Page 2685 - Week 09 - Thursday, 9 August 1990
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I trust Mrs Grassby is listening because this is the profound difference between our approach and yours. As members of the Assembly may know, youth affairs enjoys a variety of departmental locations and administrative arrangements that vary from State to State. Recent history in the ACT, particularly the confused state of the office when the Alliance Government came to office, testifies to this variability and confusion of status.
The previous Government established a social justice unit within the Chief Minister's Department giving the Chief Minister responsibility for youth affairs. However, believe it or not, the youth affairs unit which was responsible for youth programs was located within the then Department of Community Services and Health, creating a very clear confusion of responsibility. That confusion typified the Follett Government's administrative structuring. I am aware of the debate concerning the appropriate location of the policy and program functions of youth affairs. I am happy to say that as the responsible Minister many matters of concern regarding the administration of youth affairs are being addressed through a conjoint arrangement. I am firmly of the belief that administrative arrangements should reflect their basis in principle.
Mr Acting Speaker, the Alliance Government has put in place progressive administrative arrangements unique in Australia. Community programs, welfare, housing and youth affairs are all located within the Housing and Community Services Bureau. By doing this the Alliance Government has addressed one of the chief concerns of the Human Rights Commissioner, Brian Burdekin, by ensuring that many vital services for our homeless young people are coordinated through a single portfolio. This was a major endorsement of the Burdekin recommendations and one that the Labor Government had not addressed in the draft it had had prepared.
Of course, youth issues do go beyond my portfolio in some respects and extend to the portfolios of my colleagues in health, education and employment. To this end, a senior officers group has been meeting, and I would expect this officers group to operate in parallel with the other advisory mechanisms to be set in place. More than this, the impact of youth issues is a matter worthy of the consideration of the whole Assembly. As we stated in Beyond the Burdekin Report, the ACT Alliance Government is firmly committed to the integrated development of all policies and programs impacting on young people, children and families.
This is the backdrop for our administrative arrangements. It is the reason why the Alliance Government has given the youth affairs unit, within my portfolio, the responsibility for the overall coordination of youth affairs within the ACT Government. It is no longer wandering in loose conjunction as it did in the previous Chief Minister's
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