Page 2745 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 6 June 2012
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community. The official visitor schemes under the Children and Young People Act 2008, the Corrections Management Act 2007 and the Mental Health (Treatment and Care) Act 1994 operate effectively to assist and protect the vulnerable people detained in facilities established under each act. The Greens have not demonstrated any practical, actual problems with any official visitor scheme.
This government does not support changes that would threaten the effectiveness and responsiveness of the existing schemes for the protection of vulnerable people in closed environments; that is, children and young people in corrections rehabilitation detention facilities, people in adult corrections facilities and people in mental health facilities. This is where the Greens’ bill goes astray. Closed environments are operated for the purposes of the rehabilitation and care of young offenders, the remand and rehabilitation of adults who have committed an offence for which they are serving a period of detention and the treatment and care of people with a mental illness. These closed environments are not alike. Their issues, requirements, services and responses are also different. They are serviced by official visitors with different experience and expertise.
Official visitors work directly within correctional facilities, child and youth justice rehabilitation facilities and mental health facilities to assist and protect vulnerable people by facilitating early resolution of issues with service providers. If issues are not resolved, an official visitor can raise the matter directly with their minister and refer it to the appropriate complaints body, such as the Human Rights Commission or the ACT Ombudsman. They can also seek the support of the Public Advocate.
It could be suggested that the government is taking an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach. This is not true. The government considers proposals and is open to those that improve the protection of particularly vulnerable people.
The government proposes to present legislation to amend the Corrections Management Act 2007 to establish a formal role for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander official visitor for corrections and to amend the Children and Young People Act 2008 to establish an official visitor for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people. The government will also consider other non-legislative improvements to the official visitor schemes which will not compromise the effectiveness of the existing schemes.
The government is concerned that the Greens’ proposed reform, for all its good intent, takes several wrong directions. It removes deliberate scheme variations which are essential for servicing different closed environments. It duplicates existing formal complaints management services provided by the Ombudsman, the Human Rights Commission and the Office of the Public Advocate. It ignores work already underway within the Community Services Directorate to co-design a community visitor scheme for people with disabilities. It ignores national collaborative work already underway to develop a targeted service for people who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. And it fails to recognise official visitors’ direct reporting relationships with their ministers as the source of their independence from the systems in which they operate. Despite failing to identify problems in the existing schemes, the bill proposes
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