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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 7 Hansard (1 July) . . Page.. 2035 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

have to go looking for the professionals. We did not have to go looking for the principals, the Australian Education Union, the professional counselling people or the sportspeople.

I am sorry that I did not know this was coming up. If I had known, I would read for the benefit of the Minister, who seems to be totally unaware of how much community interest there was, the list of community professional people with expertise in the area of education who were concerned. They are the people the committee listened to. That is why the committee came out with the recommendations that we did showing where the Government had failed. For heaven's sake, during the process of the committee, the department admitted that they had failed, because they changed their project as we went through the process. They acknowledged, "Yes, we should have probably consulted with the counsellors". I remember that one. They also said, "They are a bit overloaded, aren't they? Yes. Maybe we will give them the task of counselling young people if they find the experience of working for the dole in a primary school difficult". That is just one example of where we saw this project to be very poorly thought through.

It is really an outrageous and silly response that we have just heard from Mr Stefaniak. He accused the committee of being political. When you have a report with that much evidence from many professional groups, it is quite a shocking response.

Mr Stefaniak said that it was irrelevant to consider the issue of insurance. The Ombudsman did not think it was irrelevant when he made comments about previous similar schemes. It was a perfectly legitimate thing for the committee to look at. We got expert advice once again from a legal person who also had some concerns about that particular issue. For the Minister to determine that the insurance cover for these young people was well and truly solid and an irrelevant issue is really alarming.

I can also remember the Minister on another occasion trying the line that it was irrelevant because it was a Federal program. That was another classic. Because work for the dole was a Federal program, we did not have the right to look at it. The fact that it was going to be impacting on ACT schools, ACT children, ACT teachers and ACT young unemployed people seemed to be irrelevant.

Another group that came to speak to us were advocates for young people. This is not just about the educational professionals who talked to us. It is also about people advocating for young people. They were not necessarily totally not supportive of finding these sorts of work experience opportunities, but they wanted to see structures and support in place to give it a reasonable chance of being a positive experience. What came out clearly from those people who work with young unemployed people or young people generally is that it is not good for them to continue to have negative experiences in this climate of unemployment. It has quite serious impacts on them if they get put into situations in which they fail.

I now have the report, so I can tell you that we heard from the Australian Education Union, who of course had a very powerful and well-researched submission, as always; the Primary Principals Association; the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union; the CPSU; the School Board Forum; ACTCOSS; the Youth Coalition; the Australian Youth Policy and Action Coalition; the Australian Guidance and Counselling

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