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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 11 Hansard (19 October) . . Page.. 3295 ..

MS TUCKER (continuing):

Many of the aims, general objects and principles of the Bill reflect contemporary ideas about the best interests of the child and much of the language and tone of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. That is an important development in the legislation and it is to be commended. The test will be how those provisions are actually applied.

Clauses 13 and 14, relating to the indigenous and young people principle and the indigenous placement principle, incorporate into legislation some of the lessons learnt from and recommendations of the national inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. This is also a very important development and goes some way towards ensuring that the grotesque policies of separation of indigenous children from their families over the last 100 years or so are not repeated.

But words and actions or, in this case, proposed legislation and current government policies and decisions can be quite separate things; so, yet again, these principles will be tested in their application. It is clear that, for indigenous organisations to exist and operate, the Government must resource the organisations so that at a bare minimum they can advocate effectively for indigenous children and young people case by case.

As I mentioned, the provisions relating to family group conferencing are an important development in this Bill, assisting families to resolve family conflict. I commend those provisions.

Another concern of service providers is the capacity for bureaucratic slowness to contribute to systems abuse, whereby children's lives are held in suspension while government agencies slowly make decisions for their so-called benefit. In this Bill there appears to be a significant tightening up of the timeframes in which decisions need to be made about the welfare, life situation and circumstances of children and young people. That is also a positive development in the Bill; but, once again, only if it is supported by appropriate resources. In fact, it could be damaging if that is not the case because we would see increased pressure for a speedy resolution of problems and the outcomes might not be thought through.

One very notable absence from the Bill is the lack of what could be called broad consumer participation or consumer advocacy in decision-making or policy development. Whilst the Bill provides children and young people with limited opportunities to articulate their individual needs in forums which are deciding their destiny, there is no explicit means by which consumers - in this case, children and young people - can collectively advocate for themselves and provide feedback to government and other organisations about government policies affecting them.

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