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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 02 Hansard (Wednesday, 3 March 2004) . . Page.. 612 ..

investigation and further consideration. I understand it is an idea that he certainly would support.

We are all well aware of the alarming details emerging regarding child abuse, not just Canberra-wide but nation-wide. There has been a sharp and alarming rise in the number of cases reported—exponential I think we would say. I would suggest that some of these cases could well be due to the pressures on families today, and possibly a lack of support and provision to assist families. Families need practical support. Instead, we seem to be compounding people’s problems with heavy bureaucratic procedures or, worse still, costly court proceedings.

My hope and belief is that a commissioner for the family could help in terms of better advocacy for children and families. I am, therefore, mindful that a commissioner for the family would be a strong advocate for assisting children and families as a whole and that the role would not be yet another bureaucratic layer. As Bill Muehlenberg, national vice president of the Australia Family Association, rightly says, “Separating children from their families, or that unit, is a partial cure for the problems of seriously dysfunctional families, but it would be the cause of problems in functional families.”

Mr Speaker, I am proposing that a commissioner for the family would act as a mediator and have the power to make recommendations on policy to government, ensuring that such policy was relevant and friendly to the child and the family as a whole and complementing any such other associated policy and organisations seeking to assist families.

We must, as a society, return to placing families at the heart of social planning and policy. It is really simply not good enough to focus on the child in splendid isolation from the rest of the family unit. I believe that if we fail to do this, we will do so at our peril. We need to focus on what will make stronger and better families, thereby ensuring that we equip families with what they need to succeed.

I am sure it has been said before that government needs to ensure that we invest in the long-term planning and support for families. Bill Muehlenberg went on to say:

Support for families must be the priority. Government policy therefore must focus on delivering support to children through their families, not apart from families.

The community can be most effective in helping children only when we direct our support to parents to help them to build better relationships with their family. Any attempt to set up bureaucratic structures—no matter how well intentioned—which even appear to separate children from their families can only be destructive in the long run.

Mr Speaker, that is exactly what I am mindful of here—that we do not set up another bureaucratic structure but that we set up an advocacy to enable families and children to work together before there is resort to court rooms and often nasty and bitter battles.

Mr John Barich, the Australia Family Association state president, states:

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