Page 3179 - Week 07 - Thursday, 1 July 2010
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The department simply does not know the extent of grandparent and kinship care in the ACT. The department simply does not know how to have a handle on how many young people are in such care, and the department has not made an effort to find out. The department has given the association statistics which are unreliable at best. The department cancels meetings with the association or sends officers to the meetings who know nothing about the sector and who cannot answer their questions. Those meetings have become a waste of time. The department is locked in a sea of bureaucracy and misinformation, and all of this should be sheeted back to the minister.
She is the person responsible for the management of this sector in our community. She has failed to develop a solid policy. She has failed to listen to people in the sector. She has ignored the plight of those grandparents, uncles, aunts, brothers and sisters in our community who take on the role of parent for some of the most at risk children in our community. That is another reason why they have described this as institutionalised abuse.
But possibly the most telling reason comes from the fact that the department, in legal terms, is the legal parent of these children in care, yet the department has abrogated its responsibilities as a parent. It has handed babies over to carers without giving carers even the most basic provisions. I heard of one case in which a baby was handed to a grandparent as she arrived at Canberra airport. There was no baby capsule, there were no clothes, there were no nappies, there was no food. What kind of parent would do that to their child? That is another reason the grandparents and kinship carers association described the treatment as institutionalised abuse.
Mr Speaker, the attitude towards the plight of grandparent and kinship carers is scandalous—and that is a kind description. The grandparents and kinship carers described it as institutionalised abuse. The government’s failure to honour its election promise is scandalous. The association has called it institutionalised abuse. The government and its minister have failed to acknowledge that I, as a member of this place, and the grandparents and kinship carers of the ACT have a right to ask questions and have a right to get fulsome answers. That is scandalous. The grandparents and kinships carers association would describe that failure as institutionalised abuse.
This minister and this government have failed the grandparents and kinship carers of out community. They have failed to recognise or acknowledge the plight they face. They have failed to do anything about that plight, leaving those carers largely to fend for themselves, to take their case to the streets, essentially taking on the role of parents that is really the responsibility of the government. It is a shameful attitude, and it is institutionalised abuse.
Mr Speaker, I leave other members to make comments on this minister’s portfolio for a while. I will recover my composure and come back and make comments on other parts of the budget later.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Convenor, ACT Greens) (9:28): Through the estimates process we have sought clarification about individual line items and different budget measures that have been put into place. While much of the work
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