Page 4495 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 18 October 2011
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Community Services Directorate. This was the finding of the Public Advocate and it is something that this parliament has an obligation to respond to.
Briefly, the facts as found by the Public Advocate are that the children were not adequately cared for by care and protection. The directorate did not follow the legislation that they are bound to apply and, as a result of the conduct of the minister’s directorate, children in the care of the director-general have suffered “serious detrimental consequences”.
For the purposes of today’s motion, I do not think it is necessary to go into any more detail about the particulars of what happened, although I will touch on them. It is clear from the minister’s own evidence that she is not aware of the full scope of what was happening and certainly that mitigates the action that the Assembly should take in response to what has occurred. However, it does not excuse her. She is responsible to parliament and that responsibility extends to include an account of everything that happens in that directorate. She is not responsible for the conduct of all the staff of the directorate. The minister is responsible for the outcomes of the directorate, for ensuring that there are systems within the directorate to prevent the abuse of power and for ensuring that statutory processes are complied with.
It is reasonable to anticipate that public servants will comply with directions and comply with their statutory obligations. It is not reasonable, and no reasonable person could think that it is reasonable, to have no system in place to ensure that all children in care are safe, well cared for, that all statutory obligations have been complied with and that everyone involved in the process has turned their minds to all the questions and determinations they are required to resolve when placing a child or young person in out-of-home care.
The underlying consideration must always be the best interests of the child. This means that there must be a system in place to ensure that children in need of emergency care, which is not a rare occurrence, can be cared for as well as we possibly can. It is clear that this is not the case. For more than a year the law has been broken and the Public Advocate has found that the way the system is being administered is having significant detrimental impacts on the children and young people it is supposed to care for.
The fact is that this failure was not an isolated incident. It extended for such a period of time, including through a budget process when these issues should have been identified and funding allocated to change what was happening and ensure that we do have a proper system in place to care for children and young people in need of emergency care.
It is not appropriate and it does not reflect the accepted contemporary understanding of the convention of individual ministerial responsibility for the minister to be stripped of her role for the conduct of directorate staff. It is, however, appropriate that the Assembly censure the minister so that the community knows just how serious the issue is and that the Assembly is taking steps on their behalf to ensure that their dissatisfaction has been expressed and steps will be taken to rectify the shortcomings.
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