Children in Residential Care

Ms STINSON (Badcoe) (14:37): My question is to the Minister for Child Protection. What progress has the minister made in arranging the opera performances she detailed on FIVEaa on Monday 23 July as a solution to teenagers absconding from residential care?

The Hon. R. SANDERSON (Adelaide—Minister for Child Protection) (14:37): Well, I would like to say that's completely taken out of context. It was certainly not the intent—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. R. SANDERSON: —at all, okay? It is a shocking interpretation. What I was suggesting in that conversation was meeting these children and identifying why they are leaving, what they are running from, what they are running to, how we engage them, why they aren't at school, why they are involved in risky behaviours. Of course, we would love them to be at school.

If they are not interested in school, as with one of the girls I spoke to—her only interest that she identified was singing. I said, 'Well, why don't we look into whether there are any local choirs, whether there are singing lessons available.' If that is the one passion she has in life, and she is under our guardianship, why wouldn’t you look into it?

By consequence, a few days later I was at a Queen's Birthday church service at Christ Church and I met some ladies from Co-Opera, so it happened to come up that I mentioned someone interested in singing. It wasn't that they are having an opera career; it was any people that I meet that have ideas of engaging our young people in work or in extracurricular activities—horseriding, football, tennis.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. R. SANDERSON: You need to engage these children. You need to identify what interests them, and that is what I am trying to achieve.

The SPEAKER: Before I call the member for Morphett, I call to order the following members: the Minister for Industry, the Premier, the Deputy Premier and the member for Lee. The member for Morphett has the call.