Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

National Child Protection Week is a timely backdrop for the current industrial action by Tasmanian child safety officers, who have walked off the job in protest over staff shortages. It's also timely given the imminent release by the state government of the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government's Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings.

I have met a number of child safety officers, and I can vouch for them working in one of the most important and toughest jobs going in Tasmania. They are good, compassionate people trying to help the kids as best they can, but they are chronically underresourced and lack support, and their industrial action has my full support.

The Tasmanian government is well aware of the problems besetting child safety but remains hands off and is ignoring the desperate calls for an emergency workforce package. But there's also a role for the federal government, and, to that end, I have raised Tasmania's dire workforce shortage with the Treasurer and the education minister, urging them to provide fee-free training for relevant workers and to introduce measures to attract and retain staff. Frankly, the child safety system in Tasmania and elsewhere is on the brink of collapse, and governments need to step up. To do anything less would be to betray the children terribly.

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