Page 2306 - Week 06 - Friday, 27 June 2008
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the work, the criticism that comes as a result of failed systems and failed operations, the fact that almost every care and protection service in the country has been through a huge upheaval in the past five or so years all must make it hard for people to stick it out.
I have very closely watched the issue of resources. This is not an area that has been under resourced; there have been substantial injections of money into this area over the past few years, and no-one has quibbled about that. But I am concerned that, while last year during estimates it was revealed that there were 21 vacancies in Care and Protection Services and that the minister told us that they were going to do something about because it was a worry, this year, after a year of doing something about it—I am not quite sure what—the service is now 30 staff short.
On the last day that the minister appeared before the estimates committee, there was a swag of officials going off to the UK to undertake another round of recruitment. It has to be said the first round of recruitment undertaken by care and protection seems to have been extraordinarily successful. It is testament to the people involved that they have managed to recruit staff who were so keen to come, and that they managed to pick people who, almost without exception, were happy with the move that they made and were able to stay. There are very few people who have dropped out of the scheme. I gather that the people who did drop out did so not because they thought they had made the wrong choice but because they were forced to return to the UK due to family commitments and things like that. It seems to have been a very successful program, and I hope that the recruitment process, which is probably still going on, is equally successful and that we can fill the vacancies.
Being 30 staff down in an area like this puts extraordinary pressure on people. We cannot afford to have the people who do such important work burnt out by being overburdened. The staff of care and protection are, from their own descriptions, trying very hard to ease the burden on each of their colleagues. It seems to be a very cooperative area in which to work. But we cannot understate just how difficult it is for staff and that we should be doing all that we can to support those staff.
When the Minister for Disability and Community Services and Minister for Children and Young People appeared before us at the estimates committee, she managed to drop the bombshell that the government had seriously considered moving Symonston house because of its proximity to the proposed Tuggeranong gas-fired power station and data centre because it was considered it would be too noisy, there would be too many emissions and it would be too disruptive to the vulnerable people who are the clients of Symonston house. It was done in a pretty matter-of-fact way. The official said, “Yes, well, we heard about it. We read about it in the paper and somebody from CMD came along and knocked on our door and asked whether we would like to move, and we are looking very seriously at these options.” I suppose, in a way, it is a credit to the officials that they just got on with their job. But at the same time I think that it is a shame that CMD and other elements of the government were not so keen to tell the story about the impacts that this facility might have on the other neighbours.
It became clear that the Stanhope government was prepared to tell the Lanyon branch of the Labor Party—Mr Gentleman’s or Mr Hargreaves’s branch; I think it is
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