Child Protection

Mr TARZIA (Hartley) (15:28): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. How does the minister reconcile telling the community that child protection is everyone's business and then ignoring 84 per cent of their screening notifications that community members have, in many cases, taken hours of their precious time to report?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (15:28): It is tempting to be critical of the question, but I take it in good faith that it's a genuine concern about the way in which our child protection system operates. One of the challenges is the volume of notifications that are received from the community. In fact, perhaps I will pick this up on another occasion because people probably aren't listening.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: The mass departure had distracted me.

Mr van Holst Pellekaan: It's your side that's walking out.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: Your side left some time ago. In essence, we have some 60,000 notifications that are made, which reduces to some 20,000 screened-in notifications, which then comes down to around 5,000 investigations. Those figures mean that the workers are straining to take all of the information and then to act upon it.

If you get down to the level of the number of substantiated investigations and the number of children removed from their families, we actually are very much on a par with most other states, which suggests that we are, like all other states, doing our best to get to the children who are most in need, who most require removal from their family. This in no way stops the truth of the statement that all of us, as adults, have a responsibility to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves, and that is our children.