Page 576 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 June 1989
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and hoping that before the next meeting of the Ministers, which I believe is set down for March next year, the Minister may be able to report to the house on what actions the Administration has taken to facilitate the recommendations made in this statement. On that basis I will leave it.
MR COLLAERY (3.49): Mr Speaker, the Burdekin report is a first indication by the Hawke Government, so many years after the declaration which Mr Hawke made and which was referred to by my friend Mr Kaine, that concrete joint action is now in hand to attend to this very sad, very basic and very vital concern that we all have regarding the youth in our community.
Not only is the report by Mr Burdekin welcome but also one hopes that it is a precursor to more joint strategies that will see social justice treaties developed around the country by the various State Premiers.
Mr Speaker, Chief Minister Follett must be encouraged by this Assembly to explore the extent to which this Assembly can, in all the laws it will enact, give effect to the declaration of the rights of the child. That is a fundamental document, and it is one that we must endorse as a Canberra community. I say "a Canberra community" because we are probably the most informed, politically aware community in this nation.
Mr Berry: Oh, I don't know.
MR COLLAERY: Mr Berry speaks for himself, Mr Speaker. But the breadth of the statement given to us by Mr Berry is also very welcome. It indicates an awareness and a sensitivity to the issues raised in the Burdekin report - the other Burdekin report, as I will call it - by Mr Berry's officers. I would enjoin Mr Berry's officers to consider a couple of issues that have been apparent to members of the Assembly, particularly during the election campaign, that there are arguments in relation to the push-pull factors regarding youth homelessness.
There are proponents at one end of the argument who state that the facilities provided for youth accommodation actually encourage some children to leave home on a whim, after a minor spat with parents, and so on. At the other end, and in the reasonable midstream of the issue, many of us see that these children are leaving for a whole lot of aggregate factors to do with a breakdown, a fundamental breakdown to some extent, in parental authority and families in the modern age.
One factor of which we must be very conscious is the duty of us all to identify homeless youth. Some of us have seen, and some of us know, that we will find 13- and 14-year-old children at 2.00 am or 3.00 am in this city, on the street or sometimes turning up in numbers at the Ainslie hostel, double-bunking and all the rest. I had the
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