Page 2577 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 5 June 2012
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Let us remember that we have had members come into this place and say, “Why were those children not taken earlier?” Then we have had members come into this place and say, “Why were those children taken at all?” These are the decisions and we are not the trained care and protection staff. We have a job to do here. My long-held wish and desire is that care and protection stops being a political football.
Yes, you can score points on it. You can score points as much as you like but ultimately—Mr Smyth, I take you up on your challenge—the best thing to do for those children that are at risk of breakdown and risk of coming into the care of the territory is for this Assembly to work together to look after them. That is not what happens.
Because care and protection is a political football and you can have motions like this which will not affect one outcome for one child or alter one decision in the minds of the territory parent—you can have all the fun you like—at the end of the day if you seriously want to engender change and reform and support those children, those families at risk, it is about working together in this place as 17 leaders, not along party lines.
Party lines will be here forever in a whole range of areas. But if there were one area where we could all pull our socks up and work together it would be care and protection. Maybe one day this place will get it right, because it has not in the past. (Time expired.)
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (11.10): Madam Deputy Speaker, the first person to politicise this today was the minister, who tried to claim in her opening statement that holding her to account for this serious failure in care and protection is somehow a distraction from the budget. We will get to the budget. No-one will be distracted from the budget; we will debate it; it will be dealt with. There are also other very important issues to deal with, and this is one of those issues. To try and suggest that we should not deal with this because it is uncomfortable for the minister is the ultimate political statement. It is a sell-out of those she is meant to be serving.
Instead of engaging in the politics of it, she should be getting on and doing the job. She has failed to do that job. We have no confidence that she can do that job properly, and that is why it is absolutely our duty as leaders in this place to say to the government, to say to the Assembly: “You need to have someone in charge who can get it done, because if you don’t kids will continue to suffer when they shouldn’t. Levels of care will not be what they should be because the leadership is not there.”
You have got to ask the question about leadership when the Chief Minister gets up and, having been the minister when the Vardon report was handed down and having been in government for 11 years, Ms Gallagher’s defence is, “It’s all Bill Stefaniak’s fault.” It is Bill Stefaniak’s fault and it is an adviser’s fault from 1998 that Labor has not managed to fix this issue from at least 2004 when the Vardon report came down. The best the Chief Minister can do after 11 years in government is to blame someone 12, 13, 14, 15 years ago.
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