Page 4503 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 18 October 2011
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There has rarely been a stronger case for no confidence in a minister. To repeatedly breach the law, to do so knowingly, to do so after years when we knew this was happening, is unacceptable. This minister deserves to be—(Time expired.)
MS GALLAGHER (Molonglo—Chief Minister, Minister for Health and Minister for Industrial Relations) (11.37): The government will not be supporting the amendments to the motion today. It was interesting to listen to the contributions of members in this place this morning—they have automatically become qualified child protection workers—making decisions about what should have happened, when it should have happened and how it should have happened.
I think we need to understand the reality of care and protection systems not just in the ACT but around the country. I think every jurisdiction, regardless of political colour or flavour, deals with issues in their care and protection systems because they are incredibly fraught with problems. They are dealing not only with bureaucratic processes, they are dealing with children and families that are often broken and traumatised and unwilling to accept intervention even if the legislative framework requires intervention.
I think on a yearly basis there are 13,000 child protection reports coming through the system. There is somewhere near 200,000 out-of-home care days provided. There are 1,200 open cases of children who are in the care of the territory. Probably between 550 and 600 children are in the care of the territory parent on a daily basis, let alone the children that require some sort of monitoring and oversight but who may have other orders. This is the workload that this directorate is dealing with. To put it into perspective and to acknowledge the huge change that has happened in this area over the last 10 years, no government and no ministers have done more to improve the care and protection system than this government.
I remind members—when I was the care and protection minister back in 2003, listening to Mrs Dunne lecture this government on providing a reception centre, which I have to say is a good idea and we should work out how to do that—we found staff working in the basement of high schools left from the last time you were in government. We found staff we did not even know existed. They were working for the department in regions. Under that system, people did not even know how many children were in the care of the territory parent. There were about 30 staff working in the area. The problems that occurred under your watch and that we had to fix have taken years to fix.
Mrs Dunne says, “Why are children coming into Moore Street?” There was not even a Moore Street to come into under your government when you were last in power. The shame and the disgrace that you left the care and protection system in have lasted for years. It has required millions of dollars of investment and it has required incredible reform to out-of-home care, emergency care, therapeutic care. These are all services that did not even exist in any great capacity before the reforms and the injections of resources that we put in to reform this system.
Yes, reading Anita Phillips’ report on the weekend distressed me, as it would distress anyone reading about those cases. But these are often situations that ministers in
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