Sophie Mirabella speech: Child Sexual Abuse

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth) Link to this | Hansard source

I rise with a heavy heart this evening to talk about an issue that deeply cuts into community, destroys families and destroys lives. I am speaking this evening about child sexual abuse. It is not a palatable issue. It is not something that people like to speak about, because it is one of those very distasteful, awful and disturbing issues. Sometimes those who try to raise these issues receive all sorts of criticisms. I was moved to again think deeply about this issue after the sentence brought down in the case of the DPP v LW, on 15 June 2009 in the criminal division of the Supreme Court in Victoria. In this case, a mother was sentenced to six years imprisonment because she was found guilty of incitement to murder her stepfather. Her stepfather had been charged with an offence after a complaint was made to police. He had sexually assaulted the woman’s 12-year-old daughter. I thought to myself that it would be very interesting to find out what sort of punishment the stepfather received and, although I cannot be 100 per cent sure, I have received advice that his sentence was far more lenient. So this woman’s stepfather molested her daughter and he received a lenient sentence, while she received a far less lenient sentence after she was found guilty of incitement to murder the man who committed this heinous crime against her daughter.

Over the last few days, I have said to people, ‘What would you do if you found A, B, or C had interfered with your child?’ The instinctive reaction of a parent is not only to protect their child but to punish someone who could be so sick, be so antisocial and break all the rules as we know them in a civil society and impinge on the freedom and the innocence of childhood. The instinctive reaction of parents is to say, ‘I’d want to destroy the bastard; I’d want to kill the bastard.’ That is the instinctive reaction and that is natural.

What we are seeing here—and I am not advocating that we should go out and fulfil our instinctive urges—is a disconnect between the community sentiment of disgust and the anger that we feel for the perpetrator when a child is abused, and what the law actually does and what sentencing achieves. Perhaps what we need are greater, more severe penalties for child abusers, because it is not just the dollars and cents, the estimated $4 billion a year which child abuse costs; it is the human tragedy. We see disturbed adults who were abused as children. They have suicidal, antisocial behaviour and a greater incidence of substance abuse and eating disorders. They have issues with trust and intimacy and they are at risk of revictimisation, with the risk of sexual violence in adulthood for women who were abused at 54 per cent, versus 26 per cent for women who were not. There are real issues here.

As a community we need to demand of our legislators in relevant jurisdictions that they amend laws to reflect the due punishment for people who perpetrate such crimes because there are too many of them out in the community and walking the streets, perpetrators who get away with so much to satisfy their perverse desires and leave behind a string of damaged and bruised children and families. We must do better. We must serve our community and the children of Australia much better than we are currently. The beginning is to start talking about this more and more, not to be embarrassed, because it is a real problem, and not to be ashamed to say that these abhorrent people deserve greater punishment.

Mirabella’s adviser resigns after bad behavior

Written by JEFF ZEUSCHNER. Source: Wangaratta Chronicle

AN employee of Sophie Mirabella (MHR, Indi) resigned yesterday after admitting to behaving inappropriately at a glamorous ball attended by the Prime Minister on Wednesday night.

Several women complained about how Anthony Scrinis, appointed last month as media adviser to Wangaratta’s federal member, had behaved towards them at one of Canberra’s most prestigious annual events.

Mrs Mirabella, the opposition spokeswoman for early childhood education, childcare, women and youth, was unavailable when Wangaratta Chronicle phoned her Canberra office last night.

But a staff member read a statement from Mrs Mirabella, which said: "The probationary staff member has apologised and acknowledged that his behavior was inappropriate, though he disputes some of the allegations being made. He has voluntarily tendered his resignation, which I have accepted."

The staff confirmed Mr Scrinis was still on the first month of a mandatory three month probationary period, and said he was not an adviser on women matters.

"We have two working mothers who advise her on relevant issues," the staff member said.

Greg's Comment: Take a look at the Anthony Scrinis website. It might help you get a better understanding of the man

Sykes: Local gap year students ‘dudded’ by Labor

Source: (State MP for Benalla) Bill Sykes Media Release

Over 100 students in the Benalla electorate, currently in their university gap year, will be forced to reconsider whether they can afford to take up their deferred tertiary place in 2010 because of the Labor Government’s ill-conceived changes to Youth Allowance, Nationals Member for Benalla Bill Sykes said today.

“The Labor Government simply does not understand the ramifications of their proposed changes to the independent Youth Allowance,” Dr Sykes said. “By making the changes retrospective, students who in good faith at the end of their 2008 VCE year made the decision to defer an offered tertiary place in order to qualify for Youth Allowance have now been caught short.

Dr Sykes said almost all those country students who deferred their studies for a year did so to become eligible for Youth Allowance.

“This is the most important issue to hit rural Victoria for years and the On Track figures released reveal the full impact of the Youth Allowance changes,” Dr Sykes said.

The On Track report, prepared by the Australian Council for Educational Research, showed that the rate of deferral in country areas was twice that of Melbourne students. The report also showed a lower uptake of tertiary study by rural students.

“It shows, for example, that 84 per cent of the 64 students from Benalla College were offered a university or TAFE place and that 37 per cent deferred. That’s 24 young people from just one school who have been hit by the change. By comparison, in a Melbourne school of comparative size VCE numbers 93 per cent of the 62 students were offered a university or TAFE place and only 6 per cent deferred.

“In spite of a high percentage of offers 18 per cent of students were actually university enrolled.

“Of the 49 students from FCJ College 94 per cent were offered a university or TAFE place and 50 per cent deferred. That’s another 24 students from Benalla who have been hit by the change. While FCJ College however had no students looking for work 23 per cent of students were enrolled at university.”

While the statewide deferral rate was more than 12 per cent, many regional schools had rates in the high 20s and even into the 30 per cent range with one school at 50 per cent.”

Dr Sykes said that if the Federal Government does not scrap its Youth Allowance changes next year’s On Track figures will show an alarming decrease in the uptake of tertiary places by country students because without Youth Allowance higher education is not possible.

The Federal Government argued in Parliament this week that changes to Youth Allowance involve more than a single issue and were designed to weed out those twisting the rules to get the money.

“In arguing that case,” Dr Sykes said, “they again missed the point, and that is that Electorate Offices, state wide, are not being contacted by people who know they should not get Youth Allowance but by people who are halfway through their gap year and are now not eligible.”

Earlier this month Dr Sykes direct mailed a petition against the changes to Youth Allowance to over 800 young people in the Benalla Electorate with many more distributed to homes and schools. He has since made three presentations of signed petitions in Parliament.

“I will present more petitions when Parliament resumes next week and call on people to return all signed petitions to my office as soon as possible,” he said. “At both State and Federal levels, the fight against these changes has been led by Nationals MPs and we will maintain the pressure to have these controversial changes scrapped.”

Sophie Mirabella Parlimentary speech: (Education)

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth) Link to this | Hansard source

I have some questions for the Minister for Education. In a ministerial statement on education, employment and workplace relations, on page 24 of the budget paper of 12 May, she announced, regarding phase 2:

The remaining up to 222 early learning and care centres will be considered when the child care market is settled and based on the experience of the priority centres.

There has been a considerable departure from the advice provided previously in this statement and in the fact sheet on the department website that states:

… the remaining up to 222 ELCCs would be established progressively by the end of 2014 and delivered as part of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) National Partnership arrangements.

My questions to the minister are as follows: (1) now that it appears that the commitment has been shelved indefinitely, can you outline exactly what criteria will be used to determine when the childcare market is settled; (2) if an assessment of how the first 38 centres are operating will form part of the decision on whether to proceed with the other 222 centres, does that mean that a decision will not be made until all 38 are operational? Presumably that will be well after 2011 and, therefore, long after the next election. The minister has created an out by saying that the 222 centres are contingent on the experience of the first 38 centres, hasn’t she? But she is not listening. This was not a caveat in Mr Rudd’s much publicised election promise to build 260 new centres to end the dreaded double drop-off, was it? She is still not listening.

Regarding the work done on the government’s paid parental leave to date, did the government pay any external consultants to work on the response to the Productivity Commission’s report which was released with the budget. If yes, who were they and how much were they paid? If not, which department did the policy work and prepared the 29-page booklet, Australia’s paid parental leave scheme which was released on budget night? Of the $2.35 million budgeted for communication and evaluation expenses for the coming financial year, exactly how will that be spent given the scheme will not even be coming into effect until halfway through the following financial year?

According to the FaHCSIA budget statement, it will be this department which administers the program. Has a special group or task force been assembled to manage the introduction of paid parental leave? If so, how many people are currently employed in that capacity and what number is that expected to grow to over the coming years? What role will FaHCSIA play in the implementation of the scheme, given that businesses will be paymasters? Is it expected that Centrelink or another body would administer the scheme? In other words, whom would businesses have to deal with in order to ensure that they received the advance payments so that they could pay their employees?

On what modelling was the costing of the scheme based—was it the Productivity Commission’s or another body’s? On page 9 of the budget night booklet on paid parental leave it clearly states that an estimated 148,000 parents would be eligible for the PPL payments each year and it also says that they will on average be around $2,000 better off under the current arrangements. Taking into account tax payable and changes in family payments et cetera, is that correct? Without even taking into account the cost of administering the scheme, that would mean a net cost of $269 million a year. How does this equate with the claim on page 1 that the scheme would cost a total $721 million over five years, which is an average of $146 million a year. Even taking into account that the scheme will not start until mid-2011 does not that equal at least $1.036 billion not $721 million? While I understand there is a complex mixture of family payments affected, it is quite clear that either the figure of $721 million is incorrect or the claim that families will be better off by an average of $2,000 is incorrect.

Even the government has said that 14 per cent of working families would be worse off under this scheme and will have the option to remain under the current scheme. Isn’t that correct? What are the factors that determine whether a family will be worse off? Part of it is timing, isn’t it? Women who take their paid parental leave in the last 18 weeks of the financial year are likely to lose more in tax and family payments than women who take it at the beginning, especially if they intend to take the full 12-months maternity leave as most women do. What consideration has been given to the impact on maternity services if women time their pregnancies for the beginning of the financial year to maximise their benefit? Has any research been conducted on how our hospital system would cope? Of those 14 per cent of working women who would be worse off taking paid parental leave, exactly how will they determine whether they want to take parental leave or not? How accurately will they be able to determine their entitlement and by what method?

Will the $150,000 threshold be indexed? The $150,000 threshold applies to the primary carer’s income not to the family income—is that correct—could you please confirm? A woman who earns a tidy $140,000 and whose partner is a multimillionaire would be eligible for paid parental leave but a family couple who each earn around $78,000 are not eligible for the baby bonus—is that correct? The fact is that only around 127,000 families in any given year would receive the paid parental leave and the other 154,000 would not receive any additional benefit. So the majority of new mothers would not benefit from this new scheme—is that correct?

I would like to clarify another point. On what modelling was the assumption made that this scheme would result in an increase of average leave taken by women after childbirth by around 10 weeks? Aren’t the objectives of increasing workforce participation between pregnancies and at the same time increasing the length of time spent by women caring for their children when they are very young almost mutually exclusive? Is the message really that only the first 18 weeks are important or that six months, the figure referred to in the government booklet, is the right amount of time? Isn’t it a fact, according to the Productivity Commission’s own report, that at least 83 per cent of Australian women already stay at home with their babies for the first six months? Is the message from the government to these 83 per cent of women that they ought to be heading back to the workforce after just six months? In examining this particular scheme has the government given any consideration to the social capital of those women who do not choose to take time out of the paid workforce for a period? What signal does the government send to women who are often the mainstays of our schools, community groups and sporting clubs that their efforts are important to the nation?

What's on around Wangaratta - 12 June 2009

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