Page 5604 - Week 13 - Thursday, 17 November 2011
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recommendation for the Committee be accepted and that the reporting and consultation mechanism which is spelled out in recommendations 4.15 and 4.16.
Recommendation 2 is in relation to 4.15 and basically the committee sees this specific proposal contained in this recommendation as being able to be incorporated through the regular scheduling and the committee’s ongoing program and agrees that initially this hearing will be programmed every two years. It continues:
The Committee considers that the hearing would be include the Directorate;
the Commissioner for Children and Young People; the Public Advocate; and
the Official Visitor and accepts the recommendation.
Recommendation 3 is in regard to a recommendation that was made about joint formal reporting by the Public Advocate, the Official Visitor and the human rights commissioner, and the committee sees this as being something which is desirable and we can see this being done in the form of a formal, combined report or whatever way will be practicable for those agencies who are mentioned. The committee did acknowledge that this joint reporting will be very much dependent on the resources of the agencies and that the annual reports may actually be the appropriate mechanism for this reporting, but that will be obviously dependent, as I said, on the resources of the agencies if they do choose to report jointly, and that will also be accepted by the committee.
Recommendation 4 is in relation to 15.1. The committee proposes that this recommendation will be implemented by the committee writing each year to relevant stakeholders, including those listed in recommendation 15.1, to raise relevant and current issues. The committee believes this can and should be done in connection with the two-yearly review process recommended in the report and accepted by the committee as a desirable way of going forward.
Those recommendations will be progressed by the committee and I commend the report to the Assembly.
MS BURCH (Brindabella—Minister for Community Services, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Women and Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs) (5.52): Thank you for this report. I think that I am on record that I am very committed to making sure that my directorate, me as minister, this Assembly and society as a whole do better for our vulnerable youth and those most particularly within youth justice.
Having just received the report, Ms Bresnan, I will read it with interest. But in the main I think you would be aware that I am quite supportive, very supportive indeed, of the involvement of the Assembly in the committee structures. I wrote to you a number of weeks ago, probably months ago now, around the involvement of the committee and to seek your views on a number of the recommendations within the commissioner’s report that sought broader engagement and participation in this matter. I think, in essence, all of us in this place would agree that this is something that we, as a society and its various components, whether as members of the community or members of this Assembly, should be involved with.
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