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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-05-01 Daily Xml
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CHILD PROTECTION

Mr PISONI (Unley) (14:52): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Development. When was the minister made aware of the new indecent assault charges filed today against the after-school care worker at the western suburbs school at the centre of the Debelle inquiry?

The Hon. J.M. RANKINE (Wright—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (14:52): I was alerted to the fact that he was in court today facing additional charges, as I understand it, in relation to his first victim. This government is committed to doing what we can, as best we can, to protect children. We have undertaken a lot of steps since we have been in government to provide better protections, importantly, having all our teachers have criminal history checks.

I understand that it was the former Liberal government that brought in criminal history checks for teachers, but that was only for new teachers. We invested funds for the Teachers Registration Board to backdate checks for something like in excess of 30,000 teachers, and then again, under this government, legislation was passed to oblige those people who are working in environments where they work with children to have criminal history and background screening checks.

This person has breached a fundamental trust that we all give when we allow our children into schools, kindergartens and after-hours school care, with people whom we expect to honour that trust. I think our teaching profession feels betrayed, I think parents feel betrayed and certainly I think we in this house feel betrayed.

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