Page 5325 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 November 2011
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She will fail to do this, because what she did this morning fails to pass the common man test. The man and woman in the street know quite categorically that, when those children were sent to that property on the Barton Highway, they should not have been sent there, because it was not a suitable place. It is not a suitable place to send traumatised children in the dead of winter when there are no beds and no bedding. No-one checked beforehand. They just said, “Here’s the keys; take them.” And the agency, which was not authorised in any way to look after those children, had to make the best of those arrangements. They did. They did everything within their power to make the best of those arrangements. It is the fault of this government and its agencies that they were put in that position.
It is the fault of this minister that she did not ensure that, if that house was being used as a place for providing residential care, it met her conditions. It is this minister’s responsibility to ensure that her chief executive complies with the law. And when he wants to ensure that someone is given residential care, he must authorise somebody—preferably in anticipation, but if there is an emergency he must do it orally, in accordance with the act, and then he must follow it up as soon as possible in writing and give that authorisation to the agency.
We know that none of those things happened. We know that those things did not happen. We know that the care and protection service did not communicate with the agency in an appropriate way. It is clear that the law was breached. What we have got here today from the Government Solicitor is an attempt to do what his masters asked him to do—come up with a plausible explanation as to how this does not breach the law. It is not plausible.
It still stands. This agency was not authorised. The place of care was not a suitable place. The minister is directly responsible for authorising the place of care. It was not a suitable place. No amount of tabling of learned legal opinions will distract from the findings of the Public Advocate that on 24 occasions that we know of so far there were unauthorised placements.
There is a second part to this review. We are waiting for the government to tell us how they are going to conduct the second part of this review. So far, we know of 24 occasions with multiple agencies in multiple locations that were substandard and possibly not approved. If they were approved, they would have breached the guidelines. The agencies were not authorised to do this. These are the clear facts.
No amount of attempt at self-exoneration will hide the facts brought to light by the Public Advocate in the ACT. The Public Advocate needs to be commended for her courage, and this minister needs to be condemned for her cowardly attack on the Public Advocate in this place this morning.
MS HUNTER (Ginninderra—Parliamentary Leader, ACT Greens) (5.08): There are a couple of issues—that is, the Solicitor-General’s advice on care and protection placement—which the statement raises. Firstly, I would like to say that the main issue is that the system is not providing for the children and young people in care and protection as well as it should. I remain concerned about some of the directorate’s
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