Page 2578 - Week 07 - Tuesday, 5 June 2012
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The community deserve and expect better from their leaders. They expect that when a government has been in office for more than a decade they are responsible for what goes on, not what happened 15 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago. When you have been there for a decade you are responsible. You might be able to get away with that excuse for six months or 12 months of an incoming government, but to claim that after 11 years is outrageous. It is letting down the people you are meant to be serving, and I think the community can see through that.
We hear it from Katy Gallagher in all sorts of areas—it is not her fault that health has got so bad on her watch. It is not her fault that care and protection has not improved—in fact, has gone backwards—on her watch. Well, it is her fault. She was the minister when Vardon was handed down. She is the Chief Minister who put Joy Burch in this job. She has been the Chief Minister while this has been going on.
What has been found by Anita Phillips is shocking. It makes for distressing reading. We have heard about the institutionalised abuse of children and young people in the kinship care system. That in itself is shocking, coming as it does from people so well respected in the community. Then we saw the case of children in care and protection being put with an organisation not approved as a suitable entity and that entity being told to take those children to a house that had no electricity, no heating, no hot water, no bedding and broken windows in the middle of winter.
That is what we are talking about here. We are talking about something that happened almost a decade after Labor came to office. The politics of blaming someone else is ridiculous; it does not pass the common sense test. Then we hear from Anita Phillips that she cannot even say whether or not things have improved, whether kids are better off now than they were in 2004 when Katy Gallagher was the minister and this was brought to her attention. No doubt then she tried to blame the previous government. But to be blaming the previous government in 2012 is a disgrace. It shows a lack of leadership and a lack of genuineness in seeking to address these issues.
Some contrition here from this government would not go astray; some contrition from this minister would not go astray. We saw her on the news the other day coming out and saying: “Oh, well, look, we’re spending more money. There’s nothing to worry about here. We’re spending more money.” It was a slap in the face to those who have suffered under her failures. It is all well and good that you are spending more money, but why has the extra money not made a difference? Why has the extra money not improved the situation?
This minister, unfortunately, has shown herself to be not up to the job. She has not shown that she can improve the situation. In fact, on her watch we have seen some of the most concerning and most distressing stories coming out of the care and protection system. For that alone there should be no confidence. But when we then get another damning report months later and we have Anita Phillips saying that she does not even know whether things have improved from 2004, that should be enough.
This goes to what are the standards of this place when it comes to ministerial responsibility. Is it an “anything goes” approach? It appears that from the Labor Party
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