Page 2743 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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The Canberra Liberals are supporting this scheme because it is the best that is on offer at the moment. We believe this is better than the government’s proposal for a community visitors scheme. I had a briefing the other day from the government, and I was told, “We’re about to do a community visitors scheme and it’s much better than this.” But when you actually look at what the community visitors scheme does and what this does, there is very little to pull between it.
I suppose it is with some reluctance that we are supporting this. It is unfortunate that we have to legislate a complaints mechanism in the disability services area in particular. I work closely with Mr Doszpot who has responsibility for disability services. I work closely with the care and protection area, and there is a lot of crossover between the client groups. Everywhere I go and everywhere Mr Doszpot goes we are told that the community wants a proper complaints system for the Community Services Directorate. No-one believes that the model put forward by the government will answer their needs.
When you look at, say, the Public Advocate’s reports into the care and protection system, it shows that the Community Services Directorate is failing. It is not listening to the community. The feedback I have received in relation to that report, as I touched on yesterday, is that a number of people have said to me that the complaints they have been making year on year have been vindicated by this report but that they could not get through.
I have spent some time in the last little while reviewing what members of this place, for instance, have been told in answers to questions without notice in here and in estimates in relation to the care and protection system, remembering that two years ago almost to the day Marion Le AO went into the estimates committee and accused the care and protection system of institutionalised abuse of the children that they care for and institutionalised abuse of the carers, of kinship carers. That was pooh-poohed by the government with the minister saying, “My officials are very offended at that.” But when you go back and look at what Ms Le said then and you look at the questions that have been asked by Mr Smyth and Mr Seselja and Mr Coe and me in successive estimates hearings, and then you look at the issues raised by the Public Advocate in her report brought down last Thursday, you see that the things that we were told, the things that were being complained about in the Community Services Directorate, have been borne out. It shows that there is a high level of need in the community for a proper complaints mechanism.
The people I talk to and the people Mr Doszpot and Mr Seselja talk to in these areas have said to us: “We do not trust the government to deliver that service. We need some arm’s length from this. We need some independence for a complaints mechanism.” There is a crying need in the community—literally a crying need in the community—for a complaints mechanism in the Community Services Directorate. Given that Ms Bresnan’s bill goes most of the way to delivering that, we will be supporting this bill.
We note for instance that this bill does not come into operation until March next year. Between now and March next year I think there will be come conversation with the
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