E&OE................................................................................................
Well thank you very much Captain Eldridge, to the Reverend Dr Bill
Lawton, to my ministerial colleagues, the leaders of many community
and welfare organisations here today, members of the taskforce, ladies
and gentleman.
I start by expressing my gratitude to David Eldridge and to the members
of the taskforce for delivering the report that I launched today.
This exercise grew out of a commitment I made in a speech I delivered
to ACOSS late in 1995 as Opposition Leader, to try and examine against
the background of concern being expressed by some in the community
that the processes relating to youth homelessness were not sufficiently
involving the families of young people who left home or were wanting
to leave home. I didn't approach it with too many preconceived
notions, I suppose all of us wherever we come from have preconceived
notions and it's a bit idle to pretend otherwise.
But I thought it would make a great deal of sense if in Government
we put together a group of men and women from both the community sector
and the Government to have another look at this issue. And indeed
within a couple of weeks of the Government being elected in 1996 I
called together a group of people and the taskforce was established.
And I'm delighted that Captain Eldridge assumed the chairmanship
of that taskforce and I want to personally thank him for the quite
remarkable job that he's done.
This taskforce and its recommendations give expression to part of
the Government's philosophical approach to welfare services and
support to the less advantaged in our community. In the address I
gave once again to ACOSS only a few weeks ago where I tried to set
out some of the pathways of the Government, in a philosophical sense,
towards welfare issues in our second term of Government, I did emphasise
that we saw the Government as having a very important and a very strategic
role, but we also saw a partnership between the Government and community
organisations and individuals as being very much at the core of the
delivery of more efficient and effective welfare services in the closing
years of this century and into the 21st century. One of
the crucial roles for Government I said on that occasion was to foster
a greater sense of individual moral obligation and duty amongst citizens
and to encourage individuals through there own actions and depth of
their conviction to give back to the community that looked after them.
Now this taskforce has completed its work and in launching the report
today I want to pay tribute to the input of both the Government's
dream and also the community's dream. Without in any way suggesting
that they are the only organisations that do magnificent work in the
community sector, I do of course acknowledge on the taskforce representatives
of the Salvation Army, the Society of St Vincent de Paul, the Wesley
Mission, and Anglicare. And those four organisations and many others
of course do absolutely superb work. And the personal side of welfare
in Australia would be quite different, would be much harsher, and
would be far less sensitive were it not for the ceaseless voluntary
work of magnificent organisations such as those four.
It is important, and I think it's appropriate that this report
be released shortly before Christmas because for most of us in the
community Christmas will be an opportunity of family renewal of family
gatherings of celebrating the happiness of family life and all it
means to us, and it means most to most of us. But there will be many
of our fellow Australians who won't have that same happy circumstance
and it's therefore appropriate on the eve of Christmas that we
release this report and hope that it does make some contribution towards
a better resolution of the challenges that face many in our community
who are trying very hard to grapple in very, very difficult situations.
The report is refreshingly nonjudgmental. The report is designed to
help people. It is realistic, it is not starry eyed, it is not ideologically
driven. But it does represent a number of central realities. And that
is there aren't too many people in Australian society who don't
want their family relationships to succeed. And there aren't
too many in our community who don't regard personal relationships
as the most important emotional support they have in their lives.
And if you start with those sorts of building blocks and you recognise
that putting families in the picture, which is the title of the report,
is a pretty sensible and logical starting point then I think you do
get some very sensible outcomes. There's an old saying of course
that prevention is better than cure and in a sense that old saying
has been the driving force to this report because what it's based
on is something that's quite new and that is early intervention.
It's not just a question of providing adequate support services
when families break up, or when young people find it intolerable to
remain at home, and in some cases that is plainly the truth.
Nobody who's had any contact at all with this field deny the
fact that in some cases there is no alternative other than for a young
person to leave home. But equally there are many cases where that
can be avoided. And what is, I think, very encouraging about this
report is that as a result of the pilots it was possible to identify
a number of very very significant things. And one the most important
things that it was possible to identify is that of those families
that were involved in the pilots carried out by the taskforce that
family reconciliation was achieved in around two-thirds of all cases
studied. And the positive outcomes include the return home of the
younger family member, acceptance by both parents that the young person
be afforded an appropriate degree of independence, and the creation
of viable support systems for young people that included a member
of their family. And of those young people who left home prior to
contacting a pilot project close to one third returned home to live
with one or both of their parents. And these were significant achievements
in very difficult personal circumstances and it was found that the
involvement of parents was important to the success of the early intervention
strategy.
I know one is used to the bombardment of statistics and comparisons
but some studies have suggested that in terms of costs and the cost
of picking up the pieces in areas such as this rather than preventing
the breakage in the first instance can be as high as 1,000 times greater
than the successful early intervention. And it is important with something
like this to recognise the personal and the economic. The two are
not mutually exclusive. The idea that you can have an effective welfare
system without a strong economy is, of course, nonsense. But the idea
that a strong economy is an end in itself is also a nonsense. The
purpose of economic policy and the purpose of strong economic policies
is to make a contribution towards building a better society. And a
compassionate caring community is the ultimate goal, surely, for all
of us whatever our economic views may be. We can differ and argue
about what is the best way of getting there but I don't think
we really differ and argue too much about that being the ultimate
goal.
So I want to say how very pleased I am as Prime Minister and how pleased
the Government is that we have seen such a successful working through
of the nation of a greater partnership between the Government, the
welfare agencies and individuals within our community. And in responding
to the work of the taskforce I want to announce forthwith that the
principal recommendation of the taskforce, which is a continuation
of the early intervention strategies, will be immediately supported
by the Government. And that we'll commit $60 million over the
next four years to July 2003 and this will provide 100 services of
the type piloted across the country where the programme will be fully
operational. And I am told that this will enable assistance to be
provided to around 12,000 cases a year involving some 7,000 young
people and 5,000 parents.
Now, the purpose of that support is to demonstrate the immediately
positive and supportive response of the Government to what has been
the model established by the work of this taskforce. We think it is
breaking new ground, we think it is breaking new ground in an extremely
positive way and I want to say to David Eldridge and what he said
about my own personal interest in this is right. I am personally interested
in it because I think it is something that the Government in a sensible,
caring, positive way can contribute drawing on the expertise and the
care and the responsibility of great community organisations. And
we really do, all of us, have to pool our resources.
And the Government has an important role and I take the opportunity
in case anybody would want to use what I have said today to misconstrue
our motives. We are not in the business of shifting to the community
sector our financial responsibility to care for the disadvantaged
in our community. That is the responsibility of government. It is
the responsibility of any government of any political stripe to maintain
a decent social security safety net. That is the Australian way. We
don't believe in allowing the unemployed to starve in the streets.
We might ask the unemployed through the principle of mutual obligation
to engage in work-for-the-dole programmes. We regard that as a reasonable
request of the community that affords comfort, sanctuary and support.
And in engaging the community sector far more as is our philosophy
that is not a way of us withdrawing financial support rather it is
a way of recognising the obvious and that is that the capacity of
the sort of organisations that David Eldridge and others here today
come from to understand and relate to the problem is the superior
than that of any in the community. And that's been a belief that
I have held for a long time. I hold it very strongly and it will underpin
the approach of my Government to welfare issues.
But there is an ongoing role for the Government and that is not diminished
rather it is expanded in cooperation with the role of the organisations
which are examples of which are represented on the taskforce. It is
a very good report. The other recommendations will be studied, they
are in their character ones that require a slightly longer term response.
But our immediate response on the day of the launch of the report
to its principal recommendation I hope will be seen as an earnest
of our determination to continue the excellent work to establish perhaps
in the fullness of time a new paradigm for responding to this issue
not only in Australia but perhaps something of an example to other
countries around the world.
Family life does lie at the heart of the Australian way, it's
important to all of us. A large majority of Australians are fortunate
in their family relationships. A minority, a significant minority,
try very hard to be happy in those relationships and don't always
succeed and some don't try at all. To those who try and don't
succeed they need our support and our compassion and our understanding
and they need our help. To those who don't try at all well perhaps
we should try doubly hard to persuade them of the merits of beginning
to try. But whatever the situation may be the work of this taskforce
will, I believe, make a great contribution. I support it very strongly.
I again thank David and all of the members of the taskforce for their
magnificent work. Thank you.
[ends]