Dyson Ruth: Children Young Persons and Their Families Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
Dyson Ruth: Children Young Persons and Their Families Amendment Bill (No 4) — First Reading 
[Volume:618;Page:14445] 
Hon RUTH DYSON (Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment (CYF)) 
: 
 It is a real pleasure for me to speak during the first reading of the Children Young Persons and Their Families Amendment Bill (No 4). As the Hon Steve Maharey said in his opening remarks this bill improves the operation of the care and protection systems and the youth justice systems by amending the Children Young Persons and Their Families Act of 1989. It contains measures to ensure that the operation of our youth justice system is more efficient and more effective. Its primary focus is to ensure that the aim of the legislation and the policies that underlie it are focused on reducing reoffending and that is its overall theme—looking at the interventions that are offered the programmes that are offered and the services that are delivered to young people who are within the youth justice system. That focus on reducing reoffending is fundamental to the principles of this bill. 
This legislation that we are considering tonight is a direct response to the findings of the Ministerial Task Force on Youth Offending and despite the ignorance of the previous speaker implements all the key findings of that task force—the ones that are required in legislation. A number of the issues that were referred to by the previous speaker are not required to be implemented by legislation but one can see from the results of the Residential Services Strategy and from the range of programmes that the Department of Child Youth and Family Services is developing in the youth justice area that that task force has made a significant contribution to this work. The task force found that overall the youth justice - related legislation was sound so we did have a fundamentally sound basis on which to build; the key improvements that were needed were in sector coordination information gathering and operational practice. 
The bill also recognises the central role of victims and victim reparation in response to offending. That is a critical and important focus that I am sure will be welcomed by not only members of this House but the wider public. It allows the victim to attend the relevant Youth Court hearing without the leave of the court and amends the provisions relating to Youth Court reparation. It empowers the police to make young people comply with bail conditions without the police having first to make an arrest which has long been a source of frustration for the police. They can now become much better engaged with the young person and can ensure that the young person complies with his or her bail conditions without their having to go through a formal arrest process. 
It also improves the operation of the family group conferences. Family group conferences are regarded internationally as being a leadership model in terms of ways of dealing with people in the youth justice system. The bill provides additional discretion for family group conferences to be waived. If a family group conference has just been held and there has not been time to implement all the recommendations there seems very little purpose in having another conference to duplicate a previous process so we now have a legislative trigger for that waiving to occur. The bill also provides discretion so that certain relatives or caregivers can be excluded from a family group conference because their presence might endanger the safety of the young person and disrupt the conference. For sensible operation of the family group conference that legislative provision is welcomed. And the bill clarifies the role of care and protection resource panels. 
I know that the select committee will enjoy the wider debate that will be enabled by this legislation. It does improve both the care and protection provisions and the youth justice provisions of what is a fundamentally sound Act. In my view the bill is excellent legislation. I commend its progress to the select committee.