Child Protection

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:32): My question is to the Premier. After 14 years of promising to fix the state's broken child protection system and failing, does the Premier accept that he is part of the problem?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (14:33): I suppose there was an opportunity in this question time for the Leader of the Opposition to ask some intelligent questions about the particular reform initiatives and critique whether he agreed with all of them. I simply put the challenge to those opposite: do they seriously want to participate in this debate and advance positive ideas for improving our child protection system, or do they want to play politics with the tragedies documented in our child protection system, which are sad and which those opposite seem to revel in playing politics with?

Mr Marshall: Give me a break—outrageous, absolutely outrageous.

The SPEAKER: If the leader makes another ejaculation outside standing orders, he will be out.

Mr MARSHALL: I ask for a ruling on improper motive. The Premier has just outlined to the house that we are revelling—revelling—in the situation which currently is the crisis in child protection.

The SPEAKER: Sounds very much like an impromptu speech to me.

Mr MARSHALL: Standing order 127, sir: I ask you to ask the Premier to withdraw and apologise for that remark.

The SPEAKER: For someone to call on the Premier to withdraw, the remark or the imputation would need to be applied to an individual member rather than a collective, so I would ask the Premier to return to the substance of the question.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is very difficult to hear myself think with the barrage of abuse that emerged opposite. I am more than happy to talk about the substance of the issues, which includes the creation of a new child protection system which is better targeted at prevention and early intervention, that is, the initiatives that we have put in place: establishing a new early intervention research directory to develop new strategies to better support vulnerable families and to ensure programs are effective and include a specific focus on Aboriginal children; enhancing efforts to place children with family members earlier, with a new family scoping unit.

The SPEAKER: Point of order.

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: The question was very clear: does the Premier consider himself to be part of the problem? I ask you to bring him back to the substance of the question.

The SPEAKER: The Premier is providing information to the house which is germane to the question, the topic, and I regard the member for Stuart's point of order as being very close to bogus.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: I thought that those opposite might be interested in positive measures which are going to make a real contribution to improving our child protection system, and so—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: Well, these are new measures which are based on a royal commission report that we commissioned that we are acting on—a family scoping unit, which is about a detailed analysis of all the family and kinship networks so that we can find anybody who has a connection with a child because that, of course, is preferable to placing a child with a stranger; providing increased support and training opportunities for staff to help them deal with the complexity of the cases that are actually at stake here.

It is the easiest thing in the world to say that we need to put children first and to make their interests paramount, but making those finely calibrated judgements about whether to keep them in a family, whether to remove them, whether to put them with a particular family member or other, requires an extraordinarily fine judgement. Sometimes those judgements, with the best will in the world, will be proven incorrect. That is the nature of human behaviour, and this is profoundly complex decision-making.

There is a cost in removing a child from a family. There was rarely a child I met in relation to this system who didn't ask to be placed back with their family. This is complex public policymaking, and in many of those cases it simply was not possible because those parents weren't able to care for their children.