Child Protection

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (15:18): My question again is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. When will automated call-back features be in place for the CARL line as per recommendation 35, which was accepted by the royal commission, given that these were available to the government for several years?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (15:18): We are in the process of finalising being able to do that. We have accepted the recommendation. We will do that as a lengthy substantial trial. The considerations that we are working through at present are, essentially, legal in nature. Mandatory reporters are required by law to make a notification, and we need to confirm whether the obligation has been discharged simply by leaving a number on a callback or whether there remains an obligation on the notifier, should they not hear back from the service, to reinitiate.

We also need to make sure in more practical terms—and this is the reason for a trial—whether in fact it does lessen the workload for the staff and whether it does lessen the wait times and fulfil the expectations of the notifiers. So, we are working through some of those details—in particular, that question around discharge of obligation legally—and we will then introduce the trial.