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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-04-04 Daily Xml
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CHILDREN'S PROTECTION (LONG-TERM REMOVAL REVIEW PANEL) AMENDMENT BILL

Introduction and First Reading

The Hon. A. BRESSINGTON (20:34): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Children's Protection Act 1993. Read a first time.

Second Reading

The Hon. A. BRESSINGTON (20:35): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

Members, no doubt, would recall that I have introduced many bills in relation to child protection, and I have no doubt that, in my time in this place, there will be many more to come. Hopefully, one of these days or years, at least one of them will be seen by the government to be worthwhile and our children will be seen by this government to be worthwhile enough to protect.

This bill is titled 'Children's Protection (Long-Term Removal Panel) Amendment Bill. This bill establishes a long-term removal review panel, whose function will be to review all applications for a Youth Court for guardianship until the age of 18 prior to the application being lodged in the Youth Court. The bill provides that the panel will consist of:

(a) two members who must be child psychologists; and

(b) one member must have expertise, knowledge or experience in relation to family preservation models; and

(c) one member must be a legal practitioner of at least five years standing; and

(d) one member must be a person who is regularly appointed to act as a child's advocate at family care meetings.

The panel members would be appointed by the minister for terms not exceeding three years, although they can be reappointed once, and their position can be terminated for the usual reasons: breach of condition of appointment, misconduct, failure to carry out official duties, or ceases to hold the relevant qualifications.

The minister appoints a member of the panel to be a presiding member and may issue directions to the panel as to the procedures to adopt, otherwise it determines its own procedures. The panel is to be provided with the full case file, not just the information Families SA is relying on in court. To assist in assessing the application, the panel will have the power to:

(a) inform itself as to any matter under consideration by the panel in such manner as the Panel thinks fit; and

(b) invite interested persons to make written or oral submissions in relation to any matter under consideration by the Panel; and

(c) by notice in writing signed by a member of the Panel—

(i) request any person who may be in a position to do so to produce documents, to allow access to documents or other information, or to provide information (in writing) that may be relevant to a matter under consideration by the Panel; or

(ii) request any person to attend at a specified time and place before the Panel to answer questions relevant to a matter under consideration by the Panel.

Professionals can give information without fear of breaching confidentiality. Failure to comply with a request by the panel is an offence, carrying a maximum penalty of $10,000. The bill provides:

(a) a person commits no offence by refusing to comply with a request under subsection (1)(c), or to answer a question, if the information sought would tend to incriminate the person of an offence and the person refuses to comply with the request or to answer the question on that ground; and

(b) a person commits no offence by refusing to comply with a request under subsection (1)(c), or to answer a question, if the document or other information to which the request or question relates is protected by legal professional privilege and the person refuses to comply with the request or to answer the question on that ground; and

(c) a request cannot be validly made of a person to disclose or allow access to information that is subject to the operation of Part 7 or 8 of the Health Care Act 2008.

This panel is an oversight panel. I have told numerous stories in this place about cases which parents for years have claimed to be wrongful removal cases, and children have been put under 18-year orders. I have heard stories about children on 18-year orders who are basically out roaming the streets and have less supervision under the guardianship of the minister than they would have in the worst home possible.

Their life prospects are often very poor long term, and a lot of these kids get mixed up with drugs and alcohol, join gangs and do whatever because they have no sense of belonging. They have been taken away from their family. Quite often, children are told that their parents do not want to see them any more—that is when access is interrupted and court orders are not followed. I know members in the government have had exactly the same stories told to them that have, and I know members of the opposition have as well, that children's relationships with their families are deliberately broken and then they are put into dubious care facilities and sometimes foster care families who go on to abuse these children sexually.

When we are seeking an 18-year order and removal from a family, we have to make sure that every step is taken to ensure that that is justified. We also have to make sure that the allegations made against parents are provable, that they can be tested and that they can stand up to the test. What we have at the moment is a system where parents have no legal recourse and no right of appeal. If parents want to pursue any kind of criminal action against a social worker who they can prove has made false allegations and defamed them, they have to go through the District Court. There is no legal aid available for that, so they have to come up with tens of thousands of dollars to pay a lawyer to plead that out in the District Court. Many just do not have the financial ability to do that.

What I am proposing is that this particular panel sits in between the department of Families SA and the minister and, if a parent contests an 18-year order that is being sought, before social workers can go to that court and apply for an 18-year order, that parents have access to this panel. I propose that this panel has the ability to investigate where allegations are made that social workers have fabricated information, that people have falsely accused them of harming, neglecting or abusing their children, that the panel can see that there have been medical examinations done of these children, that they can recommend psychological evaluations and that they can read the evidence in the files.

We heard from Freda Briggs in the inquiry into Families SA that it is not uncommon at all for case notes to go missing that do not fit the intention of the social worker to remove these children. I have heard from psychologists myself—so it is not third-hand information. At least three psychologists have told me that they have been required by Families SA to rewrite reports until those reports fit what those social workers want to present to the Youth Court to secure an 18-year order. They have been told by these social workers that, if they do not rewrite the report, they will never be given any work from Families SA again.

As I said in my previous speech on minimum mandatory sentencing, we are putting all these steps in place to ensure that we get the bad guys (the bikies) and put them behind bars, and we are using all sorts of tools to do that: criminal intelligence, confiscation of assets, whatever we can think up to immobilise these people, to break that cone of silence, when we have our own cone of silence operating very well within this department, and members of this government and members of this house allow that to happen. If we are going to break the bikie code of silence, let's start now breaking government department codes of silence. Let's start now identifying serious and organised criminal conduct of child stealing by this state, because it is happening, and it has been happening for a very long time.

It is time now. When this serious and organised crime legislation goes through, and all those bills attached to it, we will have raised the bar. We have moved; we have shifted what was accepted as normal legal precedents and foundations. This government has set a precedent to up the ante, and it cannot apply only to bikies, it cannot apply only to criminals out there in the corporate world and it cannot apply only to people who suit this government. It now also has to apply to the government's own employees.

We have to have that independent review process, just like we have criminal intelligence for serious and organised crime. We now have to have independent oversight of these workers where allegation after allegation after allegation is made, where excuses are then made by every minister for Families SA since I have been in here. We do not have wrongful removals, just like we do not have wrongful convictions in our courts.

We have to start getting real about this. The government wants to get out there and get the bad guys: let's get all of them, and let's apply the same rules across the board to all this serious and organised conduct that is going on. Break codes of silence? Let's break them all, let's expose it all, let's clean up and let's do the right thing.

This panel will give parents a right of appeal. It will give them access to an appeal process and it will give them the opportunity to present evidence that is left out of those files and left out of those notes that are presented to the Youth Court when the magistrates grant an order to remove children from their parents for 18 years. We have a responsibility here. If we cannot do this and we cannot do the previous legislation for minimum mandatory sentencing for child sex offenders, we in this place have no right to claim that we can be responsible enough to enforce serious and organised crime measures across this state.

We are not responsible enough, because we are not taking every crime that is being committed against families and children in this state as seriously as we are taking crimes that this government considers to be heinous: bikies, shootings in Gouger Street, the shooting off Vince Focarelli, the murder of his son. How can the murder of Vince Focarelli's son be any more serious than the destruction of the lives of these children, who are removed from their families, who are then isolated from their families, and who do not know their origin?

Members might say that I hear this second-hand: no, I do not. I have had seven children, from the age of 12 to the age of 14, abscond from care facilities and who, for some reason, have come and sought asylum in my office. They all told the same story. They are all being abused—sexually, physically, emotionally. None of them had a clue about a relative they could ring to come and spend some time with them.

A 12 year old girl, going on 25; already sexually active, already smoking in the presence of her carers at 12—I thought it was illegal to do that—is claiming sexual abuse by her carers in a care facility. How can we allow this to continue? Another young boy, aged 14, is being bashed by workers, being abused by workers, being assaulted by other residents in the care facility. Another young lad, at the age of 13, had his teeth smashed and a chair broken across his back and was seen by the police roaming around the street at midnight. These are children under the care of the minister; some of them (not the last one) on 18 year orders.

If we are going to do this, if we are going to continue to put our children in the care of the minister until they are 18, then we have a responsibility to ensure that they grow up with every opportunity to start a new life for themselves, to be able to have a career, to be able to have a family if that is what they want to do and to be able to be functional, but not to be the next generation that is the meat market for the sickos on the street or the next generation of criminal offenders that we are breeding.

We are literally breeding this because of the way the system is, and this government has not taken one single step to make a positive change to any of this dysfunction that has been brought to their attention by me for the past six years, by other members for far longer and even by their own members, who are having to go to the minister and go to the department and take years. The Hon. Ian Hunter shared a story with me about children he reported who were being sexually abused by their foster carers. It took him, I think, three years to get those children returned to their grandparents. That is a member of your own government who has to come up across this department and fight for the rights of these children to be safe.

It is not good enough anymore and, as I said, if we are going to do serious and organised crime, let us get serious and organised and put our children first. I would much rather see five bikies walking up the street than five kids who have been deserted by the department, removed from their family and left to fend for themselves. I am asking members in here to start taking this issue of child protection seriously. There are things we can do.

Of course, the lobbyists within Families SA behind the scenes—the ones who drive this—are not going to like it, but if we are going to stand up to the bikies we can stand up to them too, I am sure. I am sure we can manage to do that as a parliament, and I am sure that if they intimidate or make any sort of threats towards the minister that can be exposed publicly as well, because we have actually made allowance for that in serious and organised crime.

We have required that people inform on the hierarchy that they serve to run drugs. As a matter of fact, if they do not do that, we are going to bankrupt them. The prescribed drug offenders confiscation bill provides that if a person does not dob in the person at the next level of a drug cartel or whoever they are working for to run their drugs, they lose their house. They are bankrupt and their family is put on the street. Why can these rules not now apply within our own government departments? Why can we not force people to inform on these people who insist that this child protection department remains almost a criminal organisation itself?

I will clarify that there are some very good workers. There are some very dedicated, very good social workers within Families SA who care about the children. Do not get me wrong: they are not all like this, but there are quite a few and, as I have said, I keep a file in my office and the same names pop up from Salisbury and from various offices all around the state, and what are we seeing? We are seeing exactly what we claim criminals do.

We move them from one office to the other. When they really step over the line, they are actually promoted to be ministerial advisers. I have seen that on three occasions. They are rewarded for their bad behaviour. What are we going to do to real criminals out there? Are we going to reward them? No. We are going to take everything they have got. We are going to put their family out on the street because how dare they not tell on the people who are providing them with their money and their livelihood?

I urge members to draw the parallel between what we are doing with serious and organised crime and what we are not doing with our child protection system. This parliament should demand the equality and the severity of the punishment befitting the crime for government workers who dare to flex their muscle. The sad part about this is that not only is bad behaviour rewarded and not only are people promoted for doing the lousiest possible job they could, for fabricating cases against parents, for perjuring themselves, if there was such a thing in the Youth Court, but the people who do want to come forward are threatened and intimidated. Sound familiar?

Do we not have to have all of these safeguards of criminal intelligence, secret court hearings and all of this sort of stuff to protect informants against bikies? It sounds like a criminal organisation to me. Unless we get rid of this stinking element that has plagued this department for 40 years, we cannot claim again to be responsible enough to be administering serious and organised crime legislation in this state.

I leave this with members to think about and I swear to God, if the government comes back with any sort of lame excuse that this is just going to cost too much, that this is just going to be all too hard, I will be out on the airwaves, screaming from the rooftops that your priority as a government is to catch bikies and you do not give a stuff about the kids that are being abused by your own department. I swear to God.

There are enough people out there now who know the facts about this. There are enough families out there now who have been negatively impacted by this and they talk. They talk to people and people do not believe their stories until they see it happening but, you know what, we are reaching critical mass where people are starting to believe that this crap happens.

It used to be, when I first got in here, and people would hear some of these stories, that they would say, 'They must have done something wrong. They must have been bad parents.' But you know what, I do not get that anymore. I get, 'Oh, you're talking about Families SA again. I have heard about this person and this person and this person that this has happened to.' Word is spreading, understanding is spreading, knowledge is spreading and people are starting to see this for what it is. It is not about all of these parents being bad parents—it is not about that at all.

I told that story about my next door neighbours. I have watched for six years while those kids have been abused and neglected. They went all winter last year without electricity. They did not have a hot bath or a hot meal all winter. It was reported. Dad is growing 50 dope plants in the backyard. What happens to him? He gets a slap on the wrist through the courts and these kids are removed for about nine weeks and then they are returned. The parents have not had to do one single parenting course—nothing.

The little boy sees me in the corner of the yard, because I used to talk to him, and I said, 'You need to ring the police about what is going on.' He did. Their own son, aged 10, rang the police. I saw him in the front yard after they had been returned and he looked at me with tears in his eyes and he said, 'Thanks for nothing.' He was forced to go back home. What did the parents get? They got a house full of new furniture and all new whitegoods. All the kids got all new toys, all new bikes—everything is fine. They have a once a week visit—and all dad had to do was mow the lawn and paint the house. That was their commitment to their rehabilitation as negligent parents.

We have children who should be removed who are not and we have children who are not removed who should be and that is the confusion of this system. If we cannot sort that out, then we should not be sitting in these seats. I commend the bill to the house.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. G.A. Kandelaars.

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