Page 2560 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 5 June 2012
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and such, foster carer such and such.” These are the things that the Public Advocate is saying they do not do. They do not keep the records, and there is no way of keeping records because simple things, like basic information about who was at the meeting, why they were meeting and who they were talking about, are not contained in meeting notes—simple things.
If this minister cannot get the simple things right, like the record keeping, how can she possibly look after our most vulnerable children, children who come from complex and quite disrupted backgrounds? This minister, who cannot oversee an organisation that can get the note-taking right, cannot possibly see, cannot possibly look after, the complex needs of these children.
This minister has been told—she was told in the interim report from the Public Advocate in October last year—that the system was broken. She has been told again that the system is broken. And the response from the minister is really to just sort of gloss over it as much as possible.
About two weeks ago the minister put out a press release called “Progress made on care and protection reforms”. I said at the time that this was a minister trying to butter the community up, because we knew that something bad was coming in the final report that was due just a fortnight later. The progress is stunning. The minister is saying, “We are doing all these wonderful things.” But most of the wonderful things that she talked about doing had happened the week before—first meetings of groups and committees that happened in the week or fortnight before this report came down. This minister has been sitting on her hands while vulnerable children across the ACT are put at risk.
Mr Speaker, this report, brought down last week, is a searing indictment of this minister. It shows that she is incompetent. We have all known that for some time; even, I think, the members of the crossbench know just how incompetent she is. She is an incompetent minister. She has failed at every turn on this. She has not shown leadership. She has been supine and allowed the department to do what they want.
It was reported to me on the weekend that on Friday the Community Services Directorate provided a briefing on the government response to the Public Advocate’s report to a range of community groups. I spoke to a number of people who were at that briefing. The briefing, Mr Speaker and members, was a briefing where officials of the Community Services Directorate spoke to the government response. They went through and highlighted the spin things—the little pull-out boxes that say, “We need to do better”—oh, der—“and within this response, have set out the key areas where improvement will occur.”
At the end of that briefing, as people were leaving, they were given a copy of the Public Advocate’s report that came out the day before. They were not briefed on the Public Advocate’s report; they were briefed on the government’s response to the Public Advocate’s report. The people who attended that meeting left that meeting and went home and read it for the first time—had the first opportunity to read the Public Advocate’s report.
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