Page 2744 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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community about how this bill might be tweaked to be really effective. But what we are doing today is telling the disability community in particular and the homelessness community—the overall community dealing with the Community Services Directorate—that we will provide them with an effective complaints mechanism. As I have said before, I do not believe Ms Bresnan’s bill is perfect, but it is better than what has been put on the table by the government, and that is the basis on which we in the Canberra Liberals will be supporting it.
The minister made a point about breaking the nexus between the relationship between an official visitor and the appointing minister by having the attorney appoint all of them. I thought at first blush that that was a convincing argument. But when you think about the level of bullying that we have seen from the Community Services Directorate of people who criticise them and the attempted bullying of the Public Advocate by the Community Services Directorate, I think there is actually some very good argument why we should have some breaking of the link between the appointing minister and the minister they report to. At first blush I thought that that was not a very good idea, but the more I have thought about it in the context of the complaints that we received and the clear lobbying we received on this, I think there is some merit in the appointments being done this way.
This is a difficult path. I often say in relation to Greens legislation that the Greens like to legislate where an administrative scheme might work, but I suppose that is the problem with not being directly in government. It also perhaps shows to some extent that the relationship with government can be ineffective on the part of the Greens from time to time. I personally would not see the need to legislate, and I know the government does not want to legislate in this place, but I suppose we have got to a point where we are saying to the government: “The community does not trust you. The community does not trust this minister and does not trust the Community Services directorate to be fair, to not bully, and to deal with people appropriately.” That is why we will be supporting this bill.
DR BOURKE (Ginninderra—Minister for Education and Training, Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Corrections) (4.02): The government cannot support the Greens’ Official Visitor Bill. This bill, despite the Greens’ good intentions for the protection of the vulnerable in our community, has wandered down the path that would leave not only the people it seeks to help but also the official visitors themselves in a worse position.
The Greens’ bill proposes to redefine and alter the official visitor schemes through a standardised complaints management function for all official visitors, irrespective of the differences in each environment. The bill also proposes to prematurely create official visitors for disability and homelessness, which is not appropriate for the official visitor schemes and which ignores a collaborative national exercise that is already underway in relation to homelessness services.
This government has a proud record of initiatives to advance the principles of the Human Rights Act 2004. The official visitor schemes reflect this government’s commitment to protect the rights of children and young people, people in prison or in detention facilities and mentally ill people, some of the most vulnerable people in our
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