Derryn Hinch (Victoria, Derryn Hinch's Justice Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate notes that—

(a) seventeen children in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services in Victoria died between July and September this year;

(b) six children who were Department of Health and Human Services clients in Victoria were killed by 'non­-accidental trauma' last year; and

(c) outsourcing the care and welfare of our most vulnerable children should be reviewed.

In my first speech back in September, I talked about a dream project which I fervently believe would improve the quality of life for thousands of Australian children. It would improve their quality of life, their health, their education and their physical safety and help protect them from sexual predators both at home and in government institutions. It was part of a campaign pledge by the Justice Party to push for a Senate inquiry, if not a royal commission, into the Family Court and all child welfare agencies. In this house, I will also work towards building the Australian child protection agency, the ACPA, which would eventually absorb all state and territory child welfare agencies.

I said at the time:

I know we are a commonwealth of states, but it is madness, it is Noddyland, when a father can break a little boy's arm in Sydney and change states and kill that child in Adelaide, because medical records in New South Wales were not available in South Australia. That is mad.

I zero in on state and territory child welfare agencies because children are being put into foster care who should not be, children are being taken out of foster care who should not be and children are being returned to abusive parents who should not be. When you hear about veteran foster carers who will no longer take children over the age of three into their homes because 'by then they are not saveable', you know the system stinks.

The institutions we have set up to supposedly protect, shelter, feed and clothe state wards are nests of scandal and abuse. Girls, barely into their teens, are ignoring curfews, roaming the streets, being bribed with alcohol and drugs and getting pregnant—and they are 12 and 13 years old. This is nothing new, but I believe it is getting worse. I say it is nothing new because, more than 20 years ago on 3AW in Melbourne, I was exposing cases of young girls at Berry Street, petrol sniffing and trading sexual favours for cigarettes and booze.

Most of the cases I will detail tonight concern Victoria, but my office has heaps of emails and information from New South Wales and Queensland. Sadly, I believe that South Australia is probably the worst state in this country for abused and neglected children—especially when their attackers have been like foxes in the chicken coop, employees of the very agency that was supposed to protect them. And I am not forgetting the welter of child abuse cases in the Indigenous community in Queensland, the Northern Territory and WA.

Some of the horrors and failures of our current system were detailed in that FourCorners expose last month, highlighting yet again the failures at state and federal level. In Victoria, we have personally discovered that the Minister for Families and Children has been tested and found wanting. If frantic parents have been given the same mushroom treatment and brush-offs that my staff have by the responsible minister, Jenny Mikakos, and her staff, then I can understand their frustration and their fear for the safety of their children. I have names, ages and addresses of all the kids I am going to talk about, but I will not use them in order to protect those children. I will fudge some of the details to hide that identification.

Earlier this month, The Herald Sun had some statistics that make a mockery of the term 'the lucky country'. They would be more understandable, though no more acceptable, in the most remote recesses of a Third World country. The Herald Sun reported that 17 children in the care of DHHS—the Department of Health and Human Services—died between July and September this year. Seventeen children died in three months! A total of 45 children 'known to the department', as they say, died in the year to June 30. One-in-six children found to be abused or neglected last year had previously been identified as 'at risk' by child protection in the same year. Their previous cases had been closed before the new abuse was found—nothing to see here, just move along. Six children, who were DHHS clients, were killed by 'non-accidental trauma' last year. This is an appalling state of affairs.

I will give you some detailed examples. How about the boy who has lived safely with his grandmother since he was three months old? He has medical problems and learning difficulties because he was malnourished and neglected after birth. His mother was, and still is, an ice addict, and she is facing criminal charges for burglary. Her partner is also an ice addict. He also has guns and hunting knives in the house—a great family environment for a little boy. The grandmother got temporary custody of the child but has now been ordered to return him to his drug-addict mother. That grandmother and child are now in hiding.

If not given back to the mother, I guess that boy could be placed in government authorised residential care—what the kids call a 'resi'. These are run by private management companies, and I will get to that issue later. These units are supposed to keep vulnerable children safe. They are placed into privately-funded homes. Typically, each house accommodates four-to-five children, with only one staff member to oversee their needs. One former carer told us that absconding, drug and alcohol problems, theft and damage are a daily occurrence. It has been reported that some young female occupants are targeted by men on dating websites. Subsequently, those men turn up at the homes, take the teenagers away and, in some cases, do not return for days. Within less than a year, two girls have become pregnant.

I mentioned the Four Corners report, the result of a three-month investigation. Look at some of their cases. Renee is 17 years old and has been a ward of the state since she was a five-month-old baby. In that time she has lived in a number of homes and remained in one foster home until she was 12. This care arrangement broke down and she went into a resi house. Renee said that in this place police would be called once or twice a week. There were assaults among the children, sexual assaults, property damage and intimidation. While in resi care, Renée reported frequent screaming, which attracted frequent visits from the cops. She had anger outbursts too in that environment. She said the kids got little to no encouragement to go to school. There was no sex education, which resulted in numerous teenage pregnancies.

Renee turns 18 in February. She says she looks forward to moving into 'a home, instead of living in a house'. But what will really happen? What I worry about with Renee, who at 18 will leave residential care, is: where does she go? What does she do? She has no money, no education, no licence, not even a birth certificate. She wants a home, she wants love and she wants a future. Where will she find that?

Natalie Ottini was a youth care worker who Renee trusted. She worked for a group called Life Without Barriers. She is also from a broken home and has been on workers comp for 18 months due to what she experienced in a Life Without Barriers home. When first employed by that organisation, she thought it would be the best job in the world. She pictured herself counselling, educating, nurturing and inspiring these children. Instead, when entering a Life Without Barriers home, Natalie said, 'I thought I was living in a bubble.' She could not believe that kids could live like this in Australia. Natalie said that children with high needs are flung between 12 and 13 places and then ultimately end up in a resi house. They are told, 'You are here because no-one wants you.' She said men would turn up at the resi homes and girls would disappear, sometimes for days.

Then there is Amy. Amy has been a ward of the state since she was four years old. She was moved around many homes before being placed in two resi houses. She said there were no rules and there was no curfew, and the majority of kids were not looked after. She claimed they were provided with very little clothing. She also got pregnant. Karah Anderson, a former Life Without Barriers youth worker, reported being in ambulances and in hospitals and attending to kids who had attempted suicide. It was Karah who got a call in the middle of the night from the hospital that Amy had been admitted to when expecting to give birth. Karah sat with her for three days until her baby was born. Horribly, soon after the birth, the baby died. Karah says she will never work in a resi care facility again.

I may sound like I am drawing a long bow here, but this is sounding to me a lot like the refugees on Manus and in Nauru. There has been protracted debate over the morality and safety of the government contracting private companies like Transfield and Serco to run those security systems. There is talk of doing the same with our prisons. But should the care, protection and welfare of vulnerable Australian children be privatised, for God's sake, given to companies like Safe Pathways, Life Without Barriers and Premier Youthworks? These are multi-million dollar operations, and there is evidence that very little of that money is being used to buy food and clothes for these wretched kids.

Janine Holbrow, a former manager at Safe Pathways, claims that children in their housing are not given access to counselling programs and that the taxpayers' money paid to Safe Pathways rarely filters down to the children. Janine resigned in July 2016 and reported that the government was paying the company $100,000 per child per year, and that the organisation, as a whole, turned over $70 million in one year.

At one of the resi homes in Tasmania, they were only given a food budget of $100 per week, and clothes for the children were hardly ever purchased. One child only had only one set of underwear. It was also reported by one former worker that the government used these organisations to offload children they could not place anywhere else, and simply said: 'Give us a price and we'll double it.'

Four Corners reported that Safe Pathways claimed on its website that it required more than $9,000 per week per child to pay for rent, food, utilities et cetera. It also says that it is a 'safe environment for children to recover from past trauma'. Former workers tell me that staff were never trained. A former army medic and aged-care worker, Chris Dawkins, said he was never trained in youth work, as he had been promised. He said he was never briefed about the young boy he was to care for. The kid was five years old, and a care plan was meant to be in place. No care plan ever eventuated. Chris said this boy was evicted from his accommodation, and at one point he personally had to pay for the child's accommodation out of his own pocket. He stated that no counselling, clothing or clinicians were ever provided. Chris resigned, stating, 'What an effing joke.' He saw that same child recently, and, thankfully, he is now in good care. The boy simply said to him: 'Guess what, bro? I've got food.'

These are the most vulnerable kids in Australia we are talking about. Another group charged with housing these children is Premier Youthworks. A youth worker there for five years said that in 2015 the government gave them $550 to $1,700 per day per child, and that in that year they were given a total of $20 million in funding. He reported that the housing was covered in graffiti and human excrement, and that there were holes in the walls and there was damage everywhere. The money never filtered down to care for the children. It was also reported that the government had paid up to $1 million per year per child for those who were deemed to be children with no hope and who no-one else would care for. Those children received little care, no or little education, limited food and not much clothing.

Last year, former Victorian children's commissioner Bernie Geary released a scathing report in relation to resi homes. He concluded that these homes were being used to house the most traumatised and violated children, and that resi was the most unsuitable housing and care for them. He reported that a 14-year-old resi client had been stranded at a railway station and called the home for help, for someone to pick him up. They refused his call and he was subsequently raped.

The Australian public was outraged when the major banks and telecommunications companies outsourced many of their services offshore to India and the Philippines. This outrage led to many companies, including the big four banks, bringing these services back to Australia. Therefore, how can the government and the people of Australia not be doubly outraged that our children have been outsourced to businesses which clearly have scant interest in the care of them, and that are only interested in what money they can make from this misery? If state governments think outsourcing the care and welfare of our most vulnerable children is somehow acceptable, if they think that taking them from families to provide a better life which leaves them uneducated, unloved and uncared for is somehow okay, I believe it is time the federal government stepped in.

Mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles desperately want to be assessed as carers, but they are increasingly being ignored. In the months since I was elected, and with people knowing that I want an inquiry into child welfare agency abuses, my staff have been dealing with family members in relation to their massive concerns in dealing with DHHS. They have met with constituents desperately seeking our assistance, as the DHHS child protection division had either refused to investigate their situation of abuse against their children from another family member or a partner et cetera, or had refused to allow a child to stay with a trusting relative. Instead, they had placed them into foster care or back with the alleged abuser.

These people have also contacted the Minister for Families and Children, Jenny Mikakos, other MPs and senators—all without reply, or they have been dissatisfied with the outcome, as many cases are dropped before they are completed. Out of all the investigations my staff have conducted, only one has received a positive response and outcome from the minister's office and DHHS. That was the case of a baby who was allowed to stay with his grandmother—for now, anyway. We are consistently being stonewalled by the minister's office. Each time my staff send an email to the minister we receive the same standard response, or nonresponse, under the guise of 'child protection laws'.

We have been lied to. Worried parents have been lied to. I will give you an example but delete the father's name, involving a little boy and claims that he has now been physically and sexually abused by his mother's new partner. The case was referred to police and statements were taken, but the department has now closed the file. I received a letter from the minister saying that the father had been contacted 'on numerous occasions to discuss his concerns', yet the father told us this week that he has not heard from them once. Is it any wonder that I want a federal child protection agency and that I want it pronto? I fervently believe that this current system shames us all.

Sam Dastyari (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to touch on some of the points that Senator Hinch has made in this motion. I think it is a very important and telling time for us to be debating this, as we lead into the Christmas and holiday period at the end of the year. Some of us are fortunate to have the opportunity to spend this time with the people we love and the people that we care about—members of the Senate aside—and it is an opportunity for us to reflect on what Senator Hinch has been talking about.

I note that this issue is something Senator Hinch has been very passionate about for many, many years; he has been speaking on this for many years, both in his previous incarnation in his media career and more recently in the Australian Senate. It a system of laws that, in some way, I believe was well intentioned—to protect people from being exploited, to protect people from being taken advantage of—but the system itself has so fundamentally failed so many people that they are the ones who are being left behind. You have a system where good foster parents, who want to do the right thing, who want to support children, who want to do their bit to help society, feel like the system has let them down. You have children, who, in many cases, are helpless, who end up falling into a system that takes advantage of them, that does not properly care for them. It puts them on this kind of rotation of going back to parents, who, frankly, in many circumstances, should perhaps not be having them—and this cycle continues. Then you end up having a criminal justice system that ends up taking up a lot of the slack later in time.

Senator Hinch has given a few examples, and what worries me is that some of the examples he referred to were people who had reached their teens or adolescence. Again, I am not so expert in this area as Senator Hinch is, but all the data demonstrates that, unfortunately, by the time you get to that stage, in many cases, it is too late. I hope the people in the individual cases Senator Hinch referred to will be able to properly deal with the issues they are going to be facing as a result of this.

As Senator Hinch touched on, there are some things that need to be above politics, and there are some things that need to be above party politics. The reality has been that, firstly, the problems and the heartache that this creates affects a group of people who are often unseen and forgotten; and, secondly, because it does not happen in the immediate short term, it has been ignored in this place for far too long. The parliament has ignored these matters for far too long. In relation to the issues that Senator Hinch touched on, the real problems are seen in five, 10, 15, 20 years, whereas, unfortunately—and, again, this is not about party politics—decisions are made too often in this place on a two-, three- or four-year cycle. We make short-term decisions about where to spend money or allocate resources rather than making long-term decisions in the interests of a child over the lifetime of a child.

Senator Hinch, what you are saying about the failure of care provided to these children, which is really the abuse of children, and a system that has abused children, is something that is worthy of exploration and worthy of this Senate's time in the new year. I know that Senator Hinch is looking at using some of the committee processes and inquiries and the power that we have as a Senate to do this. But I would hate to see the Senate, because of the overlap that naturally exists between state and federal jurisdictions over so many different areas, turn around and say: 'It is not our problem. It is not our concern. It is not our issue. It is someone else's problem. This is a state matter, even though there's some federal overlap.' I think that that would be doing the wrong thing by the children who have been exploited and have been taken advantage of. If you cannot have a system where these kids can feel like they can trust, if you do not have a system that is actually giving them the guidance and direction that they need, then really there is not going to be any hope for them.

We are all very privileged people who sit in this chamber. We all have different backgrounds, but, by virtue of being here, we have privilege and we have voices that a lot of these children do not have and will never have. I am fortunate enough to have a five-year-old and a three-year-old daughter. When we get to this Christmas period, we can look at the opportunity and luck that they will have in their lives. Compare that to some of the stories that Senator Hinch was referring to and you cannot help but feel: how can you have in a country that is as wealthy and as successful as ours such a disconnect between what our children are fortunate enough to have and what another group of children are unable to have?

What Senator Hinch is saying is: there are sensible, practical measures that we can take as a government to actually address some of these issues. I think sometimes we get very frustrated in this place when we look at the inequities and inequalities. Some of these things are so big that the frustration and natural tendency for us in this chamber is to turn around and go: 'Well, we can't do anything about that. It's far too big. It's far too hard.' I think what Senator Hinch is saying is: let's go back to the root cause of what is creating these problems. And where do you start? You start with what is in the interests of the child and then start creating a system around that.

Again, I do not believe that what is happening within the system at the moment is that there are people with the evil intention to do the wrong thing by children. I think what has happened is that, firstly, it has been ignored; secondly, it has probably been underfunded—again, I would like to see some data but I suspect it has been underfunded; and, thirdly, it has lost its way. So good, well-meaning people in most cases are giving up on the system.

Senator Hinch, I have friends who are in a situation to which you referred to earlier where, at a New South Wales level, their frustration with the system is so great that they have actually given up looking after children. These are the kinds of people who I believe we would want in the system. These are people who, unfortunately, are unable to have children of their own and they decided that they wanted to help, provide and be foster parents. But they felt so frustrated by the system that they got out. Unfortunately, you have this reverse emphasis: the people you want to get out of the system are the ones who end up staying; and the people we want in the system are the ones who end up getting out, because it all becomes too hard and too difficult.

I think we need to—and I think Senator Hinch would agree with this—do a lot more than move a motion, but it is important that we have this debate and look at how we can practically reform the system and fix some of these matters. I look forward to inquiries or whatever processes Senator Hinch chooses to push this in the new year.

Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also welcome opportunity to speak on the motion moved by Senator Hinch today. It is a matter that I know something about, having been the minister responsible for a child protection system for five years or so in the ACT. I think—and I have said this a number of times—it is the hardest portfolio I have ever had to work in as a minister. I had a range of portfolios in my time in the ACT, including Chief Minister and health minister for eight years, but nothing came close to the attention and care that needed to be paid to this area of government service delivery.

Perhaps my comments today will be from that perspective and, whilst I acknowledge that child protection systems right around the country have failed children and young people at a time when they are most in need, there is also an incredible amount of good work that is done in this area. Often these systems have relied on non-government partners to deliver that care and support.

In my time in the portfolio—and that would have spanned from 2004 until 2009 or thereabouts—the funding that went into child protection systems not just in the ACT but right around the country, I would say, more than doubled. The staff provided to child protection certainly more than doubled. The resources going into the non-government system considerably increased. That aligned with changes to the law that introduced mandatory reporting in most systems—legislation which I wholeheartedly support. However, with mandatory reporting came a massive increase in the number of reports—I think in my time it went from something like 2,500 to 12,000 reports a year; it just increased exponentially. Every report had to be investigated, and of course they were triaged from the most serious to those that we did not believe needed immediate care—for example, a report about a baby under the age of 12 months would have to be investigated immediately. There were different parameters around those decisions. But these are really difficult areas—not only processing the reports; visiting the families, assessing the children and making sure that you have a range of options available.

Senator Dastyari mentioned we are heading into Christmas. At Christmas—any time when there is a holiday period, school holidays, public holidays, any time of the year like that—we would see a massive increase in reports to child protection. We would have to run increased staffing over those times so, when most people are at home with their families, a lot of the staff in child protection units across the country are working. They have to, because that is when the reports come in.

Holiday times are often a very difficult time to get emergency placements for kids, because there might not be the options with foster care. A lot of the accommodation options close down. This goes to how difficult it is to make sure you have a system that can respond to not only the demand but also the severity and intensity of the care that is required for children and young people coming into care.

Children who have extra support needs through the trauma that they may have experienced in their background—through disability, through anything; there is no end to the complexities in this area—are often the most difficult to place, because they cannot be put in your standard foster care arrangement or, if they do, it might fail quickly. Then what are the options?

The non-government sector provides a huge amount of back-up for these kids. That is where you will often see the very specialised units, whether they are intensive support units or youth houses, that have high levels of staff for kids for whom there is no other placement for whatever reason. Sometimes they break down. I have certainly read the files of kids who have gone through multiple placements and, for whatever reason and through no fault of their own, those placements have failed. The system itself in that sense has failed them, but it is also incredibly difficult to dream up services and have them operational and successful for many of the children because of the backgrounds they come from.

Running over the top of that you have all the family dynamics. When you remove children and young people against the will of their parents and their families, there is a whole range of very difficult issues. There may be court involvement and other considerations. For example, every child protection system has high numbers of children who come from Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander backgrounds and there is a whole range of sensitivities and processes. Child protection systems make efforts—certainly in the ACT—to ensure that there are kin arrangements for those kids to be placed in and, if there are not, that there are other culturally appropriate supports for the kids coming into care.

When the system fails, what do you do? The system has failed. In my time as a minister, I saw numerous reviews in almost every state and territory in the country because of some failure of the child protection system. There were often a number of reasons. Some of it was around resources. Some of it was around inadequate systems in place to ensure that the kids that needed urgent assessment were given urgent assessment. There were failures of process. There could be an inability to find appropriate placements or kids leave care of their own will and abscond.

The other issue is that states and territories have struggled at times to resolve the difference between laws as they operate across state jurisdictions. For many of these kids, if they are moving from Queensland and coming through New South Wales and maybe stopping in the ACT or going on to Victoria, there can be a failure of legal orders in place in Queensland and not applying in other jurisdictions. There was a fair bit of work being done on that. Also, there are the most severe cases of failure where, say, a child dies. I am certainly aware of cases like that, including in the ACT. How do you respond to those? What sorts of review mechanisms do you put in place to make sure that you are assessing immediately whether there was any failure that led to the child dying and whether reform is needed. The child protection system, like a health system, which relies so much on human decision-making and at times subjective assessment and analysis of a situation, is not perfect because it relies so strongly on human decision-making.

I used to do walk-arounds in that area of the department because it was an incredibly stressful place to work, particularly around Christmas and holiday times when families are stressed and under pressure. We would see family breakdown, domestic violence and other problems occurring in the family unit and a significant number of children would come into care. I saw firsthand the work that went on in those workplaces. I am not sure it is a job that I could do, I have to say: seeing those reports coming in; making snap decisions about whether resources need to be deployed immediately; whether it is something that could wait a few hours or whether it is something that needs to be dealt with tomorrow or, indeed, in a week's time. When those decisions might not be right, how does that affect the workforce? They particularly feel it when there are high-profile cases and there are questions, quite rightly. I am not making any point here that people should not be raising questions and making sure that the publicly funded child protection system is robust, strong, open and transparent, and open to review, but I am saying that this is an area in particular where the finger that blames is very quick to be pulled out. People make decisions about who went wrong—in my experience, usually the government—and how that affects the workforce.

We had so many reports coming in and a complete inability to recruit staff in this area because of the nature of the work—because there is a high burnout rate and people often cannot do it for a long periods of time. They need to be highly skilled and often have a social work degree or a psychology degree. We simply could not attract staff to the positions. At one point we had 25 per cent of positions unfilled against a backdrop of a massive increase in the number of reports and a commensurate increase in the number of kids coming into care, to the point that we had to go overseas. We sent people over to Ireland to recruit about 50 social workers from Ireland to come and staff our child protection system, and that was because of a national shortage. To some degree now, there is a drain on the international workforce to get people in place to do these jobs. I have to say that, from my experience, the people who have worked in these positions are, for the large part, extraordinary. We should remember that at times the work they do is extremely difficult. As I said, I would place it up there with probably the most difficult jobs for a public servant. It would be right up there amongst the top. They quite often have the finger pointed at them very quickly. It is rare—when those decisions go right, decisions are taken and kids' lives are saved or they are put on a more supportive path—that the work is acknowledged. That is because for the large part, unless these cases are under public review through a coronial process or some sort of bureaucratic review that is then released, this information is often not available because of privacy considerations.

I do not think child protection systems, regardless of how well-resourced they are and regardless of having the right staff in place, will ever be perfect, because of the nature of the work being done in these systems. I too would have concern about the privatisation of child protection, definitely, but I think the balance has to be found between government and the non-government sector working together through some sort of contractual arrangement. Private partnerships and private arrangements funded by the public sector have been in place for some time because the public sector simply cannot deliver the services that are required for many of these children.

I know that many of the partnerships we had here in the ACT were with community service providers. They were often a church based organisation or a youth based organisation that was a not-for-profit organisation. There were times when we would have to go beyond those organisations. That was often for the most difficult kids. There are examples where you have to design a service around a child or family because their needs are so difficult that they will not fit into a traditional service. There are certainly examples where separate houses have been set up for kids or sibling groups, perhaps without their parents, where staff are put in place to support those kids. That is funded almost directly through one organisation that has the ability to deliver that service. In those situations, again, the service arrangements quite often break down—usually on a Friday afternoon!—and you have to work out what you are going to do to keep the care wrapped around those kids.

I accept that these systems are not perfect. I accept that these systems have failed children at times and children have suffered injury or death because the right decisions were not made. But I would also put in a little plug for the departments themselves in saying that there needs to be some balance here. These people go to work every day and often get the most horrific cases referred to them for assessment. Some of the staff will not last very long. Others will require ongoing counselling and support. Some will not return to work after some of the things that they have witnessed. But all of them—every single person I have met who has worked in child protection—always have the best interests of the child front and centre. That is what they are trained to do. That is the work they do. Whether the systems allow them to deliver that and whether their judgement has been right a hundred per cent of the time are separate matters. I would just like to put some balance in and say that this is an extremely difficult area.

There is no perfect solution, believe me; otherwise there would not have been the number of reviews that have been conducted. And every review that is conducted in one state is read and copied and assessed by every other state, because we are all looking for what the secret is, what the answer is, to make sure that we keep our most vulnerable children safe from their family, from their peers or from other influences, and there is not a single, perfect solution.

This is an area where I think the Commonwealth and the states and territories could work more closely together. It is largely seen by the Commonwealth as a matter for the states. It is very easy, when you are in a level of government that does not have responsibility, to say you are not going near any other level because you do not want to pick up anything more than you are already responsible for—particularly in areas where the growth in funding requirements is on par with the growth that we have seen in health departments. It is a rapidly increasing area of expenditure, it is a very difficult area to deliver services in, but it is an area where greater cooperation could occur between the different levels of government, and certainly where the Commonwealth, in the interests of children nationally, could take more interest and support the work being done by the states and territories.

I acknowledge Senator Hinch's interest in this area. It is great that there is a champion here for children and vulnerable children—another one in this chamber; I know that there are many senators who feel strongly about this area. But I would also put on the record my plug for the work that is being done by the states and territories to keep our children safe.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too would like to acknowledge the interest of Senator Hinch in putting this important issue on the Notice Paper for discussion under general business today.

Here in Australia we do have a child protection system that is dominated by the states. Clearly it is the statutory role that the states and territories have; nevertheless there is a growing appetite to have a national conversation about the wellbeing of our children and whether the states are adequately working together to protect the interests of children in our nation.

Federal Labor introduced the National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children 2009-2020, and that paper is very relevant to the motion that is before us today. The paper, put forward by the Hon. Jenny Macklin as the minister at the time, sought to put some clarity around the responsibility for vulnerable children in our nation. Everyone in this place would agree that all children have the right to be safe, the right to receive loving care and support and the right to receive the services they need to enable them to succeed in life. While, as a nation we hope that parents are able to exercise their primary responsibility for raising their children and for protecting their wellbeing and ensuring their rights are upheld, it is also incumbent on us as governments, as parliamentarians and as a wider community to do that.

It is certainly of note to me, for example, that the human rights of children, whilst they have come a long way in recent years, are still, in my view, underrecognised and underappreciated. We need to do more in this nation to recognise the intrinsic human rights of children. Too often in our society, culturally, children are seen and not heard or treated as the property of their parents. But, while we are dealing with vulnerable beings who are unable to look after or care for themselves, we need to make sure that all of our nation's children have their rights upheld—and there is more that we should do.

In that context it is significant to look at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. If you look at the culture and history of what the royal commission is looking into, in terms of organisations that have perpetuated abuse against children within their institutions, it often stems from that lack of recognition of the rights of those children and the needs of those children relative to the privilege of those institutions. I think that is an important starting point: looking at the kinds of issues that Senator Hinch is putting before the chamber today—that is, we must do more to recognise the intrinsic right of children to wellbeing and to be protected from abuse and neglect.

Senator Hinch's motion recognises some tragic circumstances arising in the state of Victoria, but this is also a significant national problem. There are some 50,000 or more reports of child abuse and neglect substantiated every year by child protection services across the country. There are many more things that we need to do, as Senator Hinch, I think, would like to indicate with this motion at a national level to protect the best interests and welfare of children—and I would really like to discuss with him in the future about more of the kinds of things that we should be reflecting in this chamber.

Senator Hinch, for example, highlights the issue of the outsourcing of the care and welfare of our most vulnerable children and that it needs to be reviewed. In my experience, the welfare and care, in terms of outsourcing, of our most vulnerable children in our nation is frequently reviewed by state child protection departments, often as they have launched from crisis to crisis after different tragic incidents have arisen from state to state.

I question what Senator Hinch is really getting at when he asks for a review, so we really need to have some further engagement with him about what he is trying to achieve with this motion—for example, when you talk about the outsourcing of the care and welfare of our most vulnerable children, are we talking about foster caring arrangements? Is that outsourcing? Are we talking about the fact that we are severing that relationship between a parent and a child because of that abuse and neglect and because of the intervention of a child protection system, or is Senator Hinch referring to residential care or privatised residential care? All of these settings for looking after the most vulnerable children need to be considered when looking at this issue. So, while I support Senator Hinch's motion, I do not think it adds much clarity in terms of what we actually need to do. It highlights the urgency of the issue and is a call to action, but it is not yet providing us with much guidance as to what Senator Hinch actually thinks we need to do.

However, I am pleased to see that people are actively thinking about these issues. I certainly am and many of Australia's organisations interested and dedicated to the welfare of children are very actively involved in considering these issues—for example, as I highlighted, the National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children sets out some of what the picture looks like in relation to who is responsible for what.

Traditionally, the Commonwealth's responsibility, when it comes to protecting vulnerable children in our nation, has been through supporting the states to fund education. It is very much there in our family payments system and our social security system, which is there to provide financial security, albeit inadequate financial security, for families to protect the wellbeing and interests of children. That is the most significant thing that the Commonwealth can do and does do to protect the interests of all Australia's children.

We also fund, through the Department of Social Services, a great many early intervention services that are there to support vulnerable families, with the hope of supporting them to raise their children in a way that supports their wellbeing, so that they do not come into contact with our child protection system. We have many successful programs in that regard. It is important that we have those programs that are preventing the pointy end of intervention for vulnerable children. We know, for example, Indigenous children are six-times more likely to be the subject of a substantiated case of child neglect or abuse than other children in our nation. That is why many of these services are targeted appropriately at Indigenous communities to support those families and the wellbeing of their children.

What I would say here is that we need to see the issue of protecting children as more than merely a response to abuse and neglect in our children but as moving to promote the safety and wellbeing of children overall, because if we can embed the promotion of safety and wellbeing of children overall then we prevent far more children from coming into contact with the pointy end of the child protection system.

While the states are responsible for the pointy end of the child protection system—and indeed they are also offering services to many families—we have the Commonwealth providing that social safety net for Australia's children through the payment system but also through many of the amazing services that are funded. This week there has been the Family and Relationship Services Australia conference here in Canberra, and I note that Senator Brandis had a statement read out at that conference noting the importance of those services to supporting the wellbeing of families in breakdown to prevent them from coming in contact with our court systems. Again, these are the kinds of issues that Senator Hinch has previously brought before the chamber, noting the significant contribution of family breakdown and the Family Court system to conflict in families and creating vulnerable situations for children.

In that context, if you look to a national approach on these issues—if the Commonwealth were to say, 'Okay, we want to review the outsourcing and care of vulnerable children in our nation'—you have to say, 'What are the states doing, and what is the Commonwealth's responsibility towards those children?' Traditionally, as I have explained, they have been quite separate things, but more and more, as the states are discovering, they have very different systems. They are unable to share data with each other. They implement different best practice. Because they are not able to share data, they are not really even able to share best practice. What that means is that we really need to have a national conversation about this issue, and it requires involvement from the Commonwealth to see progress made, because in my view the states can no longer tackle this problem alone without some further leadership from the Commonwealth.

I am pleased to say there is some progress, but I have to say it has been much too little, too late. We have had, for example, community services ministers meeting without the Commonwealth, trying to make progress on these issues. But, for the first time in a while, Minister Porter has met with child protection ministers and, on 11 November, they put together a communique which highlighted a number of key issues, including a National Statement of Principles for Child Safe Organisations. If you connect the idea of a National Statement of Principles for Child Safe Organisations to the sentiments of Senator Hinch's motion, where he is calling for a review of the outsourcing and care of our most vulnerable children, in fact what we are talking about here is the need to do better on that very setting that Senator Hinch is describing.

There are a range of principles, if you like, embedded in the way organisations dealing with children need to work in order to make them child safe. These are things that are highlighted by the royal commission, and they are now increasingly being highlighted by more and more organisations that are interested in child safety and wellbeing. So the National Statement of Principles for Child Safe Organisations is designed to be used as a benchmark for cross-sectoral jurisdictional child safety and policymaking. It is designed to be seen as a framework for funding and investment decisions based on those child-safe principles. It is designed to look at legislation and compliance regimes, and it is designed also to draw from the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It is also designed to support the findings on working with children checks and actions on creating and maintaining safe environments for children.

As you can see, and as Senator Gallagher highlighted, these are indeed very complex arrangements when it comes to dealing with the safety and security of vulnerable children. Senator Hinch's motion is commendable in highlighting the importance and urgency of this issue and that we must do more, but what I want to say to the chamber today is that, yes, we must do more but we need to step through these things in a strategic and considered way but with high priority. It is not a simple thing of just reviewing the outsourcing of the care and welfare of our most vulnerable children. There is a huge amount of thinking that is already going into this issue. The thinking on this issue is coming very much through the royal commission currently, and there are hundreds and hundreds of pages of findings from the royal commission—and these are just its interim reports. We as a nation—as a Commonwealth and as the states—will need to respond to what the royal commission is telling us about the situation of Australia's most vulnerable children. The royal commission has looked at the historical circumstances of children in institutional care but very much with a view to teaching us what we need to do in the future. So we will have—in this place, in government and in the states—a very significant job to do to ensure children are protected.

I am pleased to say that we are now starting to see progress—albeit too slow—on issues such as interjurisdictional information sharing, consideration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander placement principles when it comes to foster care, and indeed renewal of the next action plan under the National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children, which Jenny Macklin put in place.

There is also significant interest from the Commonwealth and from state ministers in permanency planning reforms. When you look at the need to review the outsourcing in the care and welfare of our most vulnerable children, the permanency of those placements and the way are planned for those children are of key significance in whether those placements succeed. As Senator Gallagher highlighted, there is a great deal of instability for many of the children who are in our foster care system. They can go from placement to placement and be in many different foster families and many different institutional settings. There are things that the system is doing to contribute to that and that are causing difficulties for these children in addition to the difficulties that they already confront. Planning for permanency is a significant area that ministers across the country are looking at. Indeed, they will need the Commonwealth's support to step through some of those issues.

There are significant national reforms that will interplay with this. I note these are on Minister Porter's agenda—for example, the investment approach to welfare. It will be interesting to see whether an investment approach to welfare will see more resources directed to vulnerable families who need it and prevent more interaction with our child protection system because the wellbeing of families is improved or whether the minister's approach will be to audit expenditure and do quite the opposite by ripping resources away from families who need it. I am somewhat cynical, I have to say, about stepping through our investment approach to welfare if it uses an actuarial approach to taking money away within the system. However, a proper investment approach to welfare could be applied quite successfully within our social welfare system to support the neediest families and prevent them from engaging with the state's child protection systems. In closing, our nation's children absolutely deserve the best in life. They deserve their fundamental human rights to be protected, and we in this place have a lot more work to do on that.

Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak to this motion. I certainly endorse the comments made by Senator Gallagher and Senator Pratt. Since being elected to the Senate, I have had the privilege—as you have too, Acting Deputy President Sterle—of meeting with many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and organisations across this country. I commend Senator Hinch for raising the issue of children in out-of-home care, but, like Senator Gallagher and Senator Pratt, I have some reservations about the focus of the motion.

In speaking to this motion, I particularly want to focus on what is happening to children in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities because they comprise more than 50 per cent of the children in out-of-home care. As you would be aware, Acting Deputy President Sterle, in our home state of Western Australia, the rate of out-of-home care amongst Aboriginal children is out of control. Sadly, it is an area where Western Australia leads the pack. The stats in Western Australia are 16 per cent higher. As Acting Deputy President Sterle and Senator Dodson would know, in the Kimberley region every child currently in out-of-home care is an Aboriginal child. That tells us that there is a crisis. As Senator Gallagher said, this is not an easy issue to deal with and it is not one size fits all. Through my association with SNAICC and other organisations, I have become aware that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and organisations really are solution focused. They really are starting to come together, and in many ways they are leading us. Whilst I accept there is never going to be a one-size-fits-all model, I do think that we urgently need to sit down with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and hear what they have to say.

On 9 November in this place, Family Matters—an umbrella group of 150 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations that have come together to look at and try to address this issue of out-of-home care—launched their inaugural report called The Family Matters report: measuring trends to turn the tide on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child safety and removal. It has some shocking statistics in it. Rather than dwell on those statistics, they want to move from a deficit model, which governments seem to apply to fixing problems, to look at how we make our communities stronger and how we make families stronger. The report makes some alarming predictions. The report says that, if we do not do anything different, in the next two decades we will triple the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids in care. Across Australia, there are already 15,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who are missing from their homes. They are missing out on their mum, their dad, their grannies, their brothers, their sisters, their aunts, their uncles and, even more importantly, their culture. It is almost as if we are creating another stolen generation because these kids are missing out.

The report also makes the point that we invest a lot of money into out-of-home care—as we should—because for some children one of the solutions is certainly to get them away from harm in the first instance, but we do not spend enough money on making our communities stronger and on supporting parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles or whoever has responsibility for those children. That is also where we need to focus our resources. If we make families stronger, then we make outcomes for children much better. I do not think any of us in this place would disagree with the fundamental principle that children are best cared for in their own families. So what is at that we as a community, and governments both federal and state, need to do to make sure families are strong and children are able to stay within their own families and, particularly for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids, within their own culture?

One of the other groups I have had a bit to do with is prisoner groups. In Western Australia, I have met with a number of organisations. Barry Winmar is running training for Aboriginal prisoners—in particular, Noongar prisoners from the Perth region—out at Fairbridge. He tells me over and over again about the number of young Noongar men who come to him for training who have no idea of their culture. We know now that there is a very strong link between kids in out-of-home care and future prison sentences—they commit crimes and end up incarcerated. It seems to me that if we put the support back to families, and start to strengthen families, significant numbers of those kids will not end up in care. One of the very first things that Barry does is get the elders in and start to talk about culture—because these young men know nothing about where they have come from, their connection to country and so on.

The Family Matters report, which was launched here on 11 November, says we need a COAG response. I appreciate Senator Gallagher's remarks. She said the Commonwealth government does not want to be part of this, because it is probably one of the most difficult issues that state governments deal with. But we do need a nationally coordinated response because we owe it to kids, to future generations, to get this right—and it starts with getting it right in families, in people's homes.

In Western Australia we have a mix of services. I am not aware that we have any private for-profit carers in Western Australia. Certainly, the non-government sector in WA is taking a lot of children from the state system. Just recently, Stephan Lund, from Wanslea Family Services, which has been around for a very long time, attributed the increase in children in care to having more mandatory reporting regimes and a better recognition of family violence, domestic violence—and, of course, we have drug and alcohol problems. Mr Lund spoke about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. He said they find it particularly tough because they lose contact with not only family but culture. Of Wanslea's 108 foster families, only two are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. There are a whole range of reasons why Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families may not be able to put themselves forward as foster families. They are often struggling with poverty themselves. They are often dealing in an informal manner with other children in the family. In Western Australia in particular—but not isolated to Western Australia—there is the issue of the trauma and dislocation of Aboriginal people not that many generations back. So it is difficult to encourage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families to come forward and be foster families.

Many times—and I have spoken to women in these circumstances—the grandparents take the children. But they do so in an informal manner because they do not want to butt up against the welfare system. In Western Australia we have a very high rate of custody orders being given out until children are 18. Putting on my cynical hat, I think that is a way for the Western Australian government to get them off the books and out of home care so that they can say they are reducing the numbers. But that is not a good outcome. And now we are seeing the family law centres intervening on more and more occasions to try and prevent those care orders for young children to the age of 18—because that is completely ripping them away from family members, their culture and so on.

Two advocates in Western Australia told me just a couple of weeks ago about two Aboriginal children who were placed in long-term care until the age of 18 and then taken to the US—so, complete dislocation from family and friends. In defence of caseworkers we know in Western Australia—and I am sure this is not isolated to Western Australia—they have far too many children to deal with and far too many families that they are responsible for. They too are overloaded. If you have a look at what is written, Western Australia has good protocols and good actions to be taken for children—in particular, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children being kept in touch with their culture.

But all of that falls by the wayside when the caseworker is overworked or, as Senator Gallagher reminded us, has very difficult issues to deal with—and we have seen some of those tragedies hit the headlines in Western Australia. As Senator Pratt pointed out, it always leads to another review. So with the greatest of respect, Senator Hinch, I do not think we need another review; I think we need action. If you did not attend the launch of the report on 11 November, I would urge you to have a look at Family Matters. Ultimately, it is about all of us wanting children to be kept with family and to be kept safe. Family is the best place for children. I sat as a member of the community services inquiry a couple of years ago and heard firsthand from three young women who had been in foster care all their lives. That is a memory that has stayed with me—hearing the horror stories they told of what had happened to them.

Debate interrupted.