Page 1144 - Week 05 - Tuesday, 29 May 2007
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for decades. We did not vote yes and move on. We voted yes, and we celebrate it to this day. The symbolism of what we did lives on and continues to drive and inspire us in the spirit of social justice and reconciliation.
Forty years ago, the world watched as Australians collectively spoke the language of social justice. We acknowledged that day the respect and dignity to which each person is entitled. We acknowledged that, if this is denied to any one of us, it is denied to all of us. To do justice to the referendum, we must now live social justice every day in our relationships, in our interactions and in our approach to reconciliation. We must fully embrace reconciliation, accept our history maturely and forge forward in a relationship based on respect. We owe this to the legacy of those who fought hard for the 1967 referendum. They did it without email, without websites and without the ability to catch planes and travel around the country.
KairosCare
MRS BURKE (Molonglo) (5.39): I bring to members’ attention the Kairos Prison Ministry’s work in Australia. Many members may know I hold from time to time Assembly breakfasts. In particular, the speaker at the May breakfast was a gentleman by the name of Ian Pavletich. He is the marketing promotions manager, I guess, for the Kairos Prison Ministry. He told us a little bit about Kairos and their involvement with our soon-to-be ACT prison. I was quite interested to hear him.
What is Kairos? In a nutshell, Kairos reaches out and says to men and women in prison, “You have a choice.” It says to women, family members, and friends, “You are not alone.” It says to juvenile offenders, “There can be a better way ahead.”
I guess many of us would know some of the facts, but I will run through a few of those. It costs society between $55,000 and $75,000 per annum to have someone in custodial care. All those in prison will be back in society one day, but over half, men and women, will re-offend within two years unless something changes in their lives.
However, over 80 per cent of the sentences given are for a period of less than five years, including parole time; so most are not big-time crimes, in other words. Eight to 10 per cent are serving time for traffic offences. Most re-offending inmates are a result of the environment they grew up in or had to live in. Most women in prison suffered major abuse as children. Most do not know how to take action to permanently stop the cycle.
In Australia, Kairos is currently active in over 16 correctional centres for men and women with more coming on board—eight regional centres for women and one torch program for juveniles. It has been said that Kairos is widely recognised as the most effective program available to positively change basic attitudes of the incarcerated and re-establish the self-belief in affected family members. That is what we know. We hear the catch-cry: “they have done the crime; they do the time”. This is where Kairos can really reach out.
Kairos is a not-for-profit, Christian-based ministry governed in Australia by the national board of Kairos Prison Ministry Australia, or KPMA. It is interdenominational, meaning that volunteers come from all arms of the Christian
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