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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 08 Hansard (Thursday, 5 August 2004) . . Page.. 3485 ..

South Australia. We noted that the issues in relation to care and protection were of nationwide concern, but we found that there were many problems to do with how we look after our most vulnerable and that the most vulnerable in our community—children who have been placed into care—were not having their needs met, were not having their voices heard and were being placed under continual strain.

We put forward the idea that, if a child is in care, it will most likely end up being part of the juvenile justice system. That is a cycle we must work to break so that we are actually protecting our children who need protection and not letting them get into a situation where they feel they need to participate in criminal activity to be part of their community. These things were being said 12 months ago, and throughout the inquiry many reports were put forward of concern in relation to children and young people.

The key component, which was always put forward and I think needs to remain the focus, is that children’s voices were not being heard. Children, as the key component of the care protection system—through the CREATE Foundation and through conversations with anybody they can find—have for a number of years been putting forward their concerns about the care and protection system and the problems that they are facing. For far too long, adults, as leaders of the community, have ignored their voices. We can no longer do that. We need to listen to the people who know what is happening to them, and we should respect the voices of children and young people. If we continue to ignore their voices, we will surely regret it even more than we do at the moment.

I would like to respond to some of the comments Mr Hargreaves was making. I was not planning to, but I feel that they do need some response. When the Chief Minister and the minister for what was then education, youth and family services announced that they would be doing a further inquiry into care and protection in the ACT, like many people in this place, I went back and looked over the work that the community services committee had done. I read the transcripts, I read the submissions and I re-read the report—because I thought that we had discussed these issues. Looking back over the transcript, I saw that we had.

Mr Hargreaves’s concerns about individual children were raised with the minister in relation to specific cases where young people known to family services had died and there were coroner’s inquiries going. Mr Cornwell raised those concerns specifically. There were discussions about how these things could have happened, why children were falling through the gaps and what we needed to do to make things better for children in care.

Other things were discussed in those inquiries, including the concerns of the Office of the Community Advocate in relation to statutory reporting under section 162. Concerns were raised about the looking after children system that is meant to deal with reporting and information flows. Concerns were raised about children in care and their continual involvement with the youth justice system.

These hearings were reported again by the Canberra Times in February 2004. They are not necessarily new discussions that are happening in the public. The minister was there. The minister was even told that she might want to look through the OCA report to see what the OCA was saying. I think enough alarm bells were ringing for the minister to ask for more information and to look a little bit deeper into this.

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