Legislative Assembly

13740 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY Wednesday 25 March 2009 __________ The Speaker (The Hon. George Richard Torbay) took the chair at 10.00 a.m. The Speaker read the Prayer and acknowledgement of country. LAW ENFORCEMENT (POWERS AND RESPONSIBILITIES) AMENDMENT (SEARCH POWERS) BILL 2009 Message received from the Legislative Council returning the bill with an amendment. Consideration of Legislative Council's amendment set down as an order of the day for a later hour. BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE Notices of Motions General Business Notices of Motions (General Notices) given. CHILDREN LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (WOOD INQUIRY RECOMMENDATIONS) BILL 2009 Agreement in Principle Debate resumed from 12 March 2009. Ms KATRINA HODGKINSON (Burrinjuck) [10.07 a.m.]: Early intervention in New South Wales has been found by the Wood inquiry to be markedly insufficient. I have been pushing for the need for greater action on early intervention for several years. It was one of the major points raised in my submission to the special commission of inquiry on behalf of the Coalition. My contacts with service providers revealed that up to 40 per cent of families assessed for Brighter Futures assistance had to go on a waiting list due to serious under-resourcing by this Government. When the Murrumburrah Early Learning Centre closed in November 2007 it was revealed that 10 of the 49 children attending the centre were known to the Department of Community Services [DOCS] and were considered to be at risk in their home environment. Of these 10 children, six were participating in the Brighter Futures program run by the Department of Community Services and a further four were waiting placement in this program. Similarly, when I visited a preschool in Tamworth I found to my horror that up to 15 families from one school were being forced to wait for up to two months for Brighter Futures help. The New South Wales Coalition’s submission to the Wood commission stated that early intervention for families is the most appropriate way to ensure that the incidence of full-blown child abuse is reduced. It is vital to equip parents to deal with stressful situations before they escalate. [Extension of time agreed to.] The number of preventable deaths from either child abuse or neglect, or under suspicious circumstances, will be reduced significantly by early intervention. However, another category of child deaths could be significantly improved with better early intervention. The Ombudsman has observed that a child whose death is reviewable is almost eight times more likely to have died from accidental poisoning and more than five times more likely to have died as a result of accidental death from exposure to smoke, fire or flames. The rates of death due to accidental drowning and other sudden deaths are also significantly higher than in the general community. While these deaths may be classified as accidental, it is reasonable to assume that had the normal levels of parental supervision expected by the community been in place, most of these deaths would not have occurred. This also is where the Brighter Futures program is very important. It can teach parents good parenting skills. Leaving rat poison under the sink where a two-year-old can get to it may not fit into the categories of 25 March 2009 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 13741 abuse or neglect, but it is bad parenting and has led to many deaths, as the New South Wales Ombudsman has observed. In fact, it is eight times more likely than in the normal community. This Government waxed lyrical about spending $1.2 billion over the past five years on the Department of Community Services [DOCS]. Early intervention should have been a priority, but it was not. It was not until the last year of the so-called five-year reform program that the Department of Community Services budget for early intervention was increased. How many children died in those first four years because of the failure of successive community services Ministers to prioritise early intervention? The Coalition has raised early intervention in the Department of Community Services estimates hearings and in the one supplementary hearing that was held when I was shadow Minister for this important portfolio. I also issued many media releases and asked at least four questions on notice about this matter in this place: question numbers 4222, 3097, 1060 and 0474. Three of the four answers I received from the Minister were almost useless, as so many of us have come to expect from the Government. Both Minister Greene and Minister Burney were more intent on hiding data rather than admitting the truth of their failures. It was not until after Commissioner Wood completed his hearings that the current Minister for Community Services provided me, in December 2008, with a reasonable reply to one of my questions. Even then, and after the reform period was over, the Minister admitted that the community service centres in Brewarrina, Cessnock, Charlestown, Cobar, Moree, Muswellbrook, Narrabri, Nyngan, Raymond Terrace and Walgett had no early intervention caseworkers. The Minister said they are being recruited. When will the Minister be able to tell us that these positions have been filled? I fear that they remain vacant. Many of these communities have large indigenous populations, and are widely recognised as having much higher rates of child abuse and domestic violence. The Minister for Community Services should be aware of the Australian Bureau of Statistics document, the Socio-Economic Index for Areas [SEIFA]. It shows that New South Wales has an average advantage-disadvantage index of 1,011. Willoughby City Council on Sydney's North Shore has a high index of 1,174, while places like Nyngan are as low as 917; Walgett, 896; and Brewarrina, 807. These areas also have domestic violence rates up to 10 times the State average. Why has the New South Wales Labor Government ignored these areas for years? I specifically refer to recommendation 10.4 of the Wood report, which states: NGOs and state agencies should be funded to deliver services to the children, young persons and families who fall within the groups listed in recommendations 10.1 a and b and 10.2 a and c above. These services should cover the continuum of universal, secondary and tertiary services and should target transition points for children and young persons. Such services should include: a. home visiting, preferably by nurses, high quality child care, preferably centre based, primary health care, school readiness programs, routine screening for domestic violence, preschool services, school counsellors, breakfast programs and early learning. Commissioner Wood mentions preschool services specifically. The availability of preschools and other early childhood services is vitally important to the delivery of early intervention programs. Given that early intervention services are to be delivered to clients by the non-government sector, it is vitally important that preschool and other childcare groups are able to survive. This is not what is happening at the moment. In its Keep Them Safe response to the Wood report the Government does not address the recommendation that preschool services be funded. The Government's response to recommendation 10.5 commits to the funding of the Preschool Investment and Reform Plan and also to the additional $21 million that has been announced. But clearly this is not enough. It should be noted that New South Wales has the worst record in Australia for supporting preschool education. The 2008 Report on Government Services produced by the Federal Government Productivity Commission shows that New South Wales has the lowest participation rate—64.6 per cent—of four-year-old children at preschools. New South Wales also has the lowest real preschool funding per child population at $726, and at $49.20 the highest average preschool cost per child after government subsidies. This situation has built up over the life of the current State Labor Government. Obviously, the support of early childhood education is a low priority for this Government. In the 2007-08 State Budget for the Department of Community Services, preschools and childcare services did not receive any real increase in expenditure, while child protection and out-of-home care received increases of 12.8 per cent and 18.3 per cent respectively. The 2008-09 budget provided the stopgap Preschool Investment and Reform Plan that states that it will provide places for an extra 10,500 children. But the latest Productivity Commission report stated that during 2007 some 29,650 New South Wales children missed out on 13742 LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY 25 March 2009 preschool in the year before starting school. Clearly, the Government has no plans for the 19,150 four-year-old children that are missing out on and will continue to miss out on preschool education in the year before primary school. As the Government is aware, the Coalition has put forward a policy that will close this gap entirely by raising the participation rate of four-year olds attending preschool two days a week to 95 per cent, adding an additional 25,000 preschool places across the State. To do this the Coalition has committed to spending $50 million a year for four years. I arranged for my colleagues in another place to raise the matter of preschool attendance in the latest estimates hearings. The Minister replied during the hearings that attendance rates in New South Wales are 88 per cent and the funding allocated will bring this up to 95 per cent by 2015. However, when questioned why the Minister disagreed with the Federal Government's Productivity Commission data showing that only 64.6 per cent of New South Wales four-year-olds attended preschool, the Minister stated that the Productivity Commission figures were incorrect.

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