Bills

Social Workers Registration Bill

Second Reading

The Hon. R. SANDERSON (Adelaide—Minister for Child Protection) (12:46): I am very pleased to stand here today and introduce this very important piece of legislation. It is reported there are now over 4,000—

The SPEAKER: Minister, there is a point of order.

Ms COOK: Point of order: this is a private member's bill, which I am carrying, that has been brought to the house and given government time. Correct?

The SPEAKER: Very well. Let me confer with the Clerks. I am informed that it has been moved to Orders of the Day, Government Business, and accordingly it would be the minister who moves government business.

Ms COOK: No, the will of the person who is the holder of the bill was—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! There are submissions in relation to whether it does form government business. I will further confer with the Clerks. Member for Hurtle Vale, it may be that you confer momentarily with the minister but in the absence of any agreement, the Deputy Premier and Leader of Government Business wishes to confer with me.

If it be the will of the house, I will turn to the member for Hurtle Vale. Member for Hurtle Vale.

Ms COOK (Hurtle Vale) (12:47): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

It is with great honour that I bring the Social Workers Registration Bill 2021 to the house. This bill seeks to establish a social worker registration board and create the process for social workers in South Australia to finally be under a registration scheme. I will keep my comments brief in the hope that we can move this bill now as quickly as possible and just provide a quick summary of the chain of events.

For many years—before, in fact, this parliament—the previous Minister for Health, Jack Snelling, had attempted to create and advocate for a federal scheme with his parliamentary colleagues across all states but was unable to do so. There was a commitment by the then Liberal opposition to establish a registration process when in government. When the Liberal government was put into place, we expected to see this happen fairly quickly because that is what social workers had wanted. It is a recommendation of the royal commission.

There are many stakeholders, some of whom are here today, and I would like to acknowledge the Australian Association of Social Workers, and the South Australian branch in particular, as well as the many social workers within the sector, for their hard work. I also acknowledge Belinda Valentine, grandmother of dear Chloe, who was the subject of the inquiry that has recommended this to happen. She has lobbied and fought and done some great work in the community in Chloe's name and I thank her personally and deeply for that. I also acknowledge the Hon. Tammy Franks for then taking this initiative. Without her, this bill would not be here today.

More than three years ago, the Hon. Tammy Franks tabled a bill in the other place and it then went to committee. The committee, including myself, the now minister but then member for Heysen, the Hon. Irene Pnevmatikos, the Hon. Connie Bonaros—I am going to miss someone—and the minister, Rachael Sanderson, worked very hard to get a bill that suited everybody—social workers and stakeholders. This was then created. That bill was sitting in waiting. Minister Sanderson has had a year to bring a bill to this house and has not done so.

Without the determination of the Hon. Tammy Franks, the Labor Party and other members of the crossbench, this would not be happening today, because the Hon. Tammy Franks brought this into the upper house. In the end, it was supported in the upper house by all members, but in the interim there was in fact a chaotic tabling at the last minute—five minutes before midnight—of some 25 amendments, only days before the bill was to be voted on, most of which were not supported or suitable for the stakeholders, including the Australian Association of Social Workers.

I would like to mention the hard work done by Malwina Wyra in the Hon. Tammy Franks' office and Katherine Baldock in my office, who, along with others, did some fantastic work with all those amendments to make sure that we were going to not be forced into some kind of position that was not workable for the sector at the heart of this bill.

That chaos then saw another set of amendments tabled at around 4.30pm on the day that the bill was to be debated, which again created more work over a period of a couple of hours to work out that most of these amendments were actually similar to the ones that had been tabled before. To be frank, we had a night filled with duelling amendments.

At the end of the day, the work was done by the Greens, Labor, the crossbench and the stakeholders. In spite of the minister's staff saying to us that they had only just seen a bill, we know the Liberal government had this bill for 12 months when it could have been tabled. Sadly, even the minister's own staff were not aware that they had that bill.

Now we have a bill with some amendments, which we have accepted. I understand there is one more amendment that has been tabled, which in advance I will say that we will support. We hope today to see this bill passed and that social worker registration will become a thing in the very near future and that we, the sector and Belinda Valentine can get some satisfaction and some peace with this. I commend the bill.

The Hon. R. SANDERSON (Adelaide—Minister for Child Protection) (12:54): It certainly was my intention to bring this through. In 2014, when I first became the shadow minister for child protection, I was made aware that the Australian Association of Social Workers had been advocating for two decades for the registration of social workers. It was then that I had the parliamentary library do research that compared the registration schemes of countries around the world, and even the library staff were quite astounded to find that Australia was the only English-speaking country in the world that did not have a registration scheme.

The Layton report in 2003, under the then Labor government, recommended the registration of social workers and the then Labor government ignored it. It was also raised in 2015 by the state Coroner, Mark Johns, in his inquest into the horrible death of Chloe Valentine. I acknowledge that her grandmother, Belinda Valentine, is here with us today.

The same measure was also recommended by the Deputy Coroner in 2016 following the baby Ebony case. It was also recommended by the South Australian parliamentary committee in 2015—again ignored by the then Labor government—and again in 2008 by Justice Mullighan, whose relative—I think grandson—is here with us in parliament, yet the Labor government still ignored the registration of social workers.

For many years—16 years—the former Labor government could have brought through this legislation through parliament and they failed to do so. I acted swiftly as soon as I was the shadow minister to research, to meet with stakeholders, to look at ways that we could improve the child protection system. In 2016 in fact, I was the guest speaker at the Australian Association of Social Workers' annual dinner celebrating World Social Work Day and I announced then that this was the then Liberal opposition's policy to advocate for the national scheme.

We also then released a press release on 7 April 2016 stating that, although the then Labor government of 13 years had ignored the calls for decades from the Association of Social Workers, we would commit, if elected, to doing something about it. And we have. What happened was we got elected in 2018 and, yes, this is one of our election commitments. In 2018—as a new minister, there is a lot to learn and a lot to do and even more to fix than I could have ever imagined that had been left by the former Labor government.

The first orders of business were to implement foster and kinship carer payments to 21. We audited children in residential care to find those who had been there for many, many years who should not have been. We broadened the qualifications of staff so that we could fill the long-held vacancies—274 vacancies—in staff to take the pressure off our staff so that they could do the work that a social worker should be doing under a less stressful situation and conditions. We did that. We acted very swiftly.

We also found in 2018, coming to government, that the Children and Young People (Safety) Act from 2016 had not actually been enacted. It was enacted in two phases, and phase 2 was not due until 22 October 2018, which was under the new government. Not only had it been delayed, there were fatal flaws in the legislation that had to be my urgent, first, most important thing to do or I would have a piece of legislation that could not be enacted.

My focus went on to fixing that bill. In doing that, I had to get the agreement of the crossbench and opposition to bring through the amendments very quickly, ignoring the amendments that I was passionate about as a member in opposition that I wanted to change. I had to put that aside because we needed to fix the poorly drafted legislation of the former government.

We did that, and I made an agreement that I would then do a review in a year where the opposition, as well as myself—the amendments that I wanted when I was in opposition and was unsuccessful to bring through—that we would wait a year, do follow-up, do more consultation, and bring that through. That bill sits in the upper house. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Sitting suspended from 12:59 to 14:00.