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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 4 Hansard (17 April) . . Page.. 1023 ..

MS TUCKER (3.50): Mr Speaker, I support what the other speakers have said, of course. The extra comments I make are, once again, to do with resources. That has already been mentioned; but it has to be stressed over and over again. If we are going to start mandating these sorts of actions, if the support is not there, then there can be very dire consequences. As everyone else has said, our children must be protected. The situation may be no worse than it ever was. Maybe we just know more about it now. But, because we know about it, it would be absolutely dreadful if we did not take appropriate action. In terms of looking at long-term and short-term costs and benefits, if you look at the profile of people in gaol, homeless people, mentally ill people and drug addicted people, you will find in those groups a very high representation of people who were abused as children. Mandating is only one aspect of the very big issue of child abuse and its prevention. As the Community Law Reform Committee said in its report, the problem of child abuse is complex, and it is a mistake to think that the law and the law alone can provide a solution. The law must operate in tandem with other measures, such as public education, training of professionals and the appropriate resources.

Child care is an interesting area here. We have Federal funding for child care, which gives priority mostly to working parents. Very often, if there were more support, just in terms of child care, for children in families that are very highly stressed, you would relieve the pressure on those families and also you would give the parents or carers the opportunity to get support of another kind, because everyone recognises that very often abusers of children were themselves abused or have personal difficulties that are quite extreme. We have an obligation to take appropriate legislative measures to protect children and to bring abused children to the notice of the authorities. Therefore, we really must provide services to deal with the situation. The 1988 Victorian Law Reform Commission report on sexual offences against children, quoted in the ACT Community Law Reform Committee report on mandatory reporting, concluded that, with adequate resources - I emphasis that - mandatory reporting is an efficient and effective mechanism for the detection of child abuse.

As well as training, an issue that has been highlighted as important is the need for targeted education programs. But we have to think about other preventive measures as well. The Greens are concerned about long-term costs, and I stress once again that we must take the long-term view of these issues and put the work in at the beginning. It is about early intervention, which has come up over and over again. The Government's approach to training sounds quite reasonable. I would like to ask the Minister whether he can report to the Assembly on the success of the training in the first catchment area, which was apparently due to be completed by 30 April. I would like to have some kind of feedback about how that went.

I think the issue of Family Services has been dealt with. We have to see a commitment from this Government to looking at how Family Services is working. It is coming over loudly and clearly in discussions with anyone who works in this area that that department is not functioning well, that it needs more resources and that there is a crisis of morale in the department as well, as a result of the lack of resources. Already, this work is extremely stressful. If you are underresourced as well, I think it is asking too much of people. We await with interest further initiatives from the Government in this very important area.

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