Protect All Children Today (PACT) 2009 Conference
‘Protecting Children Today"
‘From little things, big things grow'
25 March 2009
PACT Chairman, Ms Penny Gordon,
Acting Commissioner, Commission For Children and Young People and Child Guardian, Mr Barry Salmon,
Assistant Commissioner Ross Barnett, representing the Commissioner of Police,
Executive Director, Department of Justice and Attorney General, Ms Megan Giles,
Director of the National Children's and Youth Law Centre, Mr James McDougall,
Distinguished delegates, including the many volunteers present today,
Ladies and Gentlemen.
In the spirit of reconciliation and community harmony that we seek to foster throughout our State, I acknowledge the Jagera and Turrbal peoples, traditional owners of the land on which Brisbane now stands and I thank Uncle Des Sandy, Traditional Elder of the Yuggera People for his wonderful Welcome to Country.
As Governor of Queensland and as Patron of Protect All Children Today (PACT), it is my honour to open the 2009 Protecting Children Today Conference. As Governor, I am especially pleased to welcome to our State delegates from elsewhere in Australia and from across the Tasman. You are here at an exciting time for Queensland, with the State election just held having made history, through the election of a woman as State Premier for the first time ever, not just in Queensland, but in any Australian State. We are also marking this year the 150th anniversary of both the State and of its capital city, Brisbane, and are happy to be able to share this celebration with others, including the Queensland delegates who have traveled here from regions outside the capital. Although this conference has a very full program and promises to be absorbing, I hope there may be some opportunities for delegates, during the three days - or perhaps afterwards, before you have to head home - to see and experience some of the attractions of this very beautiful - and now very cosmopolitan and sophisticated - city. If you can fit in nothing else, at least take a riverside walk or a stroll through the botanic gardens - or better still, a ride on the river - to give you a ‘feel' for the city's distinct character and setting.
Addressing you in my capacity as Patron of PACT, I am delighted to see such a strong attendance at the 2009 conference. PACT has now been operating for 25 years - a significant anniversary; although I note, in its typical low-key, get-on-with-the-job manner, there are no planned major celebrations to mark this quarter of a century milestone. However, as its Patron, I take this opportunity to extend my congratulations to PACT and my thanks to all who have helped its growth, in both size and significance, from a small community-based NGO concerned with child protection, to one which has become a major service provider, a forceful and influential advocate for victims of child abuse and neglect generally, across all areas of government and the community; and a key organisation addressing the needs of children involved with the criminal justice system. The specific work done by PACT and its Child/Young Person Witness Support Program is the largest within Australia and is duplicated in only a few centres worldwide. This is a remarkable record of which you should be very proud.
It is a record which illustrates remarkably well the Conference theme: ‘From Little Things, Big Things Grow". I know that this year you have chosen to focus on three areas: Justice, Proactive Education and Therapeutic Intervention, however I believe it good, at the outset of your discussions, to recall PACT's own growth from ‘little' to ‘big' and to see this as an inspirational backdrop to the many presentations you will hear and the discussions and ideas it is hoped will flow over the coming three days.
The conference program planned for those three days is highly diverse, as is the assembly of delegates and volunteers, experts and specialists. That diversity is, of course, a reflection of the complexity of the issues surrounding child protection and underlines the (increasingly) multidisciplinary nature of the field. The abstracts of the many presentations to be made over the three days, set out in the Conference handbook, cover an extraordinary range of subjects. However, looking at them overall - and reading them thoroughly - as a non-expert I was struck by a strong and remarkably consistent message running through many of the papers. Many of them referred to the multifaceted nature of policy and practice and the need for a cross-professional perspective; but the clearest call of all was for greater cooperation, and collaboration - between agencies, between services, between everyone working in the field. Some spoke in more negative terms than others - alluding to gaps and describing the problems caused by limited collaboration and cooperation between services; others referred, without elaboration, to the importance of coordination and the scope for greater interagency collaboration; and others spoke more forcefully about the need for collaborative partnerships, for better-functioning child protection systems and a need to get people from all areas of child protection working together to achieve better outcomes for children.
I suspect that really means a need to work together BETTER, to achieve better outcomes - because it is also apparent to me, from everything I have read and observed, that a process of active collaboration, of exchanges and cross-fertilisation, between professionals, experts, specialists in different areas involved with child protection, IS already underway and has been for some time.
I have wondered about the impetus for this. Has it been legislative change? At the State, Federal and international level? With practitioners and advocates responding to new regulations and requirements? (I suspect our keynote speaker this morning may offer some insights into this particular question, as he looks at the Convention on the Rights of the Child). Has increased interaction and cooperation emerged more naturally, and become an ongoing process as we have become more knowledgeable - more aware of the complexities and sensitivities surrounding child protection? Is it a measure of growing maturity and sophistication in knowledge and social attitudes which has translated into greater sophistication in the design and provision of services? Is there perhaps a growing ethos of collaboration? Or, are the needs just greater?
In foreign policy and the conduct of international relations, which was my area of focus and expertise for over four decades until seven months ago, (when I resigned from the Australian foreign service to take up the position of Governor of Queensland, returning to my home State), I saw a significant shift some years ago in the conduct of foreign policy and the management of responses to major international challenges. Issues like climate change, global warming, international terrorism, global pandemics - the so-called trans-boundary problems - or "problems without passports" - were so large, so challenging, that they forced governments into the realisation that they were beyond the capacity of any single government to solve by acting alone: that they required simply unprecedented cooperation to address. That led to a flurry of international activity to develop new legal instruments, new conventions, protocols, joint action plans covering a range of subject areas - notably in relation to the environment; but also on health and human rights - and, significantly, led to new approaches and policies on intervention, on humanitarian grounds; as well as a new emphasis on root causes, on prevention and early warning.
You may think this is remote from your conference and areas of specialisation and interest - but I do see parallels: think about the needs, the size of the problem; think about the complexity of the issues with which you are dealing - whether as police, social workers, magistrates, counselors, teachers, psychologists, volunteers, health workers; think about the intense debates over intervention - not just therapeutic but political; and the increased emphasis on early childhood protection approaches and preventative programs. Although you are working at the State and national level - and not internationally - here, surely, are the same elements, requiring if not demanding new forms and levels of cooperation and collaboration for the challenges to be addressed - and addressed effectively?
I know that one of the stated purposes of this conference - as it is for most conferences - is to network. For this particular conference, I suggest, the word - and the goal - has very special meaning - and the opportunity of networking available to you here has greater importance than usual. My message to you, as you listen to the presentations, move between sessions and mingle with fellow delegates, is that you should discard the more gentle - "isn't-it-nice- to-be-together-with-colleagues-and-people-working-in-similar fields" idea of networking - and give it a harder, more purposeful edge; reflect on this issue of collaboration and cooperation and think of where and how you - in what you do - could take action to work more closely and effectively with others in the sector or system, to achieve better outcomes in your own work and ultimately for the children you have made it your mission to protect.
Because, of course, whatever your focus or your field of specialisation, that is the core goal - the one clear purpose that brings you together at this PACT conference - to protect children.
The last people who need to be convinced of the importance of this is all of you. I have studied the list of participants, read the biographies of many of the speakers - glimpsed in the printed word and descriptions of what for many of you has been a lifetime's work, the passion and commitment so many of you feel about protecting the most vulnerable members of our community. People like Barry Salmon, the Acting Commissioner for Children and Young People and Child Guardian, and the sponsor of this Session, whose brief biography concluded: "Working to make a positive difference to the lives of Queensland children is the single driving force that inspires Barry's work at the Commission". People like Rex Wild QC, who introduced the first Aboriginal Witness and Victim Support Coordinator positions in Alice Springs and Darwin and instigated compulsory cross-cultural training for all staff in his office when Director of Public Prosecutions in the Northern Territory and who co-chaired the Inquiry which produced the "Little Children are Sacred" Report. People like Barry Walton and others running the "Moving On" Project, working with former residents of children's institutions. People like Stephen Stathis and Ivan Doolan, dealing with adolescents incarcerated in youth detention centres, concerned that they rank among the most disadvantaged in the community and share a number of vulnerabilities. People like Jan Connors working in the Child Protection Unit at the Mater Children's Hospital or Judy Fox, in the Family and Youth Counseling Service in the same location and Gill Palmer, of the Youth Education Service of the New Zealand police, implementing child protection programmes not only in primary and secondary schools, but now in early childhood centres.
I've picked out only a handful from the 200 attendees of this conference: I know there are many others working in the field who are not able to be here - hundreds of people, committed to protecting our children and young people - dealing with immense challenges. For those that are here, your commitment and your effort is something that everyone in our community should admire and be very grateful for. I certainly am - and, speaking as I am able to do as Governor, on behalf of the people of Queensland, I thank you for what you do: for what you have done - and for what you may do in the future.
Nelson Mandela once said: "There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul, then the way it treats its children".
Believing this to be true - even while acknowledging the immensity and complex nature of the challenges our society, our communities face in this area - it is also immensely reassuring to see so many members of society determined to stand up for the vulnerable, resolved to ensure that our children are well treated, to protect them from risk and where harm and abuse have occurred, to do everything possible to redress those wrongs and deal with the consequences, to mend the damaged, to restore and to heal.
The title of this Conference - "From Little Things, Big Things Grow" - is borrowed from the song of the same name, by Australian balladeers Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody. While the song is actually about the Gurindji people and their eight year struggle for recognition and land rights in the Northern Territory, it is also a story about advocacy, about a man who stood up for the rights of his people - who showed patience and determination to achieve results. In standing up for young people at risk as you do, you, too, will need patience and determination, but when the going gets tough, I'd like you to consider the words of this ballad. To think of the man who, as "daily the pressure got tighter and tighter", simply persisted, who "went round softly speaking his story to all kinds of men from all walks of life" and who counseled his people when they were discouraged, to "let the stars keep on turning" ... until he succeeded - not for himself, but for a greater good - the sort of greater good to which I know you are all committed, working to protect our children and young people.
I wish you excellent discussions and it is now my pleasure to declare open this 2009 Conference ‘Protecting Children Today".