Page 2779 - Week 09 - Thursday, 26 August 1993
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I would love to pay foster carers $240 a week. I would love to pay every citizen of this Territory $1,000 a week. I would love to have a situation where we had unlimited funds available for community services; but we do not. We are in a situation where we have real budgetary difficulties. Wherever this Government seeks to raise additional revenue, we get cheap carping from Liberal Party members or their outside supporters saying, "You cannot impose new taxes. Taxes are too high". Then we get Mr Cornwell parading around and saying that we should be spending more money on welfare. You just cannot do that. If this Government were shown to be providing an inadequate basis of payment for foster care arrangements in this Territory in comparison with other parts of Australia, I would legitimately accept a criticism. But, when this Government can demonstrate that its basis of payment for foster care compares well with what is going on in other parts of Australia, criticism of the Government is unfair, unless the Opposition can point to new revenue sources - and the Opposition is always very keen to avoid new revenue sources.
We are currently running 104 foster care places in the Australian Capital Territory. That is up from 76 in 1991-92. Of the children in support by the branch, we have a total of 147. We have a very high proportion of children in foster care in the ACT. A conscious decision was taken about four years ago to move away from residential care into foster care. We have been able to increase foster care places. I am advised by my officials from the Family Services Branch that it is very rare for us not to be able to find a foster care place for a child for whom foster care is appropriate. That is not to say that foster care can be arranged for every child, because there are some children who have particularly severe behavioural or other difficulties that make foster placement almost impossible, although again I pay tribute to the community agencies involved. In particular, I pay tribute to Open Family, which has established quite a reputation for taking on some of the foster children with particular behavioural difficulties.
I had hoped that we would not see opposition members beating a drum of NIMBYism when organisations like Open Family have foster care placements in Housing Trust houses and residents say, "We do not want these awful people in our street", and opposition members say, "You should not have these awful people in your street". Again, you nod your heads and say, "Hear, hear! Open Family does a great job with these very behaviourally difficult kids", as they do; but, when we had an Open Family house recently in South Canberra where there was a disturbed individual, we had opposition members beating the drum and saying, "Shock, horror! You have to do something about getting these people out of this street".
Opposition members have the luxury of having it both ways. Governments have to make the system work, and our system of foster care is working well in this Territory. We are getting placements in virtually every case where a placement is appropriate, and we have a remarkably good ratio of foster care placements to residential care placements. We will not be uprooting the individuals involved in the Barnardo's program and moving them into residential care. I am advised by my officers, who have again spoken to the relevant parents, that the placements will be continuing with the same carers until they are completed. There will not be new placements. New placements will be coming from the other three organisations that continue to operate and offer foster care in the ACT.
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