From: <info@pm.gov.au>
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Date: Fri, 19 Jul 2002 14:43:33 +1000
Subject: Prime Minister : speech
To: tpibob@austarnet.com.au
Message-Id: <20020719050604.DAD3DF3F9@agate.sge.net>

 

19 May 2002

 

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP
ADDRESS TO THE AUSTRALIAN RESEARCH ALLIANCE FOR





CHILDREN AND YOUTH, WESTERN AUSTRALIA







	Subjects: 





E&OE厖厖厖厖厖厖厖厖厖厖厖厖厖厖厖厖


Well thank you very much Michael, Professor Stanley, Mr Kevin Campbell, Julie Bishop the Federal Member for Curtin, my other parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen and children.

As you might expect over the years Prime Ministers have a lot of presentations, that is pieces of advocacy presented to them arguing a case or putting a proposition.  I guess in the six and a half years that I've been Prime Minister I've had hundreds of presentations made to me, some of them have been particularly memorable, others, and no disrespect meant, not so memorable.  I have to say that one of the most memorable I had presented to me was in fact presented by Professor Stanley when she put forward some views about early childhood intervention and most particularly the linkages between health, family relationships, schooling, developing anti-social tendencies, and ultimately of course criminal behaviour.  When you think about it, and when I thought about it afterwards, it seemed the most natural thing in the world that there would be such linkages.  But sometimes you need somebody who has a touch and a feel for those sorts of things to really focus your attention on it. !
 And this presentation that Fiona Stanley made to a regular meeting of the Prime Minister's Science Council, which I chair on a regular basis, and as somebody who had a relative unscientific upbringing, and there'd be a lot of people who from time to time would readily concur with that, I found it an absolutely gripping and certainly a very convincing presentation.  And it started me and other members of my Government thinking about ways in which we might in collaboration with other governments and with companies, with talented researchers and dedicated people in this sector, see if we couldn't find some additional solutions and adopt some additional policies which might assist in a comprehensive way to address these problems.  

And I know that this alliance has that kind of objective very much in its sights.  I know of the formidable reputation of the institute, of the tremendous work that it's done and it is an organisation which has rightly attracted not only a great deal of financial and other help here in the city of Perth and within in the Western Australian community, but also very importantly on a national basis.

It's very important that the hubs of excellence in research, particularly in the area of medical science and the behaviour of the young, that those hubs of excellence be spread around the country and they not be concentrated just in one part of Australia but indeed spread around the country.  And I'm sure I'm not overstating it to say that in this particular area of research and this particular discipline there is no institute and there's no part of Australia that enjoys a greater reputation than does this institute here in the city of Perth.

What is encouraging to me about the alliance which I'm launching is that it is a collaboration.  We have provided financial assistance, corporations have provided financial assistance, the state government, its agencies, the lotteries commission and others have provided financial assistance. And importantly it will draw on the talents of dedicated researchers of this institute.  I've met some of them this morning and have been told in the brief period of time that's inevitably available on these visits of the great work that has been done, particularly but of course not only in relation to the health challenges of indigenous children.

I'm very very committed to providing what support within all the competing demands that government has made upon it for the work of this alliance and of course over the years in research capacity a great deal of federal money has been provided for the institute.  We now have a specific Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Larry Anthony, who's working to develop a comprehensive Commonwealth programme for early childhood development.  And the Government is focusing very much on the sorts of things that Professor Stanley raised in that presentation some two years ago for the development of a comprehensive inter-governmental and indeed community response to early childhood challenges.  The need, as I found a reminder of this morning when a met a young girl who participated in the Raine study going back over a period, a number of them are here today, going back over a period of just under 11 years.  And it's a reminder to somebody such as myself of the requirement for patient r!
egular painstaking research.  And unless you do that you don't really have the database, you don't really have the factual information on which clinical judgements can be made and very importantly the factual data on which policy decisions can be made by governments.

One of the things you find in government is that no amount of good will is enough, no amount of good policy direction is enough, unless you have accurate information at your disposal. And the use of taxpayer resources to achieve particular goals can be very frustrating if in fact the database on which those policies are based and the objectives are pursued are inadequate, or worse inaccurate.

And that of course brings us to the research alliance that I'm very pleased to launch today, because what it will do is to provide that information, it will augment the effort of people who are trying in their different ways around the country to assist young people and children who need assistance, to promote policies of early intervention for families and children who are at risk and to follow their experience and their patterns through life.  We are a keen supporter of the alliance, the Federal Government, we've committed $600,000 in establishment funds for the alliance over the next 18 months.  I applaud those corporations and those agencies of the Western Australian Government that have been involved in it and I'm delighted to launch the alliance, I can assure you that I will follow it with great interest. I think it's working in an area which is of enormous national importance to all Australians.  I wish it well, and it will continue to have the good will and the practic!
al support of the Commonwealth Government.

[ends]






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