Page 2670 - Week 09 - Thursday, 9 August 1990
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the most effective manner possible. It is this process that the Alliance Government is committed to and it is this process that will achieve the best result.
In conclusion, Mr Acting Speaker, I would like to commend all the organisations and youth workers who give their time to alleviate the problem of youth homelessness and provide a better quality of life for those young people in the ACT who need it.
MR CONNOLLY (11.24): I rise this morning to make some brief remarks on the legal needs and services aspects of the Alliance Government's response to the Burdekin report. Before beginning my remarks, I am pleased to hear from Ms Maher's remarks that she studied the New South Wales Law Foundation's Kids in Justice report. It is certainly an excellent report which I would commend to all members of the house. I am pleased that Ms Maher is examining it. I would also be pleased to learn that Mr Collaery had had a good look at that report. It reinforces the point that I have been making on a number of occasions in the controversies over the past couple of weeks, that juvenile justice is a very sensitive issue in which there is no simple solution. It is an issue on which if at all possible a bipartisan approach is far superior to an impassioned partisan attack.
I would note in passing that it displays a particular level of maturity in public debate in the ACT in that we have had a change of government, but both while Labor was in government and while the Alliance has been in government and Labor in opposition, although there have been incidents of young people escaping from the juvenile detention centre in the ACT, both oppositions have rejected the temptation to go on the media and have a bash at the Government for persons escaping from juvenile justice centres. There is a tendency throughout Australia, regardless of the party in power, for the power out of power to blame every escape from a detention centre on the Government. We have been very careful to avoid that because, as Mr Berry said in a number of his remarks, it is easy to turn juvenile justice centres into an Alcatraz and stop escapes. The prime goal in juvenile justice is not to impose maximum security and prevent escapes; it is to reform the children to avoid keeping children in custody.
The New South Wales Law Foundation report is particularly dramatic in its demonstration of the increased cost to the community of detaining children in custody as opposed to flexible and innovative community based sentencing options. I would hope that as the months pass the Alliance Government will study those responses and adopt some of those innovative approaches.
Mr Acting Speaker, the Burdekin report, which opened on Universal Children's Day in October 1987, held public hearings throughout Australia with over 200 witnesses. When it reported in February 1989 it was universally
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