Mr. Damien Peelo:

It is a bespoke payment for kinship care. As we said, it is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. When we are trying to use the guardian's payment to address kinship care, it is not an adequate payment. We do not even have different payments for under-12s and over-12s. We know the cost increases for an over-12 and the extra costs that go with that. All these things we are talking about involve the lack of support for kinship care. It is only because we do not use the term enough.

We do not even know the extent of the problem that we have.

I will also speak on Senator Ruane's point on the family and the siblings' right to engage. Yesterday, on kinship care day, we heard the heartbreaking testimony of a grandmother who had the resources to take only one of her grandchildren into her care. What a choice to have to make. She was heartbroken speaking about it. There were many issues involved, including that the payment was not enough to support both children. She has all of the issues that Ms Murray just spoke about, including the lack of support for housing, the lack of mental health supports, the needs of her child and the extra needs of the grandchildren, and the needs of her daughter in addiction. All of these are very important. The goal should be to support a family to remain together with supports and pathways to do this. If this is not possible, the next choice is kinship care and how we support this, how we keep families together and how we keep the connection. We have learned that the adverse effects on a child go right into adulthood. We hear adults talk about being disconnected from their siblings, and there are cases regarding institutional care where adults speak about the impact of being separated from their siblings. We are not dealing with this now, and now is a chance to ask how we do it and how we support kinship care.