Ms Noeline Blackwell:

I thank the Senator for his question. The main purpose of this is to ensure that we do not spend the first two years of the third national strategy and, indeed, the momentum we have now, through this committee and others, in talking about - I would use the word “faffing” if I could, but it is unparliamentary – and dealing with putting together an agency, and all the energy and legislation that will take. What will be core is that when the third national strategy is announced by the Minister, and before the Senator sees her, that he will be able to see clear direction that Departments are being brought together and that there is oversight and a coherent responsibility for all of the work that is to be done in the future when these are formally combined. An ad hoc system is necessary to effectively say to people that we will bring the legislation in place in due course but in the meantime we need somebody in overall charge and running this. We need to ensure, and I believe it is meant to happen, that there will be implementation of the very urgent work that needs to be done across so many areas of the strategy for the first two years. It may be an agency or a person. We would not presume to tell the Minister how that should happen. Our real fear is that time and energy will go into looking at what it will be like in the future and that people will put off work and say that the agency can deal with that when it comes into place. We need somewhere to put that urgent work now and for it to continue, if that makes sense.