Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak in this matter of public interest debate about the issue of child abuse. A matter that I have spoken about a number of times before is what I would call the crisis with regard to child abuse and neglect around Australia. It is an issue that has particular focus at the moment with regard to Indigenous children in the Northern Territory. Certainly, there are very significant problems in many communities in the Northern Territory with regard to sexual assaults on and abuse of children. But, as that report itself makes clear, whilst there are severe problems in the Territory and some communities, the problem of child sexual assault is certainly not confined to Indigenous communities or to the Northern Territory.

I might also make the point that, as that report also makes clear, with regard to those Indigenous children who are subjected to appalling sexual assault in the Territory, a number of the offenders are not Aboriginal men but are non-Indigenous men in positions of authority and trust. None of that is to try to downplay the serious challenge faced by Indigenous communities; it is simply to try to put the full facts and some of the wider context into the situation.

I want to move from the issue of sexual assault in Indigenous communities to the broader issue of child protection across the country. This is not just a matter that I have spoken about a number of times; this is an issue that the Senate itself has passed resolutions about. It has passed at least two that I can think of that have expressed support for national action and stronger action in regard to child protection issues. I think it is very important that, when the Senate actually agrees to resolutions—and we all know that we get asked to vote on a whole range of them pretty much every sitting day—we do actually have some genuine support for what we are putting our votes behind, otherwise I think it rightly generates increased cynicism in the community. If the Senate passes a resolution saying that we should all take responsibility for setting a national agenda with regard to abuse and sexual assault of children then that is what we should do. Frankly, I do not think that to date there has been sufficient done with regard to really taking a national approach and setting a national agenda with all stakeholders—state, territory and local government; key community groups; wider organisations; and child protection organisations—working together on this issue.

One thing to me is clear: whilst we do need more resourcing of child protection agencies—and I note that in my own state of Queensland there has been a significant increase in recent times; that is welcome, although whether it is sufficient to really cover or make up for decades of underfunding is another issue—even if further resourcing of child protection agencies occurs, as it must in most areas, that in itself is not going to be enough.

Child protection workers, broadly speaking, tend to be dealing with the consequences of child abuse and neglect rather than trying to get in at the preventative level at the early stages to prevent abusive behaviour and violence. That is where we need to have a national debate about our attitudes and our social approach towards children and we need a greater recognition—as that report from the Northern Territory was titled just last week—that Children are sacred. We should not just give lip-service to that attitude but seek to infuse it into our culture and our society much more than it is now. The levels of child abuse are such that we cannot just kid ourselves and say that it is just a few isolated misfits, weirdos and sickos. There are tens of thousands of children suffering from substantiated serious abuse and neglect around Australia every year and there are many more reported incidents on top of that, a number of which—quite a large proportion—we have not had the resources to properly investigate. It is almost impossible to accurately establish precisely the number of seriously neglected and abused children around Australia but it would be ludicrous to suggest that it is not much greater than the tens of thousands of substantiated incidents and the tens of thousands of children already recognised as having been subjected to serious abuse and neglect.

In 2005 we had 25,000 children on care and protection orders around the country. Again, that is far from the total number subjected to significant abuse and neglect. That is the number at such a serious stage that they need to be placed under a care and protection order. It is important to emphasise that when we are talking about child abuse, that is, of children under nine years of age where you are a proven victim of abuse and neglect, 93 per cent are harmed by someone they know and trust and 71 per cent are harmed by their natural parent. That is according to statistics through the Kids First Foundation. So it is not stranger danger. It is not even the stereotype of the step-parent. In the majority of circumstances it is the natural parent.

As well as adopting an ethos of all children being sacred, I think we also need to recognise—if you want to get down to a more utilitarian approach—that it is immensely damaging to our whole community and our whole society. All of us know instinctively, if not through reading the research—though if we need to be convinced there is plenty of research there—that harming children, beating children, abusing children, neglecting children, subjecting them to sexual assault, will harm them and many of them will be harmed seriously and permanently. It is not only a breach of their human rights and their basic human dignity, it inevitably means flow-on costs and consequences for the wider society that they are part of. We have to recognise that and that is why extra resources into preventing and addressing abuse and neglect before they become more serious is going to be a saving in the long term.

A few weeks ago I called for a national debate with regard to our attitudes towards protecting children from abuse and neglect. That was in response to, or as a consequence of, legislation passed in the New Zealand parliament that was portrayed as making smacking illegal. That is the easy shorthand description of it but it is not actually what was done. The legislation there was not about banning the smacking of children but about removing the defence of reasonable force, which parents have used to excuse brutal and, indeed, sometimes even fatal violence against children. That does not mean that every time there is brutal and sometimes fatal violence against children that the perpetrator would always get off, but it does mean that in some cases, certainly, they do. In other cases they may still be convicted but of a lesser offence with a lesser penalty, and when it is in those areas on the margins then it makes it less likely that police or other authorities will follow through with charges.

So it is not a debate about whether or not smacking children should or should not be banned. We may all have our views on that but that is not the debate I think we need to have. In some respects, it is a distraction. It is an important issue but it is a distraction from where the debate needs to be in a law reform sense, which is about how much extra lawful defence parents should have with regard to hitting children than anybody else in the community.

We all know that corporal punishment—the hitting or beating of children—is now not permitted in schools around Australia. Frankly, I was appalled to hear the health minister, of all people, talking last week about the need to consider bringing back the smacking or caning of children—corporal punishment—in our schools. To even suggest that is a desirable idea is a horrendously backward step. His statement that as our teachers get gentler our kids get more brutal might be a bit of pop psychology from the health minister. I would love to see the peer reviewed academic research that backs that up. The research that I have seen suggests that those children and young adults who are violent are far more likely to have been subjected to violence themselves, whether in the home or elsewhere. I have seen plenty of peer reviewed research that demonstrates that. If the health minister wants to show us some research that says hitting children in schools has merit, I would be interested to see it. We all know how caning and strapping and beating children was used to excuse extreme violence and abuse in schools and institutions—we have had the Senate committee inquiries into that and the harm it caused.

Show us the research that says this will actually help and then we can have an informed debate on it. But to just make a blanket assertion that stopping teachers from hitting kids means that they get more violent because of the lack of discipline is an incredibly dangerous and irresponsible thing for a health minister to do. It is equally worrying that the education minister has—at least reportedly—left the door open for a return to physical punishment of children by backing autonomy for school principals to decide on its use. To have a duopoly of the health minister and the education minister even pondering the concept of legally enabling the hitting of children in schools by people who are not their parents is a very backward step. Unless they back that up with very strong, peer reviewed research showing that it actually helps in reducing violence amongst older children and adults then I suggest they stop floating these dangerous ideas. This is not just about what is in the law and whether or not teachers should be subjected to disciplinary action and those sorts of things; it is actually about our attitudes. That is why I made the point at the start of my speech that we need a national debate on this issue. We need to consider our attitudes towards children and why we think it is okay to hit children, of all people. It is something we would never be able to do with another adult but it can be used as a legal excuse to justify force against children.

I am not just floating the idea that we need to have a national debate about this because I think it is an interesting philosophical concept but because of the statistics that I mentioned at the start—the national crisis in child abuse and neglect which is at chronic, serious and growing levels. Something is wrong in our society, in our attitudes, and that is why we need to talk about it. To be told by the health minister that such a call is just ‘gesture politics’ I find contemptible. I do not particularly care what he thinks of me as an individual, but he is saying that to child protection groups, academics and people with expertise on the ground—and most people, including academics, have expertise as parents and we all have expertise in being parented in various ways, whether by our parents or others, as we were growing up. To dismiss all of that research and argument as gesture politics when its genesis is the desperate desire to try to do something to prevent more child abuse, rather than just putting more money into child protection workers to mop up the pieces, is pretty offensive—especially coming from the health minister, of all people. And for him to have come out, weeks after his comment about gesture politics, and advocate beating children in schools was quite extraordinary.

This is not some fringe, hippy notion. As I mentioned, the New Zealand parliament has just passed legislation with a conscience vote, so it was not some party deal. It was passed with a vote of 113 to eight, so it was across the political spectrum and almost unanimous, after the issues had been looked at by a comprehensive public inquiry. It is one of 15 countries—and I read the other day that South Africa is moving down this path as well—to remove or reduce the legal defence of being a parent as an exemption from the defence of reasonable force when hitting children. That is a debate we need to have. Anybody who suggests we do not need to have that debate should come up with a better idea about what to do about the chronic and serious crisis with regard to child protection, abuse, neglect and sexual assault around Australia. It is not just something we can lecture Indigenous communities about. We have our own problems. If we are too gutless to face up to them and we just dismiss them by saying it is ‘gesture politics’ then, frankly, that is pretty weak. It is betraying the children and it is certainly dismissing the concept that our children are sacred.