Page 2483 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 29 June 2005
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Our answers have always been correct and I cannot see what you are trying to run here. If you are trying to give yourself credit for establishing a working party, if that is what you want, you can have it. I will give it to you. I will say, Mr Seselja, that you got this working party started if that is what you want. There is no issue here. The working party was established in line with the recommendations. The recommendations did not say within what time the working party should be established. There is a small thing called a budget that occurs between February and May that actually takes a little bit of time. Mr Seselja, not having been in government, would not understand that. A working party has been established to do the work required under the standing committee report.
There is no story here, there has been not failure to implement recommendations and there is no way you can hang anything over my head. I have a proud record on Quamby and this government has a proud record on Quamby. The situation I inherited from your government was that nothing had happened for seven years. Mr Corbell, on handover from his portfolio to mine, said, and we were just moving into budget time, that some money was needed to upgrade Quamby, that that was a priority bid. That was his recommendation to me on taking over the portfolio. Mr Corbell had already started the work to be done on that bid, which was ultimately successful, but nothing had been done for seven years prior to that. There had been no changes, no extra resources going in.
We have had to ramp up the school, we have had to provide computers and put extra teachers in there to support the students. We have, as I said, 47 different programs going in there. We have young people from Quamby attending youth interact conferences on remission during the day, out and about, and we have young people successfully living independently in the community post their transition support from Quamby. Really good things are happening at Quamby and it is to the staff and the management of the Office for Children, Youth and Family Support that credit should be given.
I will take credit for getting the money, but that is about all I can take credit for. My job is to make sure that all the resources that are needed for Quamby are provided to Quamby and that I am fully briefed on all of the issues surrounding Quamby, which I am. At no point during estimates did I mislead the committee, did I answer anything incorrectly, and I really resent the imputation that I have done so. I am very clear on that. The whole reason for taking things on notice when you do not know something is so as not to mislead the committee. If I had said that the working party had not been established and then had to come back and correct the record by saying that it had and give the information, I would have been misleading the committee. But my answer was, “I don’t know.” At the time, that was correct and then you asked some follow-up questions which were answered.
The real issue here is that the mind of the opposition should be on supporting the children and young people at Quamby, not bickering over what date a working party was established—a working party which did not have a deadline or time frame to meet and which the recommendation did not say must be established immediately. The government is implementing the recommendations of that report, but it is doing far more than that. If you think that the standing committee report sets the limits on the work that can be done at Quamby you are mistaken because there is much more that needs to be done there and the position is reviewed almost on a daily basis, depending on the make-up of the young people within that facility at that time.
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