Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 27 November 2008 I spoke about my first official duty after being declared a member of parliament. It was to visit a Christmas event for GrandCare. More than four years later, on the weekend, I had dinner with a group called Grandparents Rearing Grandchildren. For those members who do not know, these are grandparents who are raising their own children's children, for various reasons, and all members have them in their electorates. The major reason for this is drugs. My speech is about the injustices of our bureaucratic system, which sees these people saving children and losing their life savings and superannuation and the system just sticks a finger up at them.

The majority of these children have one form or another of disability, which brings its own challenges to the table. Before I go on, I want other members in this place to try to imagine, up to the age of 80, suddenly having thrust upon you the duty of raising your grandchild or grandchildren. I would like to give examples of how the system treats these people. Let me give you the first scenario.

The DCP comes to you as a grandparent to save your grandchild from imminent danger and encourage you to get a court order. You do this and have to bear the costs without any financial support from the DCP. So you go to court and then Legal Aid provide the legal assistance for you to fight at the request of another government department, the DCP. As everyone knows, the Family Court can be very expensive, and this has wiped out the savings of many a grandparent. In the end you may win the case and the custody, but guess what: any government funding from Centrelink that the parents are entitled to stays with the parent. At the end of the day the grandparent saves the children at the request of the DCP, and usually expends all their savings in looking after the children, and the majority of parents just keep buying drugs with taxpayers' money. In a country town in WA, a couple in their 70s have five of their seven grandchildren with them and desperately need to build a $20,000 extension to accommodate the children. Do you think they can get the money? No way. But we see millions of taxpayers' dollars being spent on detention centres, and I am sure the charter flight from Christmas Island to Perth for a solitary passenger costs more than $20,000. After this weekend people will also cop the carbon tax. Where are our priorities as a nation when we cannot help out our people who have paid taxes all their lives and we desert them in the hour of their need and of their grandchildren's need? Have we not learnt anything from our apologies to the forgotten Australians and to the stolen generation?

We should be supporting our inspirational grandparents who are put in the position of having to look after their grandchildren—and if we do not we should have an inquiry as to why not. It is great to see the member for Shortland here. I know she will come on board with any inquiry like this because of the requirement to look after these people and not drive them into a fiscal grave.