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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-05-06 Daily Xml
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Child Protection

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:14): Supplementary: will the minister come back to the house and provide us with that detail?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for the Public Sector) (14:15): As I said at the beginning—and my answer essentially will be yes, before people get excited about whether or not I am answering the question—it is important that we not become fixated about these individuals. The chief executive, as is appropriate, is going through a process, as he informed me this morning. That process will result in decisions that he will make as chief executive and therefore as the ultimate manager of the staff in question, and I am sure that that will all become public and that that will include, I have no doubt, where people are sitting at the moment.

What I am concerned about is that, while people can make errors or cannot adopt practices that, either with foresight or in hindsight, were not the best, we not become fixated with a witch-hunt or a desire to solve this—

Mr Pengilly interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Finniss is called to order.

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: That this not become an effort to say that the beginning, middle and end of resolving what happened is by identifying individual staff members. It is far more important that we understand that the practices and the procedures within the department have required reform. There has been a process of reform and there will continue to be, and the Coroner has been extremely helpful in guiding how that reform might transpire.

An honourable member: What about the culture?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE: I know I am not supposed to respond, but it might save another supplementary. Culture is essentially, in an organisation, the build-up of the kinds of qualifications that you expect from your staff members, the training that you provide to your staff members, and the procedures and practices, and indeed leadership within the department, that guide how that operates. Those are all areas in which we have received very useful recommendations from the Coroner, and not only has there been some quite reasonable and useful reform in the last year or so, there will now be far more as a result of that Coroner's report.

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