Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .

Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Wednesday, 4 August 2004) . . Page.. 3436 ..

Support for families before things get to crisis point is essential, but I do not think you need a commissioner for the family to achieve that. It has come up consistently in every single social policy report I have done in this place that we want prevention of child abuse and family dysfunction and social dysfunction by seeing support for families. So that is where there is common ground between Mrs Burke and everyone else in this place, I would suggest.

I will give some examples of good family support services. I remember well the O’Connor Family Centre, which was closed down by the previous Liberal government. It was one of the really good services that we had in the ACT for working with families and allowing people who lacked confidence within their family situation to move really gently into a supportive external environment. It was one that, I would suggest, represented best practice. I would like to see it replicated around Canberra. We lost that one.

Mrs Burke quoted an American academic, William Doherty, President of the National Council for Family Relations and Professor of Family Social Sciences—and I quote her quote:

… the principal momentum for competent parenting must come, not from a top down state or federal initiative, but rather from diverse families working together in powerful, but non-partisan ways. What is needed is a public, grass roots movement generated and sustained by parents themselves to make family life a priority.

I have to say I am at a bit of a loss to understand why Mrs Burke chose this quote. It seems to me that it does not lend much support to her concept of a commissioner. In fact, it supports something more like community-based services of support and education, a parents’ support line and so on.

The other thrust of Mrs Burke’s argument seems to be that things like a commissioner for children focus too much on situations where there are problems, leaving the majority of families unattended. I think this is an interesting position for a Liberal member, too.

Mr Cornwell, as quoted by Mrs Burke, disagreed with the community services and social equity committee’s recommendation for a commissioner for children and young people, on the basis that it could threaten the parental rights and responsibilities of the vast majority of ACT families whose children do not come to the attention of any local authority. In Mrs Burke’s words, there seems to be a huge push across the country to somehow alienate children from their parents and, in the process, take rights and responsibilities away from parents. With many states now looking at a commissioner for children, I would have thought the value of having commissioners to work on issues related to the group of people who are vulnerable, disadvantaged or at risk is quite clear, that is, these officers oversee services for vulnerable children. To claim that they are taking away family rights is, as I said earlier, verging on what is, for me, quite a terrifying ethic, that what is in the family stays in the family.

It is also very disturbing that Mrs Burke’s premise, the reason she argues we need a commissioner for the family, is that we have human rights law and we will have a children’s commissioner. If we really want to look at what we need to be doing for our

Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .