EDUCATION AND CHILD DEVELOPMENT DEPARTMENT

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg) (14:59): I have a supplementary question, Madam Speaker. Minister, under the restructure, if you are going to provide for all children, why have the children in the children's prisons been excluded from your portfolios and transferred to Mr Hunter?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Minister for State Development) (14:59): This is my responsibility; I was responsible for designing the machinery of government changes. They were allocated to the Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion because that was the appropriate place for them. If the member had listened carefully, rather than interjecting throughout the minister's contribution, she would have realised that what we are creating here is an early childhood development agency. It doesn't seek to do all of the things that affect and have a bearing on children. There are important services that are provided to adults which have a bearing on child development. This will not mean that there aren't important connections that need to be made with other agencies—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —including the Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion. The juvenile justice elements of the former agency of families and communities remain with the Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion.

There is a difficult boundary to be drawn on all of these things because the truth is that all the things we do in government bear on the way in which our children develop, but we have created, we think, a sensible boundary which brings together for the first time in Australia all of these agencies that bear on the healthy development of children. I think it is a very important reform and I have chosen minister Portolesi to take those reforms through and I am very confident that she will succeed in them.

Mr Marshall: Why is she sitting so far back?

The SPEAKER: Order!