Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am aware that there are some exemptions, and we have been through that ad nauseam in this place—the 16 weeks. But if you are looking after children in a kinship care process it is rather onerous to keep going back for this 16-week exemption. In fact, some people do not want to make it a permanent arrangement. So, again, you are still disadvantaging children who are in kinship care on an ongoing basis that is not the result of a family law order. I remind the Senate that the figures indicate that there are an increasing number of children in out-of-home care—it is going up quite significantly—and the number of children in kinship care is going up quite significantly too. So we are talking about a significant number of children. Many of these children are in informal arrangements, particularly in Aboriginal communities, and it would seem to be much more equitable and more efficient to provide for this cohort of kids and carers in the arrangements that the government has made. As I said, the government seems to have gone halfway to fixing this problem. These amendments actually try to do what the government is trying to do in a much more cooperative manner. The so-called flexible arrangements that are happening at the moment are not meeting those needs and are still quite cumbersome.