Parliamentary Committees

Select Committee on Statutory Child Protection and Care in South Australia

The Hon. S.G. WADE (16:04): I move:

That the second interim report of the committee be noted.

I will be brief in relation to this report because I did refer to it in my comments yesterday. As I mentioned in the council yesterday, this was an opportunity for the committee that has particular responsibility for statutory child protection and care and for the consideration of the government's response to the child protection royal commission to consider one element of the government's response, which was what is commonly called the safety bill.

I commend the bill to the council and I know that it has already found its way into the parliament's consideration of that bill. In that context, I would like to formally thank the members of the committee: the Hon. Tammy Franks, the Hon. Jing Lee, the Hon. Dennis Hood and the Hon. John Darley, for their contribution and particularly to Lynette Mollard, our research officer, and to Mr Anthony Beasley, our secretary.

The key stakeholders, who are part of the dialogue on this bill, provided substantial submissions to the committee and I would commend both the Hansard of the committee and the evidence to the committee. I acknowledge the huge amount of work they have done and particularly thank them for going the extra mile and actually providing us with fresh submissions post the consideration of the House of Assembly.

I think members will find those two submissions particularly useful and, for that reason, the committee has added those two key submissions as appendices to this report. The first, appendix 2, is the submission of what is generally called the alliance. The letter is written by Ross Womersley of SACOSS on behalf of the wider group of stakeholders and the second appendix, appendix 3, is the Law Society letter.

As I mentioned in the council yesterday, I did have greater hopes for this particular reference in that there were early indicators that the government might use this as a vehicle to facilitate dialogue with the community, the parliament and the government and avoid the prospect of a cumbersome committee process within this council. For whatever reason, that did not eventuate. We primarily had a conversation between the parliamentary committee and stakeholders. Nonetheless, that was, I believe, extremely useful. The Hon. Tammy Franks, in her comments yesterday, drew heavily on that material and I am sure the debate also will, going forward.

With those remarks, I commend the report to the house and look forward not only to the consideration of the safety bill but also the consideration of the changes to the Family and Community Services Act to deal with prevention and early intervention and, for that matter, the fulsome implementation of child protection reform.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. T.J. Stephens.