Page 2443 - Week 06 - Thursday, 23 June 2011
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that it is very difficult to keep that continuity of staffing in areas like youth justice and in areas like care and protection and child protection. These are tough areas to work in. I have great respect and admiration for the people who work in these systems.
We need to ensure that we have the debriefing, the supervision, the professional developments, the supports we need to be able to recruit that staff and to keep that staff, to be looking at how we can ensure that they can stay there for good periods of time so that young people will get the benefit of not just having one case management system but also of being able to build rapport with a particular case manager or a couple of case managers. It is just another issue that does link into all of this.
I think it is good that minister is moving forward in this area, is having a look at how we can improve it, because, quite frankly, we have a scandalous incarceration rate in this city, particularly for our Indigenous young people. We are failing them dreadfully. We do need to look at this. We need to look at how we can improve. I very much look forward to being part of the debates and the discussions that will take place in the coming months.
Question resolved in the affirmative.
Government—competence and leadership
Discussion of matter of public importance
MADAM ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ms Le Couteur): Mr Speaker has received letters from Dr Bourke, Ms Bresnan, Mr Coe, Mr Doszpot, Mrs Dunne, Mr Hanson, Mr Hargreaves, Ms Hunter, Ms Le Couteur, Ms Porter, Mr Seselja and Mr Smyth proposing that matters of public importance be submitted to the Assembly. In accordance with standing order 79, the Speaker has determined that the matter proposed by Mrs Dunne be submitted to the Assembly, namely:
The importance of competence and leadership in government.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.40): Picture it: ears blocked, “La, la, la, la, la; I don’t want to hear.” Madam Assistant Speaker, that is an example of the competence and leadership of this government. Today we are talking about the importance of competence and leadership in government. It is very important that we should talk about this as we mark the first week of a new chief ministership—not so much the first week of a new chief ministership but at least the first sitting week of this new chief ministership.
Much has been said by Ms Gallagher about how she will be somehow a new leaf. We have had two ministerial statements this week about openness and accountability and honesty in government, and how things will be different. We had a tabling of objectives for the next year, and somehow we are supposed to think that there will be something new about that.
But what we have heard both on Tuesday and today in ministerial statements is the same old, same old. The initiatives listed were old initiatives—they were not even tarted up. The list of initiatives today, as Mr Smyth said, except for a couple of things
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