Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight because it's a very important week on the national calendar, and that is National Child Protection Week. It's an opportunity for us to have a national discussion in our Australian community to think about the work that we need to do together to keep children safe in our nation. It's an opportunity for us to talk about what we can do here in this parliament to strengthen communities and support families to make sure that every child in Australia is safe and secure.

This week, the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect is asking us to spread three important messages, and one is that we all have a part to play in protecting all children. Even small actions can help improve a child's future. By building stronger communities, we're creating safer environments for our nation's children. Right now, more than ever, we need to take action. The rate of child protection notifications in this nation has grown from 33.8 children per 1,000 children in 2011-12 to 42 children per 1,000 children in 2015-16. There are a range of factors behind this. One is increased notifications and mandatory reporting, which means the notifications have gone up. But we don't have any real sense of what the underlying prevalence figures actually are. What we do know, and what these figures clearly show us, is that there are too many children in our nation who have dire needs and who are facing dire consequences. We need to do more to make sure not only that we stop this number from increasing but that we work together to give these children the protection and security that they need.

This is about a national conversation and a national focus on children's wellbeing and the value of children in society. We will not drive these figures down in our nation unless we—as individuals, as government, as communities and as institutions—put more priority on children and lift the focus on children above other demands. We need to give families in our nation the very best chance at raising children. I am particularly proud of Labor's role in developing the National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children, and I commend Jenny Macklin for the work she did on that back in about 2009.

Last week, with Jenny Macklin, the shadow minister for families and social services, we held a meeting with family and children's support services, peak bodies and research providers as part of Labor's community sector partnership. We had a terrific discussion about what we can all do, and what Labor can do in government, to better advance and promote the wellbeing of Australia's children. The message from the room was clear: we need a bigger focus on early intervention and prevention in our nation. It is important that our focus shifts to ensure that we prevent children from ever coming into contact with the child protection system. This is about reducing the prevalence of child abuse and neglect, which means government needs to evolve from a risk-and-response approach to a focus on the wellbeing of children. This is not an easy thing to do in our complex, federated structure where we have state systems responsible for the statutory protection systems and we have Commonwealth funding support systems that aren't necessarily well connected to those statutory systems. We need proper wellbeing interventions before children enter that statutory child protection system, because we have far too many services that are siloed and disconnected. It is important that we have a real conversation about how to fix these issues.

In addition, too many families in Australia are struggling with financial stress, with unemployment and underemployment, and with the increasing costs of health care from the government's attacks on Medicare. These pressures inevitably have a big impact on Australia's children. They increase rates of household conflict, and poverty was acknowledged by the community sector partnership as being a key driver for child abuse and neglect. So addressing inequality is key to protecting Australian families and Australian children.

Labor's focus on tackling inequality is certainly about helping ordinary Australian families. It is, in particular, about helping disadvantaged families, who are suffering a great deal under this government. The government's focus is not on making their lives better, as it should be. You can't separate issues of child protection from things like having a fairer tax system in our nation, because one of the key drivers for ensuring children's wellbeing is protecting the household income. It is why Labor takes very seriously the need for stable household incomes and commitment to things like family tax benefit A and B in our nation. In order to pay for those things, it also means that we need to make sure that the big end of town pays their fair share of tax. It's about maintaining a focus on universal health care, good-quality education, needs based education funding and quality affordable child care that's not just about employment outcomes but about the early childhood outcomes for children as well. These are all key parts of the government's role in ensuring that our nation's children have the best start in life. These are not remote from the issues of child protection because unless you have quality universal programs that families identify with and relate to then children get left behind.

Labor are committed to that safety net for Australia's children, but we are also committed to preventing child abuse. It is why we established the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse back in 2013. I have to say, though, that the Liberal government has been way too slow at responding to the recommendations that have come out of the royal commission today on things like the national redress scheme and, importantly, on recommendations that would prevent abuse into the future. Back in 2015, the royal commission recommended that within 12 months we should have a national working-with-children check in place. Now it is 2017 and there has been no substantive progress towards that outcome. The report released by the royal commission back in 2015 made specific recommendations to the Commonwealth to be implemented within 12 months. This included compiling a database that checked historical criminal records and sought to make sure that international records would also be accessible. But I am yet to see any evidence that these have been acted upon or implemented.

We have the final royal commission report due to be handed down in November, and this government better be prepared to act quickly on the recommendations of that report. But it does not seem ready at all. Redress is a very important part of this work, but there are so many important measures. There are hundreds of really important recommendations that have come out of the royal commission that are about preventing this kind of abuse into the future and creating child-safe organisations so that we value children and do not let harm occur to them. As a nation, we must redouble our efforts to make sure that every child has the right to a safe and happy childhood. We can and must do more. As Leesa Waters, who is Deputy CEO of the National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, says:

Don't wait until a child has been abused or neglected before you do something. We need to work together as a community to STOP this from happening in the first place.