Child Protection Department

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:33): Thank you. Can the minister explain to the house why she put her name to the press release put out on 21 June which promised that the new department will be established by 5 August this year?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (14:33): We have already established that that phrase is not in the press release. I have only had the benefit of hearing the Acting Premier's recitation of the sentence, or your recitation of the sentence, leader. The reason Margaret Nyland gave us this advice in advance of her final report—roughly, a month in advance—was that it would take us a while to do this.

One of the things we had to do immediately was start the search for a chief executive. While, in different configurations of machinery of government, organisational decisions can work for different reasons, what is most exciting about having a stand-alone agency is that we get a chief executive. We get someone at chief executive level who will come in and lead this organisation.

An absolute priority for us, having understood that we would be creating a separate agency, was to start the search, and I am pleased that we have not only completed it but that we have a start date that is earlier than I thought might be possible, given the seniority of the people we were approaching as part of the recruitment process. I will leave it at that.