Forum on Child and Youth Mortality

Thursday 14 November 2002

I note in the notes I'm meant to also tell you at some stage what the proposed outcome is meant to be. It is my devout hope that at the end of this process we will have more idea of what kills our kids and how to stop it.

The late, great Laurie O'Reilly was a very good friend of mine. He was a good enough friend that I'm sure he will not mind me pointing out that he could also be very, very forceful.

Wherever you are supervising from now Laurie, let me point out that there is not much better evidence of how bossy you could be than today when you get another of your wishes acted on.

In fact it is probably fitting that I go the whole hog and quote what Laurie said about youth and child mortality when he was Commissioner for Children. He said: "I have promoted the concept of a comprehensive mortality review system. The purpose of such a system would be to provide a description of what happened, to explore why the death occurred, to learn from the events and to effect change in policy, practice and service. The collection and collation of pertinent information would allow authoritative reports to be prepared which could guide future government actions and the more effective targeting of government funds".

He then went on to say: "I stress the key outcome would be the development of prevention and education strategies. At the moment everyone has a piece of the jigsaw, but no one has a comprehensive view. Our approach to health and protection must be holistic. We need to see the events in the broader environmental context, or examination must include socio-economic and environmental factors.''

There you are. Laurie O'Reilly again gets to have the last word.