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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (14 May) . . Page.. 1377 ..

MS McRAE (continuing):

What I would love to do most of all is to ensure in some way that all children are loved, cherished, kept warm, fed and well cared for; but blaming parents for not offering all of that has never got us anywhere. We can chastise them as much as we like, but life circumstances vary so much that my ideal is not realisable. I am not coming in tomorrow saying by legislation that I will decree that every child will be well fed, well cared for, loved, cherished, and never hit. That is my ideal; that is what I would dearly love to be able to deliver as a legislator. That would be the best possible thing I could ever do for anybody, but I will not and cannot. I do not think it is consistent to say, "We will prohibit this; therefore I have achieved a matter of great principle and major change by bullying two schools into changing something that they believe in".

What we can do is make society more children-friendly. To that extent, we are put in a position where we do not oppose Mr Moore's Bill; but it has hit a few very raw nerves, and I think we should re-examine a lot of the things we do here. We have to keep moving in on things like reviewing the Children's Services Act. We have to increase support for foster carers. We have to improve the support offered to families in crisis. In general, we have to offer a more welcoming environment for children, and I have been arguing this in the education community for the last two years. Teachers cannot solve every problem. It is about time society did take on the bigger issues of children at risk and did not leave them in risk situations.

That is why we need better support from our welfare services; that is why we need to recognise the problem and make our society more children-friendly. That is where we start progressively moving forward. It is an absolute disgrace that there are children who are homeless, children who are hungry, children who are underfed in our community. That is a far greater disgrace than that two schools which, fervently believing in a Christian message, feel that they have the right to follow through on that. That is where it has all hit a raw nerve. That is where I think we have to examine what we are doing here.

I accept Mr Moore's capacity to hold inconsistent views. We will support this Bill because we are not going to be put in a position of being singled out by people saying, "You people want to brutalise children"; but I think a more humane approach to the two schools in question would have been appreciated by them, much as Mr Moore's more humane approach to drug takers is appreciated in the general community.

MS TUCKER (12.07): Mr Speaker, the Greens will be supporting these Bills. I had the opportunity to look in detail at issues of violence when the Social Policy Committee inquired into the prevention of violence in schools. The issue of violence in our society cannot be separated from questions of so-called discipline of children. The argument that physical assault of children is somehow different from physical assault of adults, that physical assault of children is acceptable because it is a necessary part of teaching children discipline or of socialising them, is quite unsupportable in this day. We know that the issue of violence in our society is very complex. However, there seems to be agreement that violence is related to a number of factors, including early childhood experiences and schooling experiences. Other factors include cultural factors, influences of the media and films, and alcohol and other substance abuse.

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