Lauren Novak: No excuses this time, changes must come now

THERE are recommendations still not enacted from the 2003 Layton report and the 2008 Mullighan reports. Advocates and victims are already warning that this latest inquiry must not “sit on the shelf”.

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SHE called it The Life They Deserve, and that’s what Margaret Nyland wants her long-awaited report to deliver for vulnerable children.

The Royal Commissioner spent almost two years delving into exactly what it is like to live in the care of the state in South Australia.

She spent months talking with children who suffered neglect or abuse, were removed from unsafe parents and placed in hotel rooms, state-run homes, with relatives or foster carers.

On Monday Ms Nyland delivered a blueprint designed to safeguard those young people.

She warned that the current system was “ill-equipped to respond to the needs of many children who are at risk in the community and in out-of-home care”.

Importantly, she reminded us to think of the kids, saying a “fundamental shift is required for the system to hear and understand the experiences of children”.

Justice Margaret Nyland.

“Too often the commission heard stories of children whose needs were left unmet because attention focused on what the adults needed and wanted, at the expense of the experiences of the child,” Ms Nyland wrote.

“It is time for all of us to work together to give all our children the life they deserve.”

Premier Jay Weatherill conceded the Government had failed too many so far, but could he really have said anything else on such a day?

The question is what is he going to do about it?

It took a year to draft and pass laws enacting just some of the recommendations from the 2015 coronial inquest into the death of four-year-old Chloe Valentine.

There are recommendations still not enacted from the 2003 Layton report and the 2008 Mullighan reports.

Advocates and victims are already warning that this latest inquiry must not “sit on the shelf”.

Money has been put on the table and there is political will to do better — but that’s been the case before.

Those charged with seeing these changes through cannot be let off the hook this time.