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Transcript - Media Conference - AMA Summit on Child Abuse, Canberra

E & OE - PROOF ONLY

RICE:       And interesting morning.  Perhaps I could start by saying I was asked the question yesterday, why would the AMA become involved child abuse?  And I responded by saying that it's very clear that this is a major public health issue in this country.

We were given data this morning that showed that there'd been in excess of 40,000 substantiated cases of child abuse in the 12 months ending 2003.  And it's gone up by about 20% a year.

Now, if we had an increase in the incidence of tuberculosis in this country of the same number and the same rate, there'd be a national outcry.  If we had - you can pick any number of diseases where, if the incidence went up 20% a year the public would be up in arms, demanding that something be done about it.

Yet somehow we seem to ignore the fact that there are this number of children in our community being exposed to abuse.  And it's not just physical, sexual abuse, it's neglect, it's emotional abuse.  And we were told this morning that maybe you'd like to ask Graham Vimpani about the effects of this sort of abuse on the subsequent health and wellbeing of the abused individual.  Graham's talk is entitled 'Child Abuse is not just a Children's Issue.'

So we really do have to look at it from a public health issue.  We were given data this morning, and it's all well known, well known in the community, it should be well known to government, it's certainly known to government agencies, the predisposing factors to child abuse.  Family breakdown, substance abuse, alcohol, etcetera, poor social circumstances, the data is all in.  It does not need any more studies to tell us, what we do need is action.

And what this meeting today is trying to put together is an action plan.

Louise Newman talked to us this morning about children's rights, and illustrated that by some issues that are very real to this country and that is how we treat children in detention, and what may happen to them in the future.

We all know that unhappily the incidence of abuse is a problem in our Indigenous families.  As Muriel Cadd talked to us this morning and made a series of reform proposals of what needs to be done to address the problem of child abuse in the Indigenous community.  And so you might like to address your questions to her on this regard.

Terry Donald, this afternoon will be talking about how we really need to determine the level of harm.  And finally the other speaker from this morning - and I missed much of what she said unfortunately, I had to rush up with the white face to appear before the cameras up on the hill.  But Sandy de Wolf, from Families Australia, was talking about the important role of families, and what we need to do to help them.

So it's been a wide-ranging set of discussions this morning, and this afternoon we hope this will lead on to formulating a set of approaches that we would not ...

Look, thanks very much indeed.  Thanks for your time.

Ends

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