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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-11-27 Daily Xml
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Universal Children's Day

Ms STINSON (Badcoe) (12:46): I move:

That this house—

(a) acknowledges Universal Children's Day on 20 November 2019;

(b) acknowledges the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted by the UN General Assembly on 20 November 1959;

(c) acknowledges the 30th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted by the UN General Assembly on 20 November 1989; and

(d) affirms its commitment to honouring and enacting the four core principles of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child—namely, non-discrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child.

I might use this opportunity to inform the house of some of the opportunities I have had throughout this year to go and look at child protection models internationally. As you would all know, we obviously fork out our own money in opposition to do these things, and that is important to outline, because certainly when I have spoken with—

Mr Duluk interjecting:

Ms STINSON: Sorry?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Continue, member for Badcoe. There will not be any interjections.

Ms STINSON: Certainly when I have spoken with members of the public about the fact that, as an MP, we sometimes travel overseas to research different matters in our area of responsibility, people sometimes erroneously think that taxpayers money is used for that travel. I just make the point that those of us on this side—and on the other side as well, if that was the point the member was making—do use our own funds to do these things. That is a point I want to make clear for anyone who may be sitting back in their homes watching this broadcast, as I am sure mobs of people are doing right now.

The Hon. J.A.W. Gardner: Hundreds.

Ms STINSON: Hundreds, exactly—I am sure that they are very interested in the work of this house. Much earlier in the year, in January and February, I went over to Jamaica. You may not think that Jamaica is necessarily a place you would go to check out child protection, but I will elaborate on the reasons for that in a moment. I was also very lucky to spend almost a month in the United Kingdom, particularly in Scotland and right across parts of England, which I found very informative. I know the minister also travelled over there this year. I will go over some of these learnings from over there as well.

First, when I went to Jamaica I was fortunate to be hosted by the Salvation Army and other groups, including the child protection agency for the government of Jamaica. I spent 3½ weeks working in a residential care facility run by the Salvation Army, and it was an absolutely fascinating experience. This particular centre was in a more rural area of Jamaica, about two hours out of Kingston, and in an absolutely picturesque location with beautiful rolling hills. This community was in a valley.

Each day, I got to walk to work at the Salvation Army residential care facility and spend time with about 60 children who were growing up there. They ranged in age from little babies—one little baby was only two months old—right through to 16 and 17 year olds. Roughly, there was a gender split of fifty-fifty.

There were some buildings allocated just for the girls and others just for the boys, and there were some communal facilities, including a dining hall and some recreational spaces. There was quite a lot of outdoor space as well, including some sporting facilities. Also on the property is a school, mainly for primary and early education. Up the hill and next door is the local primary school and further down is the high school, so it is particularly well located and it actually has a view over the village itself.

This facility is certainly not run in a way that would be familiar to most people working in child protection in Australia, but there are a huge number of similarities that I observed when I was there, and one is the nature of the reasons why children come into care. Children who were in care in Jamaica were there for much the same reasons as those in Australia: issues of neglect, issues of sexual and physical abuse, abandonment and, probably much more than in Australia, poverty. Poverty is certainly a reason why some children were put into care, though I would have to say that the instances of neglect and abuse were much more predominant in the children who were in this centre.

The things that the children would talk to me about were pretty similar to the things that young people in Australia, South Australia and Adelaide would talk about as well, both in terms of children who are in the care system and in terms of children who are growing up in the safety of their own families. Particularly the teenagers raised relationships with you, and they raised quite a lot about technology and how it was used for the better—for their education and for entertainment.

They also spoke about how technology, particularly social media, was having an impact on them and the exposure of young people to potentially dangerous and certainly adverse material. It was quite concerning to see children come into contact with that kind of material, which was often violent or sexual material. Of course, we know that that happens here in Australia as well. It is a cause of great concern, not just for parents but also for children who are in state-run facilities or NGO-run facilities here.

It really struck me that the kids who are in these facilities a world away in Jamaica are battling the same issues and dealing with the same concepts as children right here in Australia, even though we might think of somewhere like Jamaica as being so different from us. The issues the facility itself was dealing with were also quite similar to ours: not enough funding for what they want to do, trying their best to look after the wellbeing of children and teaching them good behaviours so that all these children could get along.

Obviously, the make-up of the facility was quite different from ours here. Of course, we do not have very large facilities like that one, where there are 60 children all cohabiting. I have to say that that I was impressed with how well it was managed, considering the huge number of children who were there. The other thing that really struck me was the approach to child protection across the Jamaican community.

Jamaica is a very religious society and one in which almost every house is empty on a Sunday because Sunday mornings are for church. Everyone goes to church in Jamaica, in every little rural town and in the capital, Kingston. That is definitely a feature of life. The church is a big feature of life in Jamaica, and maybe that has some influence on the way that they see child protection matters. The approach taken in Jamaica is definitely one of a village approach, if you like. There was a huge emphasis on looking after your neighbour, knowing what your neighbour is up to and taking an interest in the welfare of your neighbour and that includes, of course, their children.

I was really lucky to live with a family the whole time I was over there. The matriarch of that family was a woman in her late 60s who was a former school principal. She was an incredibly kind, generous and giving person. Obviously, she and her family gave up their time to look after me for almost a month. In her home, she had two little children. Initially, I thought those two children were her grandchildren, but it turned out that they were her neighbour's children.

She explained to me that being a good community member she took an interest in what was happening in her street, and when her neighbour's husband left, leaving her with six children to look after alone, it was quite natural that she decided to go next door and see what she could help with, and that included offering to care for two of her neighbour's children.

I found that to be an absolutely remarkable and generous thing to do—to offer to look after someone else's children, who is your neighbour, not your blood relative and you do not owe them anything, and say: 'I will take on your children. I will raise them, I will take them to school, I will help them do their homework, I will feed them, I will bathe them and I will clothe them,' so that these children could grow up in a safe environment but also be close to their siblings and their mother, who would be living right next door. It meant a minimum of disruption for these children but a maximum of care for them. Additional resources, I suppose, could be put towards the other four children who were still living in the home.

As I travelled through Jamaica, I realised that this was not unusual at all. This woman was not doing something that was extraordinary in Jamaican culture. In fact, she was doing something that was really an obligation in that society. There were many people, a lot of grandmothers but also others, who were taking on the responsibility of children, often unrelated, in their community. There is certainly an aspect of that from church teachings that came down through society, but I think it is more than that as well. It is not just a reflection of the church teachings.

The thing that I take from that—that so many people in that community see themselves, as community members, as responsible for bringing up children—is that that perspective is something we can certainly learn from. When we look at how our child protection system is run, there absolutely is a system where people might have genuine concerns about the safety of children, and the idea in our society is that if we report those to an authority, as some people are required to do through mandatory reporting, for example, someone else will take care of it, that the state will look after it and that it is the state's responsibility to intervene and ensure that children are safe and that simply by making a report to an authority our job is done.

We believe that it is someone else's responsibility to make sure that that case is investigated and that it is someone else's responsibility to make sure that resources are found to look after the family. I think what that experience in Jamaica teaches us is that we each have a responsibility to look around our community and see how we can actually help. When I was in the UK, I found that some of those messages from Jamaica were reinforced in some of the ways that the UK was carrying out its practices. I was lucky enough to go to about 15 different council jurisdictions and speak with them about how they roll out their child protection mechanisms. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00.

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