Page 4499 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 18 October 2011
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support or the access to the range of community organisations in order to build those partnerships, those respectful relationships, so that we can have a very holistic approach to our families that are doing it tough, that face troubles and difficulties.
In that case, those children should not have been removed. There should have been a better response, and if we had the relationships, if we had the understanding, if we had the support for workers in both the government and non-government sector, including, as Mrs Dunne has pointed out, translators, I think that we would have had a very different outcome there.
I believe those children would not have suffered secondary abuse, or trauma rather, from being removed from their mother for 19 days. Also, the mother must have gone through a terrible time. We need to ensure that we keep supporting this family. That was something that came out too—how supports were taken away so early, particularly their elderly grandparents who were kinship carers. This should not be happening.
We have raised this issue here before. These matters do need to be addressed. We need to see a proper response to these. I seek leave to move amendments Nos 1 and 2 circulated in my name together.
Leave granted.
MS HUNTER: I move amendments Nos 1 and 2 circulated in my name together:
(1) Omit subparagraph (1)(c).
(2) Omit paragraph (2), substitute:
“(2) censures the Minister for Community Services for failing to adequately administer the care and protection system.”.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.27): This motion today should be supported, and should be supported because of the damning evidence against this minister. We have got serious and repeated breaches of the law, serious and repeated failures to act by this government and this minister and serious and repeated outcomes that put vulnerable kids in harm’s way. It is difficult to imagine a more serious case for removal of a minister than what has been put forward and laid bare today, not just by Mrs Dunne but by the Public Advocate. There is no greater failure of the territory than to put vulnerable kids in harm’s way. This minister did it through her directorate. It was done illegally. It was done when the department knew it was illegal, and it did so 24 times.
This was not just a little breach. This was not just a technical breach. It was not just one or two breaches. It was 24 breaches of the law that they did knowingly in many cases, and that put vulnerable kids in harm’s way and subjected them to greater trauma than should have been the case. That is shameful. As the minister herself acknowledged, that is shameful. And she should now take responsibility for that shameful behaviour.
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