Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. What activities are planned to raise awareness of children’s issues, especially issues of child wellbeing, neglect and abuse?

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to particularly thank the member for Fremantle not only for her question today but for her very hard work and commitment to deal with these difficult issues of child abuse. I would like to also particularly mention the members for Macarthur and Fremantle, who organised an excellent briefing for all members of parliament at lunchtime today. I think it really brought home to each and every one of us just how serious this issue is. National Child Protection Week is next week and it will be run around a very powerful theme: Children See, Children Do.

NAPCAN, the National Association for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, is organising many events around the country, with some support from the Australian government. This will provide an opportunity next week for all members of parliament to get out to wherever we can in our electorates to make sure that we show the sort of leadership that is needed in the critical area of child abuse.

I want to share with members of the House some remarks made by an extraordinary woman at the briefing organised by the two members today. Anne-Marie is a mother of three young children. She has been participating in Uniting Care Burnside’s New Parent Information Network, or NEWPIN, for the last two years. She had a very traumatic childhood, filled with far too much abuse. Back in October 2005, she was a mum with a three-year-old son and 11-month-old twins, a boy and a girl, and she said this about herself:

I was tired, sad, mad, isolated, overwhelmed, deeply traumatised and very much in need of some help.

She also said:

And these NEWPIN people were so bloody persistent and supportive, non-judgemental and compassionate and caring, I didn’t stand a chance. I’m only human.

At the briefing at lunchtime today, she said that that was the greatest thing about the people at Uniting Care. They just stuck with her through all that difficult time. She continued:

In those two years, I got my licence back, bought a car. I got a credit card and after attending two years of parenting courses, I realised that if I could do that then I could do TAFE too. I started TAFE, I got my health fixed and I took control of my life for the first time ever.

Further, she said:

The thing is when you become a parent, all of sudden it is not just about you anymore and you begin to realise, it won’t be about you for a very long time.

She also said—and I think this really summed it up:

If you have not been taught how to love and be loved, how can you teach or show it?

That is what we all have a responsibility to do: to work with people like Anne-Marie and organisations like Uniting Care Burnside in our electorates and right around Australia to make sure that children in our country can grow up happy, healthy and with a great future.