Child Protection

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:12): A supplementary: what action is the government taking to locate this child and the father?

The Hon. J.M. RANKINE (Wright—Minister for Education and Child Development) (14:12): What the department has done was contact Centrelink to request contact details for the father. We received an address in another state and so that is what alerted us to the fact that he was no longer living in South Australia, as I understand. We attempted to contact him via a phone—we had a phone number. That was not successful, so a registered letter was posted to his address. Following no response, we again made numerous attempts on a phone contact—again, with no success. When that was not successful, we did contact the child's mother.

Up until then, what we were trying to do was locate the father and the mother so that they could be told at the same time. Since then, we have been in contact with Medicare and asked them to do a search for the father and daughter's details and another address was provided and another registered letter was sent to the father. So, we have made numerous attempts to contact him and we are continuing to pursue those sorts of avenues.