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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 1 Hansard (13 December) . . Page.. 207 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

Since then, there has been a final evaluation report, and there are some very big differences. I have a number of concerns in relation to this. Firstly, the group running MAACS have consistently had problems with the way some of the evaluation was done. I have had a chance to look at the evaluation. Whilst not having, of course, personal knowledge of many of the matters, I can say, from my experience of this matter as a minister-I think I was the minister when it started-and also from my experience as someone who has done a fair bit of work in terms of being a defence counsel and also a public prosecutor, that I do have some concerns.

I have significant concerns about an evaluation report prepared on MAACS, and I have a copy of that report with me. Mr Speaker, I will refer to some issues, and I am mindful of the time. I have made a quick perusal of the final report and I would like to summarise my basic concerns. That report makes a recommendation-recommendation No 5 I think it is-that MAACS should suspend its accommodation facility for children until "it has the following recommendations in place". The service was set up specifically for men and their accompanying children.

The report goes on to say, at page 17, that whilst there are some 32 SAAP agencies funded under SAAP in the ACT, 31 per cent of which are for crisis accommodation, none target homeless men and their children. That to me is of some concern. It is somewhat contradictory that the report recommends that they do not take any more children, yet it then states that there is nowhere else for those children to go.

I have a further concern that only two pages of the full report, which is some 67 or so pages, deal with client feedback. My concern there, Mr Speaker-and, remember, I have only had a very quick perusal of the report-is that the comments by the people they interviewed, the people who exited the service, are to a person very complimentary of the service, very complimentary of its professionalism, and very complimentary of the support, the care, the compassion that the MAACS people showed them. That is mentioned on only two pages. The final evaluation comment on that is that, in general, the tone of the client feedback is positive, and then there is a negative comment.

That started a few alarm bells ringing for me. I must say that I have never met the people who carried out the evaluation, but I suppose that from my training as a lawyer and having been a minister in this place for some considerable time and having looked at a lot of reports, there were some things which just did not seem to be quite right. So, I must say, having had a quick look at that report, I do have some concerns.

The report has led directly to a tender process and the tenders closed last Friday. I think this is an ideal time for the Assembly to make an evaluation, with minimal dislocation to anybody who has put in a tender, and I will speak a bit more about this later. In my view some of the things in the tender document are perhaps not necessarily relevant to the way the service has been run, and run most effectively, and might well change the very nature of the service.

I have some comments to make, Mr Speaker, in relation to the detailed criticisms made by MAACS itself. They go into some client testimonies, and I think I should probably deal with those last. But what concerns me in their 43-page document is a point by point rebuttal of a number of allegations and suggestions made in the evaluation, especially where the evaluation says things did not occur and they say they did.

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