Newman Muriel: Children’s Commissioner Bill — In Committee 
Newman Muriel: Children’s Commissioner Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:613;Page:9900] 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (ACT) 
: 
 I would like to put on the record that the silence of Minister Maharey means that the Office of Children’s Commissioner is now becoming a political office and that the commissioner herself will become a political puppet. I challenged the Minister to set the record straight and stated that his silence would mean that he concurred with those remarks. He was silent so I think that from now on we can acknowledge that this is a political office. I have to say I feel sorry for the new Children’s Commissioner Cindy Kiro because I am sure she came into the job expecting to be able to act with some independence and she probably did not realise that the Minister was going to table a Supplementary Order Paper that I think she probably has not even seen—because no one else has seen it. It basically says that anything the commissioner does can be at the behest of the Minister. I think that is an absolutely appalling state of affairs. We already know that the Labour Government has a liking to control everything that goes on and if people step out of line the Government has no hesitation in basically dumping them sacking them—you name it. To have a situation now where an office that was independent is no longer going to be independent I think is appalling. 
I wonder even about the report from the Children’s Commissioner which is going to be tabled tomorrow concerning the deaths of Saliel Aplin and Olympia Jetson. I wonder about whether there has been any political interference with that report. It was delayed several times. It has taken well over a year to be tabled and I am aware of the fact as is everyone else that it was a previous Commissioner for Children who was writing the report. Now of course it has passed on to the new Children’s Commissioner. I would again in the same vein like an assurance from the Minister that there has not been any political interference with that report. 
Part 3 basically discusses the relationship of the Children’s Commissioner with the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act because the commissioner’s office was established under that Act. One of the reasons I am sure it was established was that the people who developed the idea of the commissioner’s office probably thought it would help to improve the ability of the department—what we now call the Department of Child Youth and Family Services—to do its job. But I have to say that the Office of the Commissioner for Children has not helped. It has given a lot of advice over the years but just recently we had probably the most damning report about a Government department in public-service history. I might add that it all happened under the watch of the Minister in the chair Mr Maharey. I do recall that when he stepped down from the position of Minister of the Department of Child Youth and Family Services Ms Dyson who took over said that he had been a bit busy. The relationship between the Children’s Commissioner and the department is a close one because the commissioner often comments on the actions of the department but it has not helped at all because the department as we now know is in a terrible state of affairs. Just today we heard here in Parliament that about 2700 cases of potential child abuse need further action. They have not been acted upon. Hundreds of them are critical and very urgent. One has to ask oneself how many more children out there are in a situation similar to some of the real tragedies we have had. Those cases are sitting on the case list uninvestigated because this Government has not got its act together with regard to its child welfare agency. 
The Office of Children’s Commissioner can advise advocate and say everything it wants but if the Government of the day does not have a desire to actually fix things then children will be harmed; they will be damaged. One of the things I would like to see the Children’s Commissioner do is to be very bold and very brave and start to talk about the real issues surrounding child abuse—the real factors that are influencing families to damage their children. I hope that the Office of the Children’s Commissioner will advocate for proper welfare reform because the Minister knows that that is at the heart of the problems.