Davis KelvinHon KELVIN DAVIS (Minister for Children): Thank you Madam Chair. Just to address some of the points that have been raised: first of all those crimes that have been read out from the Crimes Act are abhorrent crimes and we need to make sure that we protect our children. But the point that is being made is that—and it was the example I gave when we previously debated this in the House. If there is a person—a young parent say in their late teens—who has had a child and has hurt their child in such a way that the child is removed from them what the Supplementary Order Paper from the ACT Party does is it actually gives that parent no hope that they can ever have a child or start a family again regardless of the changes that they have made in their lives. So that is exactly what they're doing and it basically removes the point of this bill because we believe that people given the right support given the right opportunities and given the right education can make changes and even though they've made terrible mistakes as a younger person a younger adult at some stage in their lives they should be allowed to have another chance.Nicole McKee did say—she used the words Why would we do this so that a parent who will go on to hurt a subsequent child?" Well who's to say the person will go on to hurt a subsequent child? The point is nobody is saying that somebody who has an ongoing history of violence should be allowed to look after a subsequent child but if there are people who have made those changes in their lives why should they not be given a chance? In terms of the comments about Malachi Subecz being an invisible child—yeah I agree. No child should be invisible and their needs should be—it is outside the scope of this bill to an extent Madam Chair but I thought I would address it anyway. The member Harete Hipango who asked the question needs to also realise that a member of her former profession—i.e. lawyers and lawyers for child—was one of the people who met with Malachi and the caregiver a couple of weeks after being informed that there were concerns and failed to recognise that there was some harm caused. So there were a number of people and Dame Karen Poutasi's report was about making sure that if one group one agency one person missed the signs of abuse there were safety nets across the system and that the system was there to meet the needs of the child if there were gaps. What happened to him was totally unacceptable.In terms of mandatory reporting which was also raised by Harete Hipango the previous National Government looked at and decided not to implement mandatory reporting based on the white paper that said that there was no evidence that legislation in Australia was effective in preventing child abuse and everyone is probably thinking "Well maybe Australia has just been examining this recently." Well the reality is that New South Wales has had mandatory reporting since 1977. If by 2014 which is some 30-something years later there is still no evidence that mandatory reporting is effective we have to ask the question and look carefully at whether there's been evidence since 2012 2013 2014 or whenever that white paper came out that mandatory reporting is effective.So we're not saying we're not going to do it; we're just saying that we need to really look at the evidence and make evidence-based decisions. Why would we invest in something that hasn't got evidence after what by now is over 40 years? We've just got to make sure we make the right decisions and don't just have a knee-jerk reaction. Thank you Madam Chair."