Page 803 - Week 03 - Thursday, 2 April 2020
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Labor-Greens government for “denying vulnerable children and their families their basic human rights”. In such a context, oversight by the Human Rights Commission sadly means little to Canberra’s families. I take the opportunity to put this government on notice that the Canberra Liberals will be keeping a close eye on their management of youth justice under these proposed changes.
Finally, it was confirmed in a briefing with the minister that COVID-19 is interfering with children in the territory’s care and protection system who have regular contact with their birth families. I understand the health reasons behind this and I have been assured that the government will be putting alternative contact arrangements, such as video chats, into place. But this is another area where this government simply cannot get this wrong. Alternatives need to be genuinely robust. Again, the Canberra Liberals will be keeping a very watchful eye on whether the current ACT government rises to this challenge.
MR BARR (Kurrajong—Chief Minister, Treasurer, Minister for Social Inclusion and Equality, Minister for Tourism and Special Events and Minister for Trade, Industry and Investment) (4.23), in reply: I thank members for their contribution across a wide range of areas, as this bill obviously canvasses so many different aspects of government operations. I will make a few general closing remarks, particularly in response to some of the observations of the Leader of the Opposition and Mr Parton in relation to how certain elements of work are progressing through the national cabinet process. I want to assure the opposition that there is a tremendous spirit of bipartisanship and that interjurisdictional working groups are developing the national model approach for tenancy legislation and for dealing with many of the issues that they raised.
I have never, in 15 years in politics, seen this kind of close working relationship between jurisdictions and ministers of very different political persuasions and very different backgrounds and experiences. The way that this has been working has been small and large jurisdictions working together and Labor and Liberal jurisdictions working together.
If those opposite want any reassurance that the views of the Liberal Party are being ably represented through their stakeholdings and at a federal level, I encourage them to make a quick call to their New South Wales, South Australian, Tasmanian or federal colleagues for a sense of the bipartisanship that is being applied through all of this work on the very complex matters in relation to both commercial and residential tenancies. This has been an issue that treasurers at a state and territory level have been collaborating on and putting forward ideas and solutions to the commonwealth. The commonwealth has been providing feedback and input—then further state and territory collaboration, then back to the commonwealth, then back to the states and territories and then back to the commonwealth.
I have sat in, I would say, 16 hours of teleconference meetings between state and territory treasurers and the commonwealth, between them and the national cabinet, back and forth on this issue just in the last week. Everyone appreciates the incredible complexity of these matters. And there has never been, in modern Australian history, more bipartisanship and more work between Labor and Liberal ministers across the
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