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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 12 Hansard (12 November) . . Page.. 4051 ..

MR MOORE (4.54): I was on the Social Policy Committee of the previous Assembly when we looked at early childhood intervention. On the one hand it was incredibly moving but on the other hand incredibly distressing. I am sure anybody who deals with these issues realises that that is the case. I listened to Ms Reilly put up a very good case, and I listened to the Minister respond. If I may summarise, he said, "If we spend any more money on this, we cannot spend money on the way we are already working on intervention. Secondly, we already understand what is going on at South Windsor and as yet we have decided not to implement it". I think that is a reasonable summary.

The committee were not looking specifically at the model that Ms Reilly is talking about. I want to make that very clear. I think there will always be new models and there will always be models such as this one for early intervention which we need to examine, which we need to keep our eye on. Since there has been a report of an Assembly committee and that report has been largely implemented, it is appropriate that enough evidence be gathered before we say that it is time for us to take a particular approach. There will always be a range of new approaches to this sort of intervention.

It seems to me that the best way to proceed is for a committee of the next Assembly to take into account the issue Ms Reilly has raised and to determine whether or not it merits a further thorough investigation. That is the approach that I would prefer to take. If we were not towards the end of an Assembly, I would be saying that we should refer this matter to the Social Policy Committee now for them to do a two-stage investigation. They could say, "Is this worth pursuing?". If it was not really worth pursuing, if the committee believed that it was a good idea but that we were already doing well enough, it could make a statement in the Assembly saying, "No, we are not going to proceed down this line". But, if it did look like there was enough in this idea, then the committee could proceed to a proper and thorough investigation.

The reason for suggesting that is that I think new ideas about early intervention will keep coming up again and again. Some of them will work extremely well for some people but not for others, some will work very well for a very small number of people and, perhaps, if we are very fortunate some will be particularly effective for a wide range of people. We cannot ignore them, but I think we should develop an appropriate process to deal with such issues. I think the process Ms Reilly is proposing is not the best process. There should be a role for the Social Policy Committee or whatever follows in the next Assembly.

MR WOOD (4.58): Mr Speaker, I speak in strong support of the motion. It calls for the Government to look at an early intervention centre model and report back to us. The reporting date has, necessarily, changed as we are past that time. Mr Speaker, a number of reports of this Assembly and otherwise point to inadequate coordination of services; yet coordination is a key to the adequate treatment of a quite significant number of young people in our society. Young people in particular circumstances need a variety of forms of attention. They need specialist services, whether physiotherapy, speech therapy, social work or a variety of others. They need intensive treatment, not just treatment once a week, once a fortnight or once a month, as too often occurs. That treatment needs to be early. That is a critical point.

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