Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

Six months ago, my office sent question about Tasmania's child protection system to the Minister for Children and Youth of Tasmania, Roger Jaensch. My questions included the ratio of child safety officers to vulnerable children. In June I was told by two child-safety workers about what was going on, and what they told me made me feel absolutely sick. I asked one of those workers to share a story that was keeping her up at night: she told me about teenage siblings who were being abused by their carers, but she couldn't move them because she had no safe place for them to go. They also told me that the high rotation of staff mean that vulnerable kids often have dozens of different case workers. That means they have to retell their story over and over again, piling trauma on top of trauma.

I put my questions to the minister's office. A month went by and then another and then another, because this is so important! My office followed up and was told that my questions had been lost in the system. How pathetic is that! I couldn't help thinking: just like Tasmania's children, eh? Lost in the system. In mid-October I got a letter from the minister noting challenges in recruitment. None of my questions have been answered.

Thanks to Leanne McLean, Tasmania's Commissioner for Children and Young People, I now know why I didn't get any answers. It's because the minister and the department have stuffed up on a grand scale—not to mention the harm they've caused our children. The commissioner has released the results of her investigation into the government's decision to shift the management of vulnerable children from dedicated case officers to teams. It was apparently to combat chronic low staffing. The report found that, under team based case management, child safety officers were often responding to an overwhelming number of questions from children they didn't know. This just goes to confirming what Tasmanians already know: our child protection system is broken. It has been broken for a goddamn long time, and the most vulnerable kids are suffering.

I would like to thank the child protection workers who have had the guts to come forward and tell me what is going on—and there'll be more to come. As for the Tasmanian Liberals, I say to them: you've had 10 years to fix this; you should be utterly ashamed of yourselves. I'll have more to say later.