Page 2046 - Week 07 - Thursday, 16 June 1994
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A standing committee, a permanent committee, of this Assembly sending that clear message is an appropriate way for us to proceed to deal with the issues associated with a separate service. A number of the recommendations made in the select committee report can then be followed through by the Assembly and tracked and traced, and the Government can be held accountable on those matters and any other matter they may bring to the Assembly. It is appropriate that it be not a select committee but a standing committee of this Assembly, so that Territory residents can rest assured that as an Assembly we have a process which holds the Government accountable and holds our Government Service accountable.
MR MOORE (11.50): Madam Speaker, I considered moving an amendment to suggest that the motion should specifically include public sector reform, but I think that is covered by the words "any other related matter". I hope that the committee sees part of its role as being the examination of possible public sector reform. Having the normal powers of a standing committee, the committee, I am sure, will have the opportunity to take on what it sees as most appropriate and to deal with those issues. I wish it the very best, and I look forward to seeing reports of this committee presented to the Assembly.
Motion, as amended, agreed to.
SOCIAL POLICY - STANDING COMMITTEE
Report on Early Intervention Services for Children
MS ELLIS (11.51): Madam Speaker, pursuant to order, I present the report of the Standing Committee on Social Policy on the inquiry into early intervention services for developmentally delayed and disabled children, together with extracts from the minutes of proceedings. I move:
That the report be noted.
Madam Speaker, this is a difficult and emotional area of social and community need; but the Social Policy Committee exists to look at these issues, and I can assure the Assembly that it does so with great enthusiasm. Families who have a child with a disability or a child who develops a disability or a developmental delay have additional pressures and demands and expectations upon the parents, the family collectively and, of course, the individual child. As a society, I believe, we are bound, morally and in any other way, to do what we can to support, to assist and to care for these families as their need requires. Early intervention services are integral to the well-being of these families. As I have said in the preface to this report:
Early intervention is a developing area. The disability service area in Australia is still working through the transformation from institutionally based to community based services that has occurred in preceding decades. That same time has also seen great developments and increases in the quality and types of early intervention programs.
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