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Standing Committee On Social Issues

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Speakers - Burnswoods The Hon Jan; Samios The Hon James; Chesterfield-Evans The Hon Dr Arthur; Ryan The Hon John; Deputy-President
Business - Committee, Report


    STANDING COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL ISSUES
Page: 5677


    Report: Prevention—Interim Report on Child Protection Services

    Debate resumed from an earlier hour.

    The Hon. JAN BURNSWOODS [2.30 p.m.]: On Wednesday 16 October I had great pleasure, on behalf of the Standing Committee on Social Issues, in tabling the "Interim Report on Child Protection Services" and the committee's first report into another inquiry entitled "Early Intervention for Children with Learning Difficulties". Given the number of inquiries that the committee has been doing, it was a bit of a struggle to produce those reports within the time frame allocated to them. In September the committee obtained an extension, until 16 October, of its original reporting date for the interim report on child protection services. So I was pleased that the committee was able to table that report at about 5 o'clock on 16 October.

    I pay tribute to the dedicated staff of the committee for the work they did on those reports. On occasions they worked until 10.00 or 11.00 at night, and they often worked at weekends. Julie Langsworth is now quite sick with pleurisy and pneumonia. I am not surprised, given the amount of work that committee staff were doing. I pay tribute to Julie, Bev, Tony, Merrin, Victoria, Kirrily and Heather, all of whom, full-time or part-time, contributed mightily to the quality of those reports. Today, however, I wish to refer to the "Interim Report on Child Protection Services".

    When the committee was given its terms of reference its final reporting date was 5 December. I and members and staff of the committee are conscious that 5 December is only six weeks away. Given the size of the inquiry into child protection services and the Department of Community Services [DOCS], it will be a considerable struggle for the committee to meet that reporting deadline. However, it will report by that date, just as it met the reporting date deadline for its interim report.

    Before I speak to the interim report on child protection I should like to mention that there has been some discussion about the reasons for the focus in this report, and I would like to clarify one issue. On 4 September the committee again met to discuss the rather difficult issue of how, faced with a complex inquiry in which many of the strands overlap and are interwoven, the interim report would be separated from the final report. On 4 September committee members decided to produce an interim report in two quite distinct halves. In one half we would attempt to summarise briefly all the major issues that had been raised with us in submissions and in hearings—both public and private—about DOCS and about the child protection system. Therefore, the interim report contains quite a long chapter 2. The report has only four chapters, and chapters 1 and 4 are brief.

    In chapter 2—a lengthy chapter that comprises 19 or 20 pages—we tried to outline the progress of the inquiry, the decisions and announcements that have been made since we received our terms of reference in April and, as fairly as we could, the points that have been made that are critical of DOCS and of the child protection system. We make it clear in that chapter that we envisage that the final report will be almost totally concerned with those issues. Now that we have identified those issues, people can make additional comments to us if they wish.

    The committee has not yet been able to complete its hearings. In early November we will be hearing from certain quite important witnesses who, for various reasons, have so far been unable to speak to us. So we are conscious that this interim report does not completely cover the field. Nevertheless, as I said, in September we made the decision to run through all those issues so everyone could see what stage we had reached. We will be drawing conclusions, doing a detailed analysis—as the Standing Committee on Social Issues always does—and, on 5 December, making recommendations about the catalogue of complaints or criticisms.

    I turn now to the other half of the interim report, the chapter on which the committee focuses and in which it tries to express as strongly as it can the overwhelming conclusion that it reached, which so many of its most persuasive witnesses put to it. It is time that the Government and the community, in a multipartisan way, tried to shift the focus of debate and the focus of caring for children away from the crisis end of child protection and intervention, including the most drastic steps relating to the decision to remove a neglected or abused child from his or her family. As I think most people know, at that stage often the damage already done to the child is so severe as to be almost irreparable. Indeed, even if the damage is not quite so severe, the damage has nevertheless been done, and with all the best intentions and will it is often very difficult to ensure that the child totally overcomes that early damage.

    The committee has therefore advocated the need for a shift in focus towards prevention and early intervention. In this context, the committee decided to link up the reports in the two separate inquiries. In taking evidence in both inquiries over the course of the last year or so, the committee found that witness after witness gave evidence that the focus needed to be shifted. The witnesses said that whether you are dealing with a child whose learning difficulties become apparent in the first few years of school, or a child suffering abuse or neglect in a dysfunctional family, in many cases it becomes obvious that if the child and the family had been identified early enough in the child's life, and the various services that currently exist had been brought to bear, many of the problems might have been solved.

    The committee has therefore firmly stated that while it is essential to continue crisis intervention, for the sake of our children and our whole community we must try to overcome these problems before they arise. The committee has quoted the international evidence, because there is not a great deal of measurable evidence in New South Wales. A great deal of overseas evidence is building up on the value of preventative and early intervention strategies. The claim that is frequently quoted from the United States, which most members have probably heard, is that for every $1 spent on prevention and early intervention in a child's life the community is saved some $7 by not having to pick up the pieces late on. The damage that is done and the cost later on to the community, let alone to the child and the family, can extend from the need for recovery strategies in the early years of school, such as special literacy and numeracy strategies, to all kinds of behavioural and other interventions during a child's school life, and in many cases through to the corrective services system and gaol.

    Police Superintendent Heslop told the committee that when he thinks about the young people who come under the attention of the police and end up in gaol, he can very often identify all the symptoms in their early life that we know are often predictors of what will eventually happen to those young people. Such indicators include drug and alcohol abuse by the parents, a lack of parenting skills, a failure to simply know what to do, and myriad other things, including inherent physical and emotional difficulties, brain damage, and so on. If such indicators are picked up early, many can be remedied and the potential problems can be solved.

    The committee has discussed at some length the Families First Program, and it congratulates the New South Wales Government on its implementation. While the program is still in its early stages and has not yet been rolled out in some regions, every witness who gave evidence about it praised the initiative, both for its philosophy and its practical implementation. The committee has referred to some of the doubts expressed about whether the overall funding allocation for Families First will be sufficient, and it has some reservations about whether the program is yet managing to co-ordinate its activities with the activities of the myriad other government and non-government agencies that are involved in this area.

    One of the very firm recommendations the committee made in both the report on child protection services and the matching report on early intervention for children with learning difficulties was that a new department be set up that we have suggested could be tentatively named the Department of Child Development. This has proved to be a controversial recommendation, which is pleasing for the committee because one of the difficulties that parliamentary committees sometimes face in dealing with issues such as this is that without a certain amount of controversy it is difficult to get politicians and the media to pay a great deal of attention to their recommendations. I am therefore delighted to have people arguing about whether a new department is a good or a bad thing. This being an interim report, the committee will have the opportunity to revisit the issue in its final report. In the meantime, however, the more the issue is discussed, the better.

    The committee recommended the establishment of the new department on the basis that witness after witness told us that the plethora of agencies involved in dealing with early intervention and prevention created what everyone admitted was a co-ordination problem. The Department of Education and Training, the Department of Community Services, the Department of Disability, Ageing and Home Care, a variety of non-government agencies, as well as a variety of Federal Government bodies and local government bodies, are all involved in funding, policy and program work for young children. I do not think anyone would say that there is not a lack of co-ordination between all those agencies. It is no-one's fault that there is that lack of co-ordination, and many of the people operating the programs are doing their very best to ensure they are operating as well as possible.

    But when three levels of government agencies—Commonwealth, State and local—and a mix of non-government agencies are all involved, clearly co-ordination is a problem for those governments and their funding bodies. Perhaps more importantly, it is an enormous problem from the point of view of the families and children, given the difficulties they are facing. Time and again during both of these inquiries, as in its inquiry into disability services, the committee heard about families who slip through the cracks between different services. Perhaps they were eligible for one service but not for another, or they failed to discover that there were services in a certain locality, or they failed to take advantage of a certain service because it did not exist in their locality. I could go into more detail about that.

    Certainly Families First has been a very important step in attempting to ensure co-ordination. It is no accident that the program is run from the Cabinet Office, because, by definition, the Cabinet Office is able to do that. But no-one believes that a program such as Families First, as years go by and it becomes fully operational, can continue to operate from the Cabinet Office. Sooner or later a decision must be made as to which body will operate the program. The committee would be delighted if honourable members and the community were to read the two reports together. The committee has received from a number of stakeholders in both sectors a positive response to the arguments it has put. However, it is conscious that the reports are interim reports and that they will need to be revisited at some future time. As I said, the recommendation relating to the department is controversial, but the committee's statement about the need for prevention strategies and co-ordination is not.

    The committee has attempted to draw distinctions between what it has termed primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. Obviously, the final report will focus far more on the role of DOCS in carrying out secondary prevention activities. The example with which most people are familiar is the support services that operate throughout New South Wales with funding provided generally by DOCS but run as non-government agencies. The committee will further examine them, but it does refer to them extensively in this report. It also refers to the role that DOCS should play in developing a co-ordinated framework to bring together all relevant agencies, including family support services.

    The fourth and last recommendation calls on the Government to review the adequacy of funding of family support services through the Community Services Grants Program. The committee received extensive evidence that, although family support services do a great job and are widely supported, it is a considerable time since they have had a real funding increase. Almost everyone believes that they need an increase in funding but also that they must be more effectively plugged into the framework that is designed to look after children.

    As I said, the committee is required to table its final report on 5 December. So far, it has received 267 submissions, which is a very large number, and has spoken to more than 120 people, including representatives of peak bodies and many frontline DOCS workers in both metropolitan and regional areas. The Public Service Association has helped the committee a great deal. With its assistance, honourable members have spoken to a number of people working in community service centres and at the helpline. The committee has also had enormous co-operation from the community. It is very grateful to groups such as local child protection interagency committees that have been able to help by bringing together the myriad services that exist in local areas.

    I understand that the committee has spoken to all of the major non-government organisations and many of the frontline service groups, senior departmental managers and, indeed, the Minister for Community Services, the Hon. Carmel Tebbutt, who appeared before the committee in August. As I said, the committee has not yet been able to talk to some people whom members believe it should consult. Carol Peltola, who spoke to Four Corners about her concerns, will appear at a hearing tomorrow. During three days of hearings in November members of the committee will talk to a range of people, including groups speaking on behalf of families dealing with mental illness and intellectual disabilities.

    Numerous witnesses have said that because parents have these difficulties their children often need extra help. The committee has not yet spoken to people involved in Family Court regarding the many comments made about the difficulties experienced in the relationship between DOCS and the court, particularly when children are being used as pawns or bargaining chips in family disputes or custody matters. The committee will take further evidence from the department. I commend the report to the House. I have taken the opportunity to clarify some of the misunderstandings that arose when the report was tabled. They were made by people who should have known better. I ask honourable members to accept the report on its merits and look forward to the final report, which will be tabled on 5 December. [Time expired.]

    The Hon. JAMES SAMIOS [2.50 p.m.]: I submitted the dissenting report dealing with the Coalition's concerns about the interim report on child protection services. First, I support what the Hon. Jan Burnswoods said in her tribute to the work of our late colleague the Hon. Doug Moppett. It is true that he had a long involvement in the outback and particularly with the needs of children. He was a strong advocate for children and over the years he helped the committee to develop practical recommendations to assist in the improvement of their health and wellbeing.

    The committee has worked hard, ably supported by its staff, to produce this interim report. However, in referring to my dissenting report, which expressed the Coalition's concerns, I draw attention to the fact that the overarching problem with the Department of Community Services has been its failure to implement effective child protection systems. As a result, non-government organisations, which should be in partnership with the department, and individuals in the community are frustrated by its failure to deliver professional services. Furthermore, individual DOCS officers and the Public Service Association have indicated a high level of frustration with the failure of departmental systems and the culture of denial. In that regard, it might be said that the committee's report is insufficiently critical of DOCS.

    The executive summary is said to reflect the report's approach of understating the calamitous level of dysfunction within the department. It purports to suggest that a number of significant events and decisions have had an impact on the system since the commencement of the inquiry and, by implication, that it has improved. The Coalition believes that is not correct. I draw attention to the statement that there is a need for strong and sustained bipartisan commitment to rebuilding the system. That fails to acknowledge the bipartisanship that existed with the implementation of the 1988 Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act. The Coalition moved away from bipartisanship only after the Government failed to implement all the relevant provisions of the legislation.

    The Hon. Dr ARTHUR CHESTERFIELD-EVANS [2.55 p.m.]: These reports are significant. I will speak first to the interim report on child protection services, which is of most concern. I suggested an inquiry into the Department of Community Services in response to pressure from former wards of the State, people who were experiencing problems with the department, and peak groups. It took me 20 months to get the necessary numbers to establish the inquiry. When I first tried there were two groups on the crossbenches: those who wanted narrow terms of reference and who said that the Government would not support it, and those who said they wanted a wide-ranging report because it was a huge problem.

    I was distressed; I did not have the numbers. The Opposition said to me that as I did not have the numbers I should not put the motion, so I did not. I said there would be more deaths before the inquiry got under way. The Government was saying, "We are going well, we have just got a new team in place and we are just starting to build morale. If you have this inquiry now it will destroy morale, the department will become defensive and no progress will be made." That is what governments always say when they do not want inquiries. Sure enough, it took some more deaths, and the Opposition alerting 60 Minutes to those deaths, to get the numbers for an inquiry. I discussed with the Opposition amendments to my original motion to come up with terms of reference that all those who would vote for it could agree to.

    The Government did not want this inquiry, but I think it would now concede that it was necessary and important. The good work of the committee was done by the late Doug Moppett and the committee staff Tony Davies and Julie Langsworth, and, in the case of the report on early intervention, Merrin and Bev. The inquiry looked into what I call the two planets syndrome: the department says everything is under control and only a few management changes are needed, and they have largely been done, and the public says this is completely disastrous and terrible things are happening. If I have to decide what is reality, I generally go with the people, the consumers.

    It was discouraging that Department of Community Services workers were scared to come forward. They had to make their submissions as individuals, and that reflected on their careers. This culture of secrecy is very worrying. The old seniority scheme in the public service is being replaced. People at the top who are on relatively short contracts choose people who they think are ideologically right in the middle layers, so that effectively the public service becomes very much an instrument of the State, with careers tied to political patronage. This was evident in the way that DOCS officers were frightened to come forward in the early part of the inquiry.

    DOCS officers came forward through the good offices of the Public Service Association, which should be congratulated. Some came to me directly. They told me the situation was appalling, that large numbers of cases were simply not dealt with, and that large chunks of management time were spent deciding which cases should be investigated and which would be unallocated—the term for sitting in a pile with nothing happening. There was a lot of discussion about that percentage of cases. I gather that level 1 cases, which are the most serious, make up about 40 per cent of cases. I was told that only 10 per cent of those cases were being dealt with, which means 4 per cent of total reports. If that is the case, it is appalling. Other figures were much more optimistic. The report does not deal with the different figures given but suggests that they are only the tip of the iceberg.

    I gained the impression that DOCS functions as in intensive care unit without proper vaccination or general practitioner services, and that cases are given low priority and are not picked up until they are extremely severe. To use that analogy, if you ran a health system with an intensive care unit with no prevention, no matter how much money you put into the intensive care unit you would never have a decent health service but you would have a very expensive one. It would seem that DOCS is functioning along those lines. An intervention team is being asked to fix a large number of problems that it is not resourced to do. There have been a large number of social changes, such as the increase in drug use, the widening gap between rich and poor, increasing unemployment and second and third generation unemployment and a lessening in treatment of the mentally ill. No doubt these social factors are all relevant.

    Historically it is hard to know the causes. I was interested in getting an historic perspective of the department, but I did not get one. People said that the changes in child support—such as the Whitlam Government increasing the supporting mothers pension but cutting back its home visiting component—were significant. Changes to the department during the Greiner Government were said to be very significant. There is not good evidence giving that historical perspective and it is difficult to weigh these things. Perhaps that reflects the lack of ongoing social research in these areas. The Hon. Jan Burnswoods gave the figures. It has been widely quoted that $1 spent on the development of a child saves $7 later.

    A professor told the committee about brain development and measuring the brain circumference. This showed that the younger the child the higher the growth rate of the brain. The assumption is that experiences learnt at a very early time are far more fundamental to character development than later learning. Opportunities missed early are almost impossible to pick up later. There is a lot to be said for that. As an undergraduate I heard a notable psychiatrist describe a number of cases in which children whose childhood and adolescence were horrendous had turned out all right as adults. The factor that he identified as common to all those cases was that the first 12 months of their lives were stable. It is a question of prevention versus remediation. It has been said in child education that the amount of money spent on a child is proportional to its shoe size. That would seem to be the case. The very young are politically quite quiescent and any noise they make is very much for local consumption.

    Prevention has never really been given a go. Economic rationalists who tend to value everything by the dollar and do not understand ideas of sociological probability have always favoured the direct costs that one can see and measure over those that are likely to have a preventive effect. The trouble with spending a preventive dollar is that you might not have had to spend it. Prevention is suffering at the hands of remediation. This can be seen in the failed childhood remediation services, at school, in the juvenile justice system and leading on to the problems in Corrective Services as mixed up people who were victims become further victims in the punitive regime that this Government continues to pursue. Where is the proof that longer sentences work? The minder in charge of detailing this information to crossbench members said that it is the Government's position that longer sentences have a deterrent effect.

    We are spending $60,000 a year on each person in Corrective Services institutions and we have to think very hard about how that money could be better spent on prevention and child development. With all the rhetoric of law and order that will be coming up before the next election, I am not hopeful that prevention will get much of a go. The inquiry into the increase in prisoner population was inflicted on the Government against its will, and its response is tokenistic when compared to the prison building program. The increase in the prison population is a result of children not understanding their place in the world and not being socialised into the society in which they live.

    As to the outcomes of this report, there has been a change of Minister and a change of department head. I must confess that I think that is good. However, it has been said that the danger is that the Government will say, "We have changed the Minister. We have changed the department head. We have headed off the political flak here. We have said we will do prevention but we will not put much money into that compared to our gaol building and sentencing programs." If that is the case, that is a bad result. To some extent the Opposition, in continuing its criticism, is keeping the political heat on. Brad Hazzard, in his conversations with me asking me to take a stronger line on this, said, "If we don't keep the pressure on the Government it will simply say it will do prevention, not do it, get off the hook politically and nothing much will change."

    I am concerned about that. I told him that there had been a change of Minister and that we would replace Ministers if necessary if any changes are seen as mere tokenism. I hope that the Hon. Carmel Tebbutt can get these changes through and can redirect the money to a much more preventive approach. I am concerned about the Government's neglect of education generally and public education in particular. Public education, which is equal opportunity education, is being neglected in favour of the cheaper option of shoving everything off onto the private sector and cutting the cost per child. That is happening in education. Also, the foolish spending on gaols is at the wrong end of the social spectrum. Supporting the recommendations in this interim report would be a major change in direction for a government that is moving in the opposite direction and tends only to pay lip-service to reports.

    To some extent I agree with the Opposition's dissenting report, which crticises the Government. In many ways that criticism is valid. Criticisms that the report was put together very quickly and that there was no time to comment or even to write a dissenting report are certainly true. The criticism that the report is not detailed in its discussion of the faults in DOCS is true. However, the question in the Opposition's dissenting report that is significant and that must be addressed if the Opposition wishes to consider itself an alternative government is: What would a Coalition government do? I support this report and have not put in a dissenting report because this report offers a solution. Obviously there is a danger that that solution will not be implemented, but in a sense that is a secondary problem. The main point is that this report offers a realistic solution.

    A shift from the intensive care child protection mentality to a more preventive approach is necessary. It was said repeatedly that the culture of DOCS was no longer one of prevention, that culturally DOCS would have difficulty suddenly moving in that direction, which it had neglected, and that a new more broadly based department should do that. That seems to be sensible. Some of the most impressive evidence was given by Victor Nossar of Liverpool Hospital, who talked about the need for universal services so that people who need help with child rearing are not stigmatised. Everybody gets some help as a right of having children, with the State helping people to bring up their children properly, and research seems to show that the Families First program is very effective.

    Victor Nossar made the point that home visiting by nurses is extremely important. This enables people with greater needs to be identified and intervention to occur. There is no stigma attached to having a nurse visiting when it is the standard process for everybody. The evidence suggests that once groups with greater needs are identified there is a danger of them being stigmatised, which does not help with intervention. The committee heard evidence that screening for early intervention is extremely difficult to organise. There are questions of who will do the screening and at what age screening will take place. Different childhood problems become evident at different ages. A child may have quite major deficits that are not necessarily picked up, giving one a false sense of security, and involving large costs.

    If screening is not undertaken, there must be an ongoing relationship with the parents in order to inform them. They will then notice things and discuss them in a non-threatening environment. That will result in earlier identification of problems, be they behavioural, family, medical or congenital, better outcomes. The idea of universal services must be supported, and the evidence of Victor Nossar on that point was extremely valuable. Of course, that means that one simply says, "This is going to be expensive. We spend this many dollars per head of population in the country on this type of service."

    We need population-based funding rather than funding per intervention at a very late stage. We must ask: How many dollars per head per year do we spend in New South Wales? How much are we spending per head per year on building new gaols? How much are we spending per head per year on looking after our newborn kids, who are our future? We need to take a much more intelligent approach to this. DOCS will be involved in secondary prevention. Primary prevention is providing a good universal service so that problems do not develop; secondary prevention is identifying groups that are at risk; and tertiary prevention is trying to fix a known problem.

    In a sense, DOCS will be involved in secondary and tertiary prevention. The agency involved in primary prevention may need to subcontract some of its services, in a more constructive relationship with the non-government sector. Interestingly, strong evidence was given that with out-of-home care the non-government sector will say, "If you want us to take more children we want more money. We want so much money per child, depending on the problems the child has." That is a very realistic approach. The amount of money DOCS spends on each child not tendered out to non-government agencies is much less than the non-government agencies were demanding. To their credit, the non-government agencies are not saying, "We want more kids and more money. We will lower the standard of service." They are saying, "If we take kids with problems we want funding to put good programs in place for them." In a sense, their quality control is providing a better outcome.

    That emphasises my point about how much funding per child per year is required to deliver a good service. That is the question we should be asking. Also, once we get to that sort of thinking we can then say, "A stitch in time saves nine" or, in this case, "$1 spent now saves $7 later." We then recognise the merits of a prevention-based service. So it does not simply relate to DOCS; it relates to an entire society. The old proverb that it takes a village to raise a child has never been more apposite, and people have had to think beyond DOCS. Of course, such holistic thinking is much more difficult, and that is why the committee has recommended the establishment of a department of child development. I sincerely hope that the Government will not only take up that recommendation as an election promise with a great deal of fanfare but will actually fund it. There is no point in simply setting up administrative structures and not funding them.

    The media and the Opposition have made the criticism that to set up yet another department is merely a bureaucratic solution that looks good. If the department and the people running it are not adequately funded , that then becomes true, but it is not true of necessity. I have ignored somewhat the inquiry into early intervention, but it is a question of identifying problems early. The question is: How will that be done in the gap between when a baby leaves hospital and an infant arrives at school? In that four years or so a great deal of development happens or does not happen; learning either proceeds normally or it does not. It is a question of identifying optimally. So the problem of identifying neglect in a DOCS sense and identifying learning difficulties in a developmental sense are the same problem and to some extent will have the same solution. That is not to say that education does not matter; rather, it points to the fact that there is often a common solution to these problems. It is interesting to note that the Minister referred to early intervention in child development and that the referral of this inquiry into the Department of Community Services was imposed on the Government. I hope the Government will implement the report's recommendations. [Time expired.]

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN [3.15 p.m.]: In speaking—

    The Hon. Amanda Fazio: Point of order: Mr Deputy-President, I take a point of order in relation to your giving the call to the Hon. John Ryan when the Hon. Ian West sought the call. My understanding of the procedure relating to take-note debates for committee reports in this Chamber is that members of the committee are given precedence on the list of members wishing to contribute to the debate. Other members who are interested in commenting on the report that is the subject of the take-note debate are then able to participate in the debate as they desire. I believe that in giving the call to the Hon. John Ryan you have flouted one of the conventions of this Chamber and have shown once again that members of the Opposition, who so frequently plead that they support the protocols, procedures and standing orders of this Chamber, are prepared to throw out such conventions when it suits them. This debate relates to a very sensitive issue, namely, child protection. It relates also to another report which was tabled at the same time as the report of the committee that is the subject of this take-note debate. Your decision is trivialising debate on this very important issue. I ask you to uphold the conventions of this Chamber and give the call to members of the committee who are seeking the call rather than to other interested members.

    The Hon. John Jobling: To the point of order: Mr Deputy-President, the order in which a member is called is the prerogative of the occupant of the chair. There is no standing order that specifies the order in which the Chair must or must not call members, and there is no sessional or standing order which states that the call must be given to specific members. One hour is set aside each Wednesday for these debates until they are concluded; no member is deprived of time in which to speak. There is absolutely no basis for the point of order that is being taken. The prerogative rests entirely with the Chair as to whom to give the call. If members of the committee had jumped and made themselves heard, you may have called them, but the call is yours to give, and there is no point of order.

    The Hon. Peter Primrose: To the point of order: I agree with my colleague the Opposition Whip to the extent that there is no applicable standing or sessional order, as there is not for a whole range of traditional behaviour in this place. But there are plenty of conventions, and my colleague the Hon. Amanda Fazio was referring to a convention. The matter is entirely in your hands, Mr Deputy-President. It is a matter for your discretion, but I ask that your exercise of that discretion be guided by the conventions.

    The DEPUTY-PRESIDENT: Order! I will ignore the implied criticism of the Chair by the Hon. Amanda Fazio. I have been a member of this Chamber for many years and I am unaware of the convention to which she has referred. I am aware that when committee reports are reported and debated, it is the usual custom for members of the committee to express a view, but they have no more right than any other member of the Chamber to express a view on committee reports, and no member has precedence over any other. I draw the attention of honourable members to Erskine May's Parliamentary Practice:
        In debate all speeches are addressed to … [the Chair] and he calls upon Members to speak—a choice which is not open to dispute.

    I call the Hon. John Ryan. However, I ask the Hon. John Ryan whether he will yield.

    The Hon. John Ryan: No.

    The DEPUTY-PRESIDENT: Order! I give the call to the Hon. John Ryan.

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN: I do not understand why Government members are so keen to stop me from expressing a view on this interim report on child protection. I stand before this House as a person who was reported to the Department of Community Services as a young person at risk, so for me there is no more defining issue than the one that is currently being discussed in the House. I doubt there would be many other honourable members in this Chamber who could make a similar statement. The Opposition is concerned about some features of this report, including the fact that the report glosses over some very important issues that were raised before the committee and that were the subject of evidence given to the committee.

    The first comment I make about the report is that Government members have used their majority on the committee to present the report to members, having given only hours notice. In the context of conventions of the House, that is certainly a practice that is not common regarding committee reports. Rather, it is quite usual for committee reports to be delivered to honourable members at least a week before they are presented to the House to afford committee members the opportunity to consider members' comments and perhaps to take advice. As I am advised, that has not happened for this report.

    The Hon. Amanda Fazio: How would you know? You were not even there. You're not even a member of the committee. What would you know?

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN: Members of the Opposition did not have the opportunity to take advice, as they normally would, and have had less than an hour in which to prepare a response.

    The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: Oh, come on! Jim Samios has been locked up in Brad Hazzard's office all day. He was at the meeting for 7½ hours.

    The DEPUTY-PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Jan Burnswoods was heard in silence when contributing to this important subject.

    The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: Because I spoke sense.

    The DEPUTY-PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Jan Burnswoods will be silent while the Hon. John Ryan continues his contribution.

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN: I am at a loss to understand why members of the Government are so desperate to shut me up.

    The Hon. Amanda Fazio: Because you are not speaking the truth.

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN: The member opposite has said that I am not speaking the truth. I know a lot more about this subject than some members opposite would care to acknowledge. If they prefer, I could give them, chapter and verse, extracts from the life of John Ryan to let them know that I understand this issue a great deal better than some of the people on the Government side of the Chamber—and certainly better than some of the armchair strategists on the Government side—would care to acknowledge. For them to suggest for an instant that this is not an issue about which I care is one of the most offensive things that could be said to me. I will ignore that suggestion for the moment in deference to the more important things that need to be said about this report. For example, under the heading of "Unallocated cases", the report states:
        Due to the workloads in CSCs, level 3 or level 4 reports may not be allocated to a caseworker and may be closed without further investigation.

    I understand that the evidence showed that in some instances, in some community service centres [CSCs], some level 1 and level 2 cases were not allocated. Condemning evidence is the reason for the Opposition's concern. This report may be an attempt to steer the debate in a direction that is different from the tenor of the evidence. The Opposition is concerned that this is an attempt to divert the debate, calm down the debate, and deflect focus from the important issues. The crystal-clear facts that were presented to the committee are that, firstly, the Department of Community Services does not have adequate resources and, secondly, that there is a culture of denial and a culture of cover-up—two very important aspects that have not been referred to in this interim report. I accept that an interim report is not the final determinant. If members opposite suggest that a future report will reflect further investigation and further comment, I would be inclined to relax, but there is at least reason for members of the Opposition to be suspicious when important evidence that is given to the committee has been glossed over. The report refers also to mandatory reporting. In that regard it states:
        Mandatory reporting does have its detractors. In his submission to the inquiry, Dr Frank Ainsworth suggested that it is an unnecessary tool for determining risk, as did Barnardos Chief Executive Officer, Louise Voigt when she appeared before the Committee.

    The concern of those who gave evidence was that there was absolutely no explanatory material and no reason for that suggestion. So, on an important issue like mandatory reporting, a concern was put on record without any explanation as to the reason for that concern—and that is a matter of concern to people who gave evidence to the committee. It is unfair to suggest that we should just throw our hands up and accept this report without criticism. The Opposition is not attempting in any way to be partisan about this issue.

    The Hon. Amanda Fazio: What a load of rubbish!

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN: At least I have not been. I think judgments on remarks that I make on this report have been made well in advance of my making any statements. It is not unfair for Opposition members to point out that the report contains statements that do not accurately reflect the evidence. It might well be that a subsequent report will correct that problem. That the Opposition was not given adequate opportunity to examine, correct or amend the report, or prepare a dissenting statement, is glossed over by Government members. The Opposition had to change its representation on the committee for reasons beyond the control of the Opposition. The change was necessary because of the unfortunate and untimely resignation and death of the Hon. Doug Moppett. Consequently, the Opposition did not have on the committee a member who had heard all the evidence and had the opportunity to get all the information necessary to respond to the report with the benefit of the same level of expertise and background briefing that all Government members and other committee members had.

    The Hon. Ian West: Nonsense!

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN: It is not nonsense.

    The Hon. Ian West: That is not the committee's problem.

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN: It is the committee's problem when the committee guns through a report without adequate input from the Opposition representation.

    The Hon. Ian West: Seven and a half hours?

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN: Hours! It is normal to give committee members more than a week. I think some Government members are being a tad too precious about the Opposition genuinely expressing concerns about the report and the process surrounding it.

    The Hon. Amanda Fazio: You are using this as an election issue.

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN: Perhaps I think it is valid that it be an election issue. I dream for the day that child protection is an election issue. I suspect it will not be, but I dream for the day that it is. One reason it is not an election issue is that, sadly, children who are in the condition that the report deals with often do not have a vote or representation in Parliament.

    The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: That is the point that the report tries to make. That is why we agreed unanimously to focus on prevention. You are destroying that unanimous agreement.

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN: Prevention is well and good. It is said to be the answer to all of the problems. But, even if there were acres more prevention than there currently is, there will still be reports of child abuse, and it will still be necessary for a government department, whether it be the Department of Community Services or some other body, to respond appropriately to those complaints. If resources are inadequate, or if there is a culture of cover-up—which has been well-documented—that sort of response will not occur. Some very serious evidence was given to the committee by a person within the department who bravely came forward after leaving the department and explained that they had been asked basically to doctor briefings to the committee. They had been told to change evidence that they would give to the Minister, to Parliament and to the Child Death Review Committee to make the department look better. No more serious allegation could be made about the department, and there could be no more serious area in which to make it than child abuse. If this committee does not have a determination to investigate whether or not that incident took place, then it is not doing the duty it was set by this Parliament.

    The Hon. Amanda Fazio: Are you accusing the committee of not discharging its duty?

    The Hon. JOHN RYAN: I have not accused the committee of anything. If the honourable member had listened to what I said, she would know I made no such accusation. I have said it is necessary to investigate that matter. My concern is somewhat ameliorated in that the person who gave that evidence is to be interviewed, I believe, at a subsequent meeting of the committee. But, to be perfectly honest, the Opposition asserts its right to express concern that one of the most important issues raised before the committee barely rates a mention in the interim report—that is, that there is a culture of cover-up and that there was an attempt to provide deceptive briefings from within the department.

    The Hon. Jan Burnswoods: Do you actually expect us to put up a report before talking to the relevant witnesses?
    The Hon. JOHN RYAN: You have put other things in the report. The report could have said that one of the future duties of the committee is to get to the bottom of this issue. That would be a fair, reasonable and even-handed comment to make on the issue. Yet there is not a suggestion or recommendation on the need to ensure that briefings from the coalface of the department to its leadership need to be truthful. There appears to be better than good evidence that some information given to the head of the department is not truthful. Why Government members would be so partisan in their attempts to try to shut down the Opposition's capacity to make what I would have thought are a couple of salient points, I do not understand.

    I have not had the time to address this issue in a way that I would have liked, but the Opposition wants to make sure that any future hearings on prevention are not conducted without addressing the question that members of the department should give accurate reports. Those issues and issues related to resources ought to be addressed openly, candidly and with the greatest of diligence. That is all we are trying to say. We are a little worried that some of the wording of the report glosses over those important expectations. Opposition members are using this opportunity to raise that concern. Is there something wrong with that? I have yet to hear any reason why that would not have been an entirely proper course to take.

    Pursuant to sessional orders business interrupted.


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