Page 577 - Week 04 - Thursday, 29 June 1989
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honour of going to a hardworking home recently with my colleague Mr Jensen and another member of the Residents Rally to discuss the matter with the young persons who were managing the home in the Tuggeranong area. The story that they gave is one that we need to consider in the funding of these issues.
The story is, of course, that we have the established charitable organisations in the community, and they have a most important and vital role. But they do not, in many cases, have outreach facilities, which were referred to by my opposite number, Mr Wood. The fact is that outreach workers are largely voluntary still in this community; it is a fact that we must consider. We must also consider whether their training is adequate and whether the support that they receive generally is adequate. That is a factor that the ACT should consider.
Mr Wood: You have probably been called to be that sort of worker yourself at times.
MR COLLAERY: Indeed. As Mr Wood says, many of us are attending to those issues. An outreach program was established recently in Manuka. I must say that one of the Chief Minister's personal advisers is an operator in that program. That is an admirable program, but it is getting going only because a group in the community is making voluntary pledges of funding. I would like here to endorse publicly the fact that at least one shopkeeper in Manuka supplies provisions to that homeless refuge, out of the goodness of his very hardworking heart. I will not name that shop in Manuka, but really it is marvellous to see the community getting together now and helping the homeless children who are seen around in the very early hours of the morning by those shopkeepers who happen to open early. They are very familiar with the problems around the big bins and so on in the city.
Mr Kaine: The big bins are useful.
MR COLLAERY: The big bins.
A member: The Private Bins?
MR COLLAERY: Different from the Private Bins; that is another problem. That might be the pull factor, Mr Speaker. One issue that is dear to my heart, if the Assembly will forgive me, is the absolute failure of the Federal Labor Government to put into effect properly the declaration of the rights of the child with respect to migrant children who are being deported constantly in the company of their parents. Those children may be migrant children in the sense that they are born of migrants, but some of them are born in this country. On numerous occasions in recent years I have nearly always lost an argument on behalf of young Australian citizens who have been deported abroad.
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