Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I want to use the time this morning to talk about the government’s family relationship centres, because today is 1 June and exactly one month from today we are going to see the first of these centres open and available to the community. While this is a program that we have supported and we are keen to see the centres start servicing the community, we are worried that already we have seen not just political interference but also a fairly shambolic approach to the set up of the first services. Some services are going to be opening in temporary premises; the service in Townsville was apparently told that it should open in a tent if it could not open anywhere else. Obviously this is not the way that sensitive relationship services should be set up to guarantee the safety of clients as well as staff.

We were told by FaCSIA in estimates hearings last week that not all of the centres that will open will be operating with full services. But what is strange to us and an indication of the Attorney-General’s priorities is that we were also told in estimates hearings that the advertising campaign is fully up and ready to go. They have been able to design the ads, test them in focus groups and have them ready to go for 1 July. If only they had put some of that attention into making sure the services themselves could be up and running. It is not going to be much help to anybody if they can see an ad about a fabulous new service that promises so much but then they go and find that their service has not opened yet, that it is operating in a tent or that there are not proper staff involved. The contracts have not even been signed yet and there is one month to go. How organisations are expected to employ people and plan properly for a good start to what should be a good program is really beyond us.

We are really worried about the way the government is prioritising the running of this program. We are obviously very concerned about the politicisation of the locations of the services. We learnt in estimates last week that FaCSIA had identified a range of places of very high need—including Alice Springs, Bendigo, Caboolture, Maribyrnong, Melton and Fremantle—but none of these places got one of the 65 services. Meanwhile, places that were not ranked highly—such as Brookvale, in the health minister’s electorate; Strathpine, in the Assistant Treasurer’s seat; and North Ryde, in the Prime Minister’s seat—did receive family relationship centres.

On the information we have, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Attorney has shifted these sites around to favour his Liberal Party mates. He says this is not so, but still he refuses to make public the advice he says he received from the Attorney-General’s Department. I have to say that, if it looks like a rort, if it walks like a rort and if it sounds like a cover-up, we in this House all know what it actually is. The Attorney-General should be ashamed of himself. This is a program that was set up after the really good work done by a bipartisan committee. It should be offering something new to the families of this country, and it is being mismanaged and rorted by an Attorney who is putting politics before the needs of families. (Time expired)

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