Child Protection

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:41): Supplementary: can the Attorney-General clarify to the house the government's feelings towards the specific recommendation in the report regarding the secure therapeutic care facility, as recommended in this royal commission report and also in commissioner Mullighan's report?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (14:41): I am glad to discuss this. It is an extremely complex decision to make, to create a secure facility where you are essentially locking up a child who hasn't done anything wrong. It is not like putting them in a juvenile justice institution; it is about containing them because of concerns about their own safety.

I realise it was a recommendation that has been made in a previous royal commission. With the reaction, particularly led by the then guardian, the government decided not to pursue that. Her sense was that it was too dangerous for the welfare of the kids involved and she was very firmly against that recommendation. As with all of the other recommendations that we have not yet accepted, we are currently in a process of consulting with the community on those recommendations, and in particular those advocates for children under the care and protection of the minister.

I will be interested to see whether they feel that the safeguards that sit around that facility will be sufficient. If you read the Nyland report carefully, in the body of the report she does acknowledge the reasons for this being a difficult recommendation to come to terms with. I have an open mind about it. I have come across a couple of cases where I have felt that it might have been useful to have such a facility, but I can see why the guardian was concerned about it previously. We will allow this process of consultation to run its course.