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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 1 Hansard (16 February) . . Page.. 167 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

I understood that there was a band night on so I said I would go. I went last Friday to listen to the band night. I noticed that there was quite a good cross-section of kids there. Yes, there were kids there who are unemployed. Yes, there were kids there who probably have significant problems in their own family and personal life. There were also kids there from perfectly functional families. That band I saw was a band of Marist College kids.

Mr Hargreaves: Totally dysfunctional.

MR STEFANIAK: You might say that, especially if you are from St Edmund's or Daramalan. Obviously, they were quite functional kids who were there having a good time. It was interesting just to see the various groups there, and that is, I think, exactly what you want our youth centres to be like. I was very happy to see that. That corresponds with my observations when I go to the Civic Youth Centre. There are changing times there to make that more relevant to young people.

Go out to Gungahlin. I know that is not your area, Mr Hargreaves; it is Mr Corbell's. Go out to see some of the programs there which are run through the youth centre. They also have a very good one running through the high school. That is a different age group of kids, but again a wide spectrum of kids, and I think that is something that is terribly important. Whilst I think you are quite right to say that any centre needs to have a cross-section of kids and not just dysfunctional ones, I think you will find that that is largely occurring, and the more that occurs I think the better it is for all kids who use these centres.

You raised another point and this is a difficult one - family factors, antisocial models in parents. That raises a very difficult and vexed question, Mr Hargreaves, and I do not think anyone has come up with the absolute answer to that. That is a problem that confronts governments right throughout Australia. How do you overcome that? Early intervention? There are various programs, and I am going to go through a few of the things we do later on, but first I want to address some of your points. There are a number of things that can be done in terms of making that better. Whether you completely overcome that, Mr Hargreaves, I do not know. I think the answer to that is having services, having activities; having people there, if the family situation is not ideal, to help young people get back into the mainstream; to give them the skills and the ability perhaps to be useful members of society.

Mr Hargreaves: We are not talking about services for families, we are talking about services for the kids.

MR STEFANIAK: You raised the point and I am raising the need. That is how you could assist those kids. I think we have a number of services which do that. There are also, Mr Hargreaves, a number of community organisations and a number of people in our community who can assist there, perhaps simply someone in the scouting organisation. A kid might have a particular talent in sport and might be picked up and assisted through a sporting team.

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