House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-09-25 Daily Xml

Contents

CHILD PROTECTION

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood—Leader of the Opposition) (14:13): Just for clarity, minister, are you saying that, despite the fact that we have now established that the teacher didn't fulfil their responsibility under the mandatory reporting guidelines of the Children's Protection Act, the Parent Complaint Unit did not instigate an investigation into this very obvious breach?

The SPEAKER: I will treat that as a supplementary. Minister for Education.

The Hon. J.M. RANKINE (Wright—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (14:14): Again, as I said yesterday, the incident was assessed by the school at the time not to warrant reporting to the Child Abuse Report Line. When complaints were made to the police—and I have checked the information that has come to me—there was a report made to CARL on 14 March, which was around the time that, I understand, the police were informed about this incident and this young woman was interviewed; so, I am assuming that that report was made by SAPOL.