House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-10-15 Daily Xml

Contents

Question Time

CHILD PROTECTION

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood—Leader of the Opposition) (14:20): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier explain why he ruled out an independent inquiry to investigate the southern suburbs school alleged sexual assault case and yet on Friday last week the education department CEO has now announced an independent inquiry?

Mr Pisoni: Quick, Jennifer, get up, quick!

The SPEAKER: The Minister for Education. I call the member for Unley to order.

The Hon. J.M. RANKINE (Wright—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (14:20): The Premier has been very clear that we are not going to conduct a royal commission into every incident in a school, but what we undertook to do was to meet with the family concerned, and we met with them on Friday 27 September. We met with them, I think from memory, for about an hour and a half, in which we discussed all of the issues that they had to raise, and the family were very keen to have independent eyes over the issue of non-mandatory reporting taking place. So, in thinking about that, and in consultation with me, the chief executive wrote to the Ombudsman to ask him whether he would be prepared to undertake that as an investigation. That is why we did it.

The SPEAKER: A supplementary from the leader.