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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-10-31 Daily Xml
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CHILD PROTECTION

Mr PISONI (Unley) (15:10): My question is to the Premier. Does the Premier believe that he has an obligation to explain to parents why, when he was education minister, the education department ignored police advice to tell parents that a serious sexual assault had occurred in their school and that a staff member who had duty of care over their children had been charged with the assault?

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: Point of order: the question contains argument, in that it alleges a state of facts that to my understanding have not been established. It is a bit hard to take a question—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr Pisoni: Are the police lying, Patrick? Is that what you're saying?

The SPEAKER: The member for Unley, order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: How do I know you didn't get it from Criminon, the Scientologists? Madam Speaker, it contains argument—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. P.F. CONLON: —that cannot be taken back, but I would ask that the Premier be given leeway in his answer.

The SPEAKER: Yes, it was a question that I will have a look at afterwards but, Premier, you may choose to answer this.

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Minister for State Development) (15:11): It is a pleasure to be back answering questions from the member for Unley again after all this time.

Mr Pisoni: It's always a pleasure to hand them out.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: Can I say that the first proposition that guides all of our activities in this area is about the safety of children. So, the first and immediate steps that were taken, as I am advised and as the minister has advised in this case, is that when the perpetrator was known they were removed from their contact with children. That is what we were advised. The second proposition that I do accept from what the member for Unley raises is that we do need to account to parents. We do need to account to parents about why certain decisions were taken. That is why the minister has chosen to conduct the independent inquiry, and she rightly points out that there are things to balance.

One of the things we need to balance is to make sure that we lock up these people when they perpetrate these evil crimes. One of the factors that bears on your capacity to lock someone up is not to taint the chain of evidence, and we take the best advice that we can get about how we should conduct ourselves to protect the integrity of the prosecution.

Mr Pisoni: You ignored the police advice.

The SPEAKER: Order! The member for Unley, order, or you will leave the chamber!

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: They are important factors, and I will not have the self-righteous remarks being made by those opposite about children in this place when he knows full well that everybody on both sides of this chamber—everybody in all of our agencies—have only one thing at heart, and that is the interests of the safety of children. So, don't come into here with your self-righteous indignation about these children. The only—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Members interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: That's right, cue the self-righteous indignation. When you don't have a purpose, shifting around for some sort of moral anxiety to attach yourself is what they do opposite. That is what they do. That is their consistent modus operandi. There is no doubt, if I was a parent in these circumstances and there was—

Mr Pisoni: You would be outraged.

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: —somebody who had been a perpetrator in the midst of my children, I would want to know about it. I would also want to know, if that did not happen, whether there was a good reason for that, and that is the purpose of the independent inquiry. That will be the material that will be supplied, but the starting point—

Mr Marshall interjecting:

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL: The starting point for all of these matters, until we are able to demonstrate otherwise, is that people were acting bona fide in the best interests of trying to protect children.

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