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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-07-05 Daily Xml
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Child Protection

Ms SANDERSON (Adelaide) (15:12): My question is to the Minister for Child Protection Reform. Can the minister explain how he thinks the Hillier case could possibly fit within the parameters of the Nyland royal commission and why he expects a murder investigation to uncover the involvement of Families SA? With your leave and that of the house, I will explain.

The SPEAKER: I think it does need a bit of explanation.

Ms SANDERSON: The Nyland royal commission was appointed in response to the Shannon McCoole incident, and the review is into sexual abuse of children in care under the guardianship of the minister.

Mr van Holst Pellekaan: Good question.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (15:13): It's a highly repetitive question, I know that. The situation—can I explain this again? We have a royal commission which has been going on, as I said, for some considerable period of time. I think it would be crystal clear to everybody, including those who actually noted the comments made by the Premier a week or so ago about an interim letter we got from the royal commissioner talking about structures and suchlike, that the royal commissioner is looking at much more than whether a particular individual, who was employed by Families SA, behaved grotesquely and criminally in the context of their employment. To suggest that the whole business with Commissioner Nyland is all about McCoole is complete nonsense—total rubbish.

She is looking at the whole structure of Families SA. She is looking at all of their practices, all of their procedures, all of their structures, all of their administrative arrangements, all of their management techniques—everything. If we need any proof of the fact that she is doing that, her recent communication with the government saying, 'Look, there's one thing I'm happy to tell you in advance: I think we should have this in terms of a structure,' is an indication that she is looking way beyond anything to do with that horrible criminal behaviour of that individual. So, I completely discount that proposition.

The second proposition is the assertion that there is some fault on the part of Families SA which was causative or something else of what appears to have been a triple homicide. That is an assertion from which the opposition then goes on to launch the need for an inquiry in the face—

Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN: Point of order, Mr Speaker: the minister is debating the substance of the question.

The SPEAKER: No, I don't uphold the point of order.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: I am trying to explode this bogus question. The point is that there are already—I will say this again and I'm happy to keep saying it; if I keep getting asked the same question, you will get the same answer. I might vary it slightly for the member for Schubert, but otherwise it will be pretty much the same—

Ms Sanderson interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Adelaide is warned for the second and final time. There will be no further warnings.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: The police are looking at this matter from a criminal perspective. The Coroner is able to look at it from his perspective totally at his own discretion any time he wants, and the royal commissioner has been provided with all of the raw material in relation to this matter. If the royal commissioner is going to be reporting to us on 5 August, which we believe she will be, and she is going to be making a substantial number of recommendations to change the way in which the department is functioning, or is structured, or is configured, or the legislation is set out, which I would think is highly likely, then we are going to be dealing with a complete reform of Families SA.

My rhetorical question to those who keep pushing this barrow purely for not satisfactory reasons about an independent inquiry, I say to those people: if there were to be an independent inquiry, and if the independent inquiry is going to come out with the most damning possible outcome it could, what would the outcome be? There needs to be substantial change in Families SA. Well, hello! I think everybody accepts that there needs to be something done there. We accept that, we have a royal commission looking into that. In about a month from now, we will get a report from the royal commission, at which time the government will consider the recommendations of the royal commissioner and respond to them.

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