Child Protection

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:18): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. Why hasn't the government fulfilled its promise prior to the election that it would implement all recommendations from the Debelle inquiry by releasing the unedited transcripts of evidence?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (14:18): In relation to the Debelle inquiry, there was, as people might be aware, a two-stage process put in place. If my memory serves me correctly, Mr Debelle said in his report that certain things were not to occur before a certain unnamed event—

Mr Pisoni: And that's all happened. It's all done.

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley is warned a second and last time.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I am just refreshing members' memories at this stage, Mr Speaker. He said that there were some things that would happen before a certain event and some things that should happen after a certain event. Of course, that event, as we all know, was a prosecution and an end to the litigation about that particular matter. That has now occurred, that has been and gone.

The question then is about the other material. It has come to my attention that the other material does contain elements of information which might tend to identify individuals or victims. We need to be very careful because, as you would recall, Mr Speaker, the Debelle inquiry was provoked by incidents around school activities and school-age children. We are very mindful of the fact that identification, for example, of the school or of teachers, or of other people whose names would tend to identify those individuals could be very damaging and distressing for those young people who were adversely affected and were the subject of the inquiries conducted by Mr Debelle.

At this stage, we have made no final determination as to what will be done about the release or otherwise of that material. I actually have given this some thought, and it turns out to me that this question is how much of the valuable time of legal officers should be spent combing through those pages and examining those pages for obvious and then unobvious—and by 'unobvious' I mean just because a legal officer is reading through a page and sees an identification of a street, or the name of an individual, that legal officer doesn't necessarily know that that individual is an actual direct line to a victim and may tend to identify a victim.

It is for that reason that that has not occurred. The only concern that I have about this matter is that there were children involved in this who were victims in this particular circumstance. The only thing that we could do to make their experience of this worse would be to reveal information publicly which would tend to identify them.

The SPEAKER: Supplementary, the deputy leader.