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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-09-22 Daily Xml
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Child Protection

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (15:12): My question is to the Minister for Child Protection. Has the minister asked to see the adverse event report regarding the rape and subsequent pregnancy of a 13-year-old girl?

The Hon. R. SANDERSON (Adelaide—Minister for Child Protection) (15:12): The line of questioning from the opposition today is indicative of the culture—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Badcoe!

The Hon. R. SANDERSON: —that I have been working very hard for the last 2½ years to change: the culture of blame, the culture of naming people, the culture of fear that led to the tick-box—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Point of order, sir.

The SPEAKER: The minister will resume her seat. The member for West Torrens on a point of order.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: The minister is debating the answer immediately. She immediately includes in her answer a view on what the opposition believes and applies that to her answer. That is debate, sir, and I ask you to bring her back to the question.

The SPEAKER: I take it—

The Hon. V.A. Chapman: There's a criminal inquiry going on.

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr Malinauskas: There's a lot going on.

The SPEAKER: Order! There will be silence!

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, leader! I am in the process of responding to a point of order raised by the—

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: I warn the leader. The member for West Torrens raises a point of order, I presume pursuant to standing order 98(a). Certainly, there is no permissible opportunity to debate the matter to which the question refers. The minister has been asked a number of questions in relation to the time at which she and various officers in her department were informed. The minister was providing some context in circumstances of a number of questions having been asked on that topic. I will listen carefully to the minister. I don't detect, for the time being, debate such as would offend standing order 98(a). The minister has the call.

The Hon. R. SANDERSON: I have been fully briefed by my department but, as I was saying, for the last 2½ years I have worked very hard to change the culture of my department so that they are no longer a tick-box, fear-based department.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. R. SANDERSON: They are making decisions and I believe they have made decisions in the best interests of the young person, which is the right thing to do. I commend them on the decision to put in wraparound services and to report this to the police.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. R. SANDERSON: My role as the minister is to find out what can be done in the future to stop this from occurring again and I am doing a lot of work in that area, including with my parliamentary colleagues in education and in police, to protect all children, not only children in care but all children, because this is a problem that all parents grapple with and that is the online safety of their children.

As I mentioned earlier, through the education department there is extensive training for children and in my department there have been fantastic policies that were updated only in January 2019. We are looking at resending those out to all of our carers working with our foster care agencies to ensure that foster carers, as well as our kinship carers, are aware of the dangers of online activity.

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