"Community Services"
- Details
- Category: Uncategorised
- Created: Wednesday, 15 June 2011 23:30
- Written by Alecomm2
Mr GARETH WARD: My question is addressed to the Minister for Family and Community Services. Will the Minister inform the House on how the Government is working to improve services for families and individuals in need?
Ms PRU GOWARD: I thank the member for Kiama for his question. Improving services for the people of Kiama is what Gareth Ward is all about and that is what this Government was elected to do. I have now had the opportunity to travel to many areas in New South Wales with members like the member for Kiama to hear firsthand from our front-line staff about their ideas for improving services for our most vulnerable children and their families. The member for Kiama and I were able to see firsthand the good work of our front-line staff in housing and we were able to discuss with them what they felt needed to be done after 16 years of Labor failings. The relationship between homelessness and unstable housing and child protection is well recognised. To do better with housing is to do better for those children.
In my first few weeks as Minister I have visited one of the State's busiest Community Service Centres at Campbelltown, together with the member for Campbelltown, Mr Bryan Doyle, and the member for Wollondilly, Mr Jai Rowell, and I have been talking with front-line caseworkers with the member for Oatley, Mr Mark Coure, and themember for Parramatta, Dr Geoff Lee. Every member I have mentioned—like every Liberal and Nationals member—are strong advocates for better services for children. More recently I spent a night with our front-line Crisis Response Team, the member of which deal with the most urgent situations where a child is in danger. I talked with them about their thoughts on improving the service.
Improving services and increasing accountability and transparency drives reform. It means working better and smarter and unleashing the potential of our wonderful front-line workers. They want to do more and they are asking for our assistance to allow them to do more. Reform will be challenging and it will take time. Thanks to Labor's mismanagement, that will be a difficult task, given that we have had 16 years of waste and mismanagement.
The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Canterbury will come to order.
Ms PRU GOWARD: We have to address a huge amount of bureaucratic red tape so that front-line workers can get on with the job and help these children.
The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Canterbury will come to order.
Ms PRU GOWARD: That has not been happening.
The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Mount Druitt will come to order.
Ms PRU GOWARD: I have been working with Minister Constance and our trusted agencies to supercharge our action plans to deliver the core priorities of this Government. Those core priorities include working better with our complex families.
The SPEAKER: Order! I remind the member for Canterbury that she is already on three calls to order.
Ms PRU GOWARD: The core priorities also include putting together an action plan to work with our non-government partners to improve out-of-home care, as well as implementing organisational improvements.
The SPEAKER: Order! I previously placed the member for Canterbury on three calls to order. I direct the Deputy Serjeant-at-Arms to remove the member from the Chamber.
[The member for Canterbury left the Chamber, accompanied by the Deputy Serjeant-at-Arms.]
Ms PRU GOWARD: We are getting on with the job of real reform, not letterhead reform. All Labor did was line up the silos, put a head office on top and called it an integrated agency. It had no ticker for integrating services. It failed to transfer services to the non-government sector because it had no courage to implement the hard reforms recommended in Justice Wood's report, which Labor commissioned. Labor failed to integrate services for needy families. It failed to be accountable and transparent in its performance. It failed to work better and smarter and this State has ended up with the highest rate of child removals of any State in the country.
Following the election Labor is rewriting history, which it does well, pretending that the last 16 years did not exist, that when in government it did not have the same wages policy as ours, that it did not leave a $5.2 billion black, that the paradigms of a century ago still exist and that it is not responsible for the mess it left in Community and Family Services for us to clean up. Labor promoted the chief architect of those failures to the position of Deputy Leader of the Opposition. So long as Labor keeps up those pretences about the last 16 years, its members will remain on that side of the House.
Question time concluded at 3.12 p.m. (Source : http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20110616019?open&refNavID=HA8_1)
