Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 6 Hansard (23 May) . . Page.. 1668 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

As I said previously, we must continue to support families because they are an important part of the community and at times they need support. As the report in 1990 stated, families are the training ground for learning aggressive behaviours. Here in the ACT we have the opportunity to strongly support families, so that families who have problems can get help and feel comfortable in asking for that help. The help should be non-judgmental and available at the time it is needed. It must be very difficult for families to be told, "If you wait six months you will get some assistance".

We need to ensure that there are sufficient resources for early intervention and that there are programs to help families to meet the needs of children with severe disruptive behaviours and emotional disturbance. I think we need to recognise that and continue to support them and not reduce services, which appears to be happening. There need to be more resources, not fewer resources, and more counselling services for families. We need to promote equity in schools and to value also non-competitive activities within schools, be it sport or other recreation activities. There is the opportunity in school to learn a whole range of things and to find alternative activities that you can carry off into adult life. It is hoped that if there are alternatives available there will be little attraction for games that simulate violence, there will be little attraction for videos which depict violence, and there will be a whole range of other activities for the community to participate in. As a community, we in the ACT must support and nurture our children and their families through community activities and through our schools. This report, which I hope that you will all read, sets out many ways of doing this. I wait eagerly to see the Government take up the recommendations and implement them.

MR HIRD (12.30): Mr Speaker, in commending this report to the parliament I would like, first, as a mere male, to congratulate Ms McRae, Ms Reilly, and the chair, Kerrie Tucker, and certainly the committee secretary, Judith Henderson, with whom I served on this committee, on the professional way in which they dealt with this very vexed issue. Ms McRae, who was on the committee earlier in its deliberations, Ms Reilly and Ms Henderson are all former teachers who understood the problems which confronted the committee. Ms Tucker, the chair, is a former nurse, which meant that she also had an appreciation of the problems which were before the committee.

Mr Speaker, it is of crucial importance to the successful outcome of this extensive inquiry into the prevention of violence in schools by the standing committee that the report and the recommendations therein be treated as an apolitical issue in the wider interests of the community, as they were by all members of the committee. This is a report which has far-reaching effects, not just in our schools but throughout the ACT community.

The committee has made it clear in its report that it does not believe that violence in schools is out of control or that schools are not coping. For some students, school is indeed safer than home. The committee recognises that violence is a community problem and that schools alone cannot be expected to solve it. It is a matter of deep concern, however, that data available to the committee showed that there has been an increase in the incidence of serious violence in public schools over the past few years.

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . .