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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-06-18 Daily Xml
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JULIA FARR SERVICES

The Hon. S.G. WADE (14:29): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for State/Local Government Relations, representing the Minister for Disability, a question relating to Julia Farr Services.

Leave granted.

The Hon. S.G. WADE: On 25 July 2007 this council passed legislation to facilitate the government's dissolution of Julia Farr Services. The council did so only after inserting an amendment requiring annual reporting of the support to clients of the service. Under section 9 of the Julia Farr Services Trust Act 2007, the administrative unit of the Public Service which is primarily responsible for assisting a minister in relation to the provision of disability services in this state must include in its annual report for each financial year a statement that sets out, insofar as is reasonably possible, specified information in relation to persons who are residents of the Fullarton campus as at 30 June 2007. In the committee stage, minister Holloway said:

The shadow minister in another place asked that the minister give an assurance that the heritage residence, those who were living at the Fullarton campus before November 2003, will be guaranteed a place there indefinitely...The government repeats its assurance that those residents will be able to live at the Fullarton campus for as long as they wish. I am informed that the Department for Families and Communities annual report will include information on those heritage residents, as well as the numbers of people living in the community.

However, in breach of section 9 and the assurances of minister Holloway, the 2007-08 annual report of the Department for Families and Communities, the administrative unit serving the Minister for Disability Services, does not include the required information on heritage clients. My questions are:

1. Why did the government ignore its statutory reporting obligations under the Julia Farr Services (Trust) Act?

2. Will the minister undertake to ensure that the information required under section 9 is tabled at the upcoming estimates committees?

3. In the meantime, does the government stand by its guarantee to heritage clients of Julia Farr Services?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for State/Local Government Relations, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Consumer Affairs, Minister for Government Enterprises, Minister Assisting the Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Energy) (14:31): I thank the honourable member for his important questions, which I will refer to the Minister for Disability in another place. At this point, I remind honourable members—and I am sure they would appreciate being reminded—of the really important and extremely valuable reform work that this government has done in disability services, particularly around Julia Farr Centre.

The former government did not care and took its hands off the wheel and allowed these institutions to grow, and large numbers of particularly young people were put into this institution, with very little regard for the long-term future of often very young people who had the potential to live for many years in these institutions.

This government did a great deal of work to pull down those walls of institutionalisation and undertook a system whereby we identified those clients who were able to be transitioned. Some of those clients took quite a period to be rehabilitated and transitioned into a more home-like community setting. A great deal of work went into this slow process of identifying and transitioning hundreds of these particularly young people, although some were older, into far greater quality care settings, with a far more home-like environment, which had a significant impact on improving the quality of life for these people.

I think we should be reminded of that important work. Clearly, there are many issues surrounding this group of clients, who obviously have a great number of needs, and a great deal of ongoing work needs to be undertaken. Nevertheless, I believe that some of the things we have achieved around Julia Farr and that group of care needs are most important.

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