Grievance Debate

Minister for Child Protection

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (15:07): I rise today to talk again about the desperate need for the Minister for Child Protection to demonstrate some empathy and to take responsibility for her significant failures in relation to the handling of two heartbreaking cases of sexual abuse of girls in care. What happened to these girls is shocking and deeply upsetting to many community members. Community members know that what happened to these girls is utterly unacceptable. Everyone in this place knows what happened to those girls is utterly shocking and unacceptable.

What most community members and indeed members of this place also know is that when something so terrible has happened to a vulnerable person, to a child, the right thing to do is to front up, show empathy and take responsibility for any of your failures in relation to that matter. Taking responsibility for what we have done wrong is what we teach our children. It is part of our generally accepted societal expectations. There have been plenty of people in this place who have taken responsibility for their failures. This Minister for Child Protection is absolutely not one of them.

Instead of taking responsibility, she has indeed had responsibility taken from her. In 2019, significant functions focused on early intervention and prevention were stripped from the responsibility of the Minister for Child Protection and allocated to the Department of Human Services. Then many of the remaining early intervention programs were outsourced to the private sector, a move that is seen by many commentators and many community service organisations working in child protection and wellbeing as, frankly, odd.

How can a minister, one whose sole job it is to keep children safe, not have responsibility for the prevention of abuse and for early intervention? And now, in the wake of this utterly damning review, she has had the responsibility for critical incident reporting taken away from her and given to the Department of the Premier and Cabinet.

The South Australian public must be rightly asking: what does this minister actually do to earn her $350,000 a year salary? This minister has utterly refused to take responsibility for what retired District Court Judge Paul Rice has clearly identified as her significant failure. Yesterday and today, we witnessed the minister ducking questions, refusing to speak to the media this morning and yesterday, trotting out a rehearsed line about a regular meeting with her CE, and then again a rehearsed line about a regular meeting with her CE, and then again a rehearsed line about a regular meeting with her CE.

Meanwhile, yesterday and today her colleagues are forced to continue to run a protection racket for this beleaguered minister. She could not even answer a question about whether she had met with the guardian. They run interference in parliament, inventing nonsensical points of order to buy her time. They jump to their feet to answer her question time questions. They even programmed her estimates hearing in the evening, yet she still handballs nearly every single question to her department chief or deputy chief.

Again today, asked a series of very basic questions about the most serious issues in her portfolio, she has failed and refused to answer any of them. It is shameful. Asked by a journalist from The Advertiser on Monday if she took any responsibility for her role in the significant failings identified in the report, she said, 'I did oversee the significant incident flow chart and I agree it is unclear.' I assure the house that the problems plaguing the child protection system under this minister's watch go well beyond a confusing flow chart.

The question beckons: what on earth does this highly paid minister actually do? This minister is clearly out of her depth and, for the sake of children in state care, she must be replaced. The Rice review is an absolutely damning document that lays bare the failures of this minister—failures for which children in care deserve her to take deep responsibility. If the minister will not take responsibility for these failures, the Premier needs to take responsibility and deal with this. South Australian children in care need and deserve better. This minister must go.