Page 3982 - Week 13 - Wednesday, 9 November 1994
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MR HUMPHRIES (4.58): Madam Speaker, I move:
Schedule, page 16, amendment of Children's Services Act 1986, proposed amendment of subsection 103(2) (penalty provision), omit the proposed amendment, substitute the following amendment:
"Subsection 103(2) (penalty provision) -
Omit '$1,000', substitute '20 penalty units'.".
This is a fairly sensitive matter and I want to take a little while to explain the reason for the Opposition amendment here. Section 103 is the provision in the Children's Services Act that makes reporting of child abuse mandatory. Members will be aware that there has been extensive work done on the question of mandatory reporting of child abuse, particularly by the Community Law Reform Committee, whose report was tabled in the Assembly last December. That is a very important and valuable document in helping us work out how to deal with this extremely difficult and sensitive area.
Madam Speaker, members who have read that report will be aware that the committee of 12 members or so was almost evenly split on how to proceed with the question of reporting of child abuse and whether to make it immediately mandatory or to stagger it and to incorporate other elements into the process of making child abuse reporting mandatory. The majority took the view that it was inappropriate to proceed down that path immediately. I want to quote a few provisions from the majority report of that committee. The majority found, for example:
Evidence from other jurisdictions, both in Australia and overseas, has shown that the introduction of mandatory reporting has generated additional cases but that the services necessary for following up those cases have either been reduced or not increased, with the result that the preventive and support parts of the system were unable to cope ... The Committee does, however, believe that it would be grossly irresponsible to introduce a system of mandatory reporting without at the same time ensuring that the whole child welfare system can cope with the new measures.
The committee noted that in the 1993 ACT budget some $330,000 was allocated for six new child protection workers in the Family Services Branch and also additional staff at the Child at Risk Assessment Unit and that there had been a 26 per cent increase in notifications in the previous year which, in part, generated that extra allocation of resources. However, there was no additional money for increased substitute care or for counselling services. I do not recall any particular measures in the 1994 budget touching on this area. I do not exclude the possibility that they were there. The Minister may be able to enlighten us about that.
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