Child Protection Department review highlights failures of Minister Rachel Sanderson
An inquiry into sexual abuse of girls in state care has made damning findings against Minister Rachel Sanderson. Paul Starick analyses what it means for her future.
Opinion
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Child Protection Minister Rachel Sanderson has failed in one of the most basic parts of her job – to direct her department.
It seems inexplicable that, given the terrible history of child protection failures in South Australia, the incoming minister would not demand to know about the “serious sexual abuse of children under guardianship”.
Yet, in his independent inquiry into the department, released on Tuesday morning, this is precisely what former District Court judge Paul Rice QC concludes.
Mr Rice poses and answers the question: “Should the Minister have done more upon taking office (in March, 2018)?”
His findings are brutal and go directly to the heart of ministerial responsibility. It is a basic tenet of executive government that a minister should run his or her department, not passively watch while events unfold or bureaucrats obfuscate.
If this is not the case, it can be asked rhetorically, then why is the minister taking public money to be there in the first place?
Answering his question of whether Ms Sanderson should have done more, Mr Rice says she had certain expectations upon taking office about the information she should receive from the department but did not put these in writing.
“Clearly more should have been done. It was not sufficient to have unarticulated expectations,” Mr Rice says.
“ … Obviously this Minister would have asked to know about matters that were of particular interest to her. However, her role in this regard should be proactive.”
Continuing, he says the Child Protection Department is primarily responsible for the administration, operation and enforcement of the Act – relating to protection of children – but, crucially, the minister is responsible to the parliament for the department’s administration.
He goes on to add: “This is an important and significant area of Ministerial responsibility and the Minister cannot hope to be in a position to fulfil that responsibility unless she is expressly told about it,” Mr Rice finds.
“For that reason, it was crucial for the Minister to tell the Department that she wanted
to know about the serious sexual abuse of children under guardianship. This was a significant failure on the Minister’s part.”
Mr Rice goes on to say: “Much the same can be said about the pregnancies of the children under guardianship. The Minister should have explicitly said she wanted to be informed about pregnancies.
“Expectations were insufficient; these matters should have been articulated and put in writing.”
Once again, Mr Rice finds Ms Sanderson fallen short in her ministerial duties by failing to spell out her expectations to her department, so she was kept in the dark about abuse.
This hands a significant weapon to the Labor Party to divert attention from its own litany of child protection failures and hammer Ms Sanderson electorally.
She holds the crucial seat of Adelaide, where Labor is mounting a persistent campaign to unseat her with former staffer and journalist Lucy Hood. The margin is one per cent.
Rightly or wrongly, Ms Sanderson has been considered – by internal critics and opponents – as one of the weaker ministers in Premier Steven Marshall’s Cabinet.
Mr Rice’s finding would appear to confirm that view. It presents the Premier with an unwanted distraction from a strong narrative, particularly on managing the coronavirus and jobs in South Australia returning to pre-pandemic levels.
Ms Sanderson’s apparent dereliction of duty, in this case, has presented him with a weak link in a bellwether seat – little more than a year before the next state election in March next year.
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