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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 14 Hansard (11 December) . . Page.. 4979 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

I was suggesting that here is another type of service; why do we not have a look at it and see whether we can add, in any way, to the services already in the ACT. That was my thought when I put up the motion. In fact, I congratulated the Government on finalising their draft discussion paper on the early intervention services which had been commenced by the Labor Government in December 1994 and had been published by this Government in August 1996.

What we got was an immediate defensive reaction on the part of the Minister in relation to the proposal to consider examining this service. When he was speaking to the motion he made a number of statements objecting to any examination of this centre. He said:

However, for a number of reasons, I do not share her view that the Government undertake a study to determine the feasibility of operating an early intervention centre such as the one operating in New South Wales.

Then he went on to talk about various services that are available in the ACT. Mr Stefaniak went on to say:

... last year we, in fact, investigated the Stimulus Centre that Ms Reilly is asking the Government to implement a feasibility study of.

All well and good. Then he went on to say:

Devoting resources to undertaking a further study - and I stress that it would be a further study because work was done on this over a period of a couple of months last year - would be a waste. Any funds that might be spent there would be better devoted to assessing the effectiveness of our existing service provision.

Well, that is fine. In summary, the Minister was saying, "We have done it already. Do not waste the time or the funds".

In a letter to the Social Policy Committee dated 25 November, the Minister has said that there is going to be an early intervention team from the ACT visiting this centre in Windsor in early December. This seems to be totally contradictory. When the matter came up before the Assembly on 12 November the Minister vaguely indicated that they had done all the work and there was no need to do any more - do not spend the money. When we made some further inquiries after the information that Ms Tucker spoke about was provided by the department - there was no problem with that - we found that in fact they are going to continue to review this centre. The actions of this Minister in these circumstances seem to be contradictory. You are left wondering why, if they were going to look at it further, there was a referral to the Social Policy Committee when the department was still doing the work. Why was there such a defensive reaction to the suggestion that we look at another service that is available in another State? You are left wondering whether the Minister knows what his public servants are up to at times.

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