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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2016-09-20 Daily Xml
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Child Protection Department

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:30): Supplementary, sir: for clarity, can the Attorney-General inform the house whether the executive and the new chief executive will be located in the existing education department and, if so, can he provide any plausible explanation to this parliament as to why it is taking so long to effect this change, promised for 5 August, if they are staying in exactly the same building?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Education and Child Development, Minister for Higher Education and Skills) (14:30): The idea that creating a new department is simply moving people from one office to another office is quite ludicrous. It is an immensely complex process, and I understand that people on the other side have never experienced government and so are unclear about the details.

It is an immensely complex process to establish a new department, particularly one for child protection, which has never been established independently in South Australia before. Under the previous Liberal regime, it was in a massive department called Human Services and, under an earlier version of our government, it was in with housing and disabilities and communities and then it was moved into education. Now, for the first time, it is going to be on its own.

What we need to do in creating this department is identify exactly what pertains to the matter of child protection, as opposed to other activities in the old iteration associated with housing and disability, in the current iteration dealing with young people and children in general, but not necessarily under the protection of the minister or in need of the protection of the minister.

To work through all of that, including the implications for health, the implications for existing services within education and what will sit in this stand-alone department, takes time to do properly. We needed to make sure that we got the recommendations from the Nyland report to understand whether that put any different spin on which part of government activities were going to this independent agency. We also need to make sure that it is founded properly with corporate services and established in a way that means it will be able to stand independently.

It does require rebranding. It is very important that people understand that this department is not the same as Families SA and that this department is doing what overlaps with Families SA's current business but is not identical. The rebranding will occur as part of the rollout of the decision come 1 November. But to say that this is about where someone's desk sits in the central office completely misses the point about how profound a change this is.

Mr MARSHALL: Supplementary, sir. Given that the minister—

The SPEAKER: Let's make it a fresh question.

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