadequate electricity and in freezing conditions with broken glass in the windows.
Let me make a few points about this very succinctly so that this minister will understand, because at the moment she is in another place; she is aloof from reality. I want to make a point so that she can understand and grasp the import of the situation.
Within the Community Services Directorate we have the care and protection group. This group carries particular responsibilities for the welfare of the children in the care of the director-general. These are children whose natural family either cannot or will not look after them. They may have been subjected to abuse, to neglect and even
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