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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-07-03 Daily Xml
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CHILD PROTECTION INQUIRY

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood—Leader of the Opposition) (14:59): My question is to the Premier. As the Cossey report recommended that the education minister be advised of all critical incidents, why wasn't the Premier, then education minister, advised of the rape of a seven year old at a western suburbs school immediately after the Cossey recommendations were adopted by the minister in July 2011?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (15:00): I was the one who commissioned the Cossey review because the Cossey review determined or found that there was not an appropriate set of arrangements for advising ministers, so we put in place the policy once it became obvious that critical incidents were not being provided in a timely or comprehensive fashion to the minister's office.

From time to time we were getting briefings about critical incidents and we expected that that would have been a consistent policy position, but we found through the assault that occurred at the school, and the subsequent review by Mr Cossey, that that wasn't a systematic process, and so a policy was put in place to make sure that happened.

To the extent that any policies have not been complied with by the department, that is incompetent. I think that from what we have seen in this report by Mr Debelle, there is a catalogue of incompetence within the agency which is being addressed, and will be addressed further as a consequence of this. So, we have taken the relevant steps to address these matters and we will hold people to account for their lack of compliance with government policy.

The SPEAKER: Supplementary, leader.

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