Matthew Abraham: For now, Premier Marshall is pushing his luck, yet again backing Ms Sanderson

Adelaide became the city COVID forgot through either good management or dumb luck. But can the Premier rely on either now, asks Matthew Abraham.

Life’s a lucky dip at the best of times, so it pays to hang on to your tickets. A couple of lifelong friends of ours flew back into Adelaide from Sydney on Monday, counting themselves lucky to have made it back without one of those wacky one-minute-to-midnight COVID lockouts derailing their journey home.

After clearing the COVID checks inside the terminal, they were each handed a ticket. He got an orange “admit one” stub, number 64888, just like you get before hopping on the dodgem cars. She got a raffle ticket, black B60. My mate’s hoping his wife’s in with a chance for the meat tray, or at least a box of Roses chockies.

They had to show their tickets to the police before being allowed out of the terminal and back into freedom in Adelaide, the city that COVID-19 has pretty much forgot.

Premier Steven Marshall can rightly remind us – and does frequently – that his government has done a grand job tackling COVID-19 within South Australia. But how much of SA’s COVID success story isn’t just down to good management, but dumb luck?

The Premier is lucky to lead a community that is compliant, well-organised, older than the Australian average and, with the exception of the usual ratbags, fairly sensible. Most of us know what’s good for us.

That’s a great starting point when confronting a pandemic.

APremier Steven Marshall with embattled child protection minister Rachel Sanderson this week. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

He’s lucky to have inherited a centralised, generously-funded public health system and police force, both top-heavy with bureaucrats who know how to make endless, nitpicking rules. He’s very lucky Adelaide’s still a city where most people live in single-dwelling homes, with windows that open, backyards, and room to breathe. Fresh air and space are two of the most potent protections against COVID-19.

Lucky, lucky, lucky.

Steven Marshall has the luxury of sticking to what’s worked so far. You could argue he’s made his own luck and so have we. He’s kept us safe but that’s his job. If our governments and our public servants had just one job to do, that’d be it.

So his Child Protection Minister Rachel Sanderson, and senior figures in her department, can count themselves extraordinarily lucky to hold their positions after Wednesday’s scathing report into sexual abuse of children in state care.

The investigation by Paul Rice, QC, spells out in blunt language the failure of the Minister to direct her department to report serious incidents to her.

It follows media revelations two 13-year-old girls in state care – referred to as C1 and C2 – became pregnant to paedophiles and Ms Sanderson was in the dark until two men were convicted and sentenced for sexually abusing the children. It’s not pretty reading.

Child Protection Minister Rachel Sanderson during question time. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Kelly Barnes

Mr Rice reveals at least five more girls are known to have become pregnant but the department’s reporting system is such a “mess” – this is his description – that it doesn’t know how many more children may also have become pregnant under its watch.

But perhaps the most disturbing section of the report deals with his finding of a strong sense of “child protection fatigue” among departmental staff.

He says staff at all levels have become “desensitised to child sexual abuse … over time they become inured to it”. Dealing with the abuse becomes “part of their daily diet, virtually commonplace” and in those circumstances “child protection fatigue sets in”.

“It is not seen, from within, as a sufficiently serious crime about which the Minister must know,” he finds.

This is a deeply worrying finding and one the experienced legal brain of the former judge wouldn’t have arrived at lightly.

He also makes it clear when it comes to departmental reporting failures “none of this is new” – the misery timeline reaches way back into the previous Labor government. This means Labor’s also got form when it comes to chronic child protection bungles.

For now, Premier Marshall is pushing his luck, yet again backing Ms Sanderson as the best person to knock this mess of a department into shape. My guess is she’ll be gone from the job by winter, or spring at the latest. A senior bureaucrat or two in her department will go much sooner than that.

At 2.15am on Friday, she became the least of Mr Marshall’s worries. That’s when Liberal MP Fraser Ellis rose in state parliament to reveal he’s quitting the party after being charged, in the wake of an ongoing ICAC investigation, with allegedly rorting the Country Members Accommodation Allowance to the tune of $18,000.

Mr Marshall now leads a 22-seat minority government, with three of his original 25 Liberal MPs facing criminal charges.

Ominously, ICAC chief Ann Vanstone, QC, says “my investigation into claims by other Members continues”.

Fasten your seatbelts, we’re about to see just how far you can push dumb luck.