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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Tuesday, 3 August 2004) . . Page.. 3377 ..

not choose to go missing. But whatever the reason for them to be away from their friends, their loved ones, their families, it is the friends, the families and the loved ones who often also carry a burden, and that is of just not knowing what has happened to a partner, a friend, a spouse, a daughter, a son, a child, a grandparent—whatever the relationship. What it does is bring tragedy.

The statistics quoted over the last couple of days, at various functions I have been to, are quite horrific. Something like 30,000 people go missing in Australia every year. Thankfully, the majority of those are found within seven days. That comes as a great relief to their families.

There are a more serious number of people who disappear, who go missing, and from whom nothing is heard by their families. It comes down to a couple of hundred people but, for the families of those couple of hundred people, which I think is way too large a number, the burden is quite extreme. The irony for many of these families is that these people are elsewhere, they are known to authorities, but simply the authorities cannot reveal that. They might be known to a motor registry, through the health authorities or through Centrelink but, because of privacy legislation, that information is not available to their families.

On one hand, I think we have to balance the rights of an individual to be anonymous, to be where they are, in the circumstances that they want to be in, but I think we also have to acknowledge the rights of their loved ones and their families to actually know that they are safe. In many cases that is all they want to know. So the message is: please, we need to know where you are; please let us know. There are some free-call numbers that will allow that to occur.

The poster that was designed to go with it was in fact from a competition run at the CIT, in conjunction with the AFP. The winner this year was Maja Pietranik who won a small trophy and a small cash prize for designing all the work. I think it is tremendous that the AFP are going out in the community to get the community’s perspective on what is happening out there and how best to relate to people. The second-year design students at the CIT were responsible. Many entered and Maja was the winner. Congratulations to Maja and to the AFP, in particular their missing persons unit.

It is important work they do—I suspect a lot of it is heart-wrenching work. I would like to congratulate the missing persons unit as well, who operate at the national level, and then of course have links with all the state police forces. To the officers involved with this particularly, in many ways, thankless task—it is often a task that does not bring a solution, does not bring an answer to folks—I would say, “Please keep up the good work; don’t lose heart. You do a fabulous job, and it is very much appreciated by the community.”

I would make a final plea to members of the community that we have a role to play here as well in making sure that, if we do know somebody who is missing or estranged from their family—for their own reasons—we encourage them simply to do their family, their loved ones or their friends the simple courtesy of contacting them and saying, “I’m okay.” That is the whole theme of the postcard that has been designed. It simply says, “Dear”—blank; you fill in your blank—“I’m okay.” Signed whoever it is. It is a simple

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