Page 4294 - Week 14 - Thursday, 24 October 1991
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Mr Speaker, I draw attention to standing orders 74 and 77 which relate to the routine of business. Standing order 77, in particular, establishes that Wednesdays are the days for private members' business. The motion is simply to facilitate private members' business, which requires some effort. I think it is important that we get through private members' business; at the same time it is important that the Government have the prerogative to continue with the very busy schedule of legislation that they have. I think this is the appropriate way to do it. I have chosen Friday, 22 November, in discussion with other members, because that is the Friday in the middle of the two weeks of sitting.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
CHILDREN'S SERVICES (AMENDMENT) BILL 1991
Detail Stage
Proposed new clause 16A
Consideration resumed.
MR COLLAERY (4.20): Mr Speaker, my comments in relation to this Bill were made last night in the in-principle debate. Essentially, imprisonment is not the solution. I am awaiting an amendment to be introduced by my colleague Mr Jensen to deal with community service orders, in a juvenile context, so that they can be encouraged to take steps to perform a form of restitution by cleaning up their vandalism, repairing their vandalism, painting over their graffiti, and so on and so forth. That is a more positive way with a more effective monetary return - indirectly, of course - to the Territory than incarcerating these youngsters at Quamby and other parts west and north.
Mr Speaker, there are some additional issues about the incarceration of children, and they are our perceptions of the New South Wales system. I wish no ill on the New South Wales system and one cannot be churlish, because they continue to receive our transportees. But it is somewhat badly timed, I suggest, to propose sending more youngsters north or west when we know that the New South Wales Government has been concerned enough in relation to incarcerees in this region to start to build and provide facilities in Wagga.
As members will recall, the Alliance Government had offered, or I had offered, to the New South Wales Government to take the children from Queanbeyan and in our region so that they were not dislocated from their families. That issue has not come to pass; nevertheless, it does seem inappropriate for Mr Stefaniak to take this initiative.
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