Page 3922 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 29 November 2022
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In fact, this bill includes 25 pages of consequential amendments that do just that, inserting the new commissioner into the Children and Young People Act, the Children and Young People Regulation, the Court Procedures Act, the Human Rights Commission Act, and the Official Visitor Act, wherever the Children and Young People Commissioner is already mentioned.
In a briefing with directorate officials, I asked what exactly the difference will be in their functions and powers between the existing commissioner and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Commissioner. I was told that there is only one single difference: the new commissioner role includes the capacity to conduct inquiries and, as part of this function, to compel a person to give information or produce a document or other thing that the commissioner considers necessary.
It remains to be seen if this difference will prove to be enough. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders that we have spoken with are cautiously and guardedly hopeful and will withhold judgement until they see real reform occur as a consequence of this new commissioner. If that reform does not eventuate, I will be back to call upon the government to put more teeth into this new office.
I raise one final point: this bill specifies in great detail how the new commissioner can engage with court proceedings; but a very great amount of decision-making in the child protection space does not involve the court. When I met with directorate officials I asked whether this proposed legislation specifies how exactly the new commissioner will engage the Child and Youth Protection Services and those commissioned by CYPS to provide out of home care.
I was assured verbally that the government will make sure that this happens. But it is not spelled out. As we know from plenty of past experience, when something is not in writing, sometimes it does not happen at all. This cannot be. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders have shared with me in particular that the long-awaited legislation to finally create an external merits review process for child protection decisions, which is due to be tabled next year, must delineate a clear and active role for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children and Young People Commissioner. Nothing less will do.
On behalf of these stakeholders from Canberra’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community, I give notice to those opposite that failure to embed the new commissioner in an external merits review process will require me to table amendments to fix this oversight. I commend the bill to the Assembly.
MS STEPHEN-SMITH (Kurrajong—Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Minister for Families and Community Services and Minister for Health) (11.09): I rise in support of the bill. I will respond to a couple of the comments that Mrs Kikkert made during the debate. Firstly, I want to assure her that the government has, in fact, accepted all of the recommendations that were made in the co-design process with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community in framing this bill. We had a thorough process of co-design, and all of the recommendations from the Jumbunna Institute have been accepted. In my speech I will clarify a few things that Mrs Kikkert does not quite seem to have understood.
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