My story gives me a voice for tragically vulnerable

For me, revelations in The Weekend Australian of grave child protection failures were personal. Like many kids today, I didn’t grow up in the embrace of a biological family and instead started my life in foster care, in Victoria.

You see, my biological parents — a young Greek immigrant and his girlfriend — were not in a position to care for me. So, they made a selfless decision to give me up for adoption.

After time in foster care, I was adopted by a wonderful family who could not have loved me better if I was their biological son.

They called me Matthew — “gift from God”. For me, they were an incredible gift from the state government of Victoria, just when I needed it the most.

From personal experience I know what a powerful force for good a strong child protection and out-of-home care system can be. But, sadly, few kids’ experiences today are anything like mine.

This point was rammed home over the weekend with the force of a pile driver. Because of a government whistleblower, we now learn that 65 vulnerable children, known to child protection, died in Victoria last year. The reported circumstances of their deaths, which have not been denied by the government, are cause for the gravest concern.

Classified Andrews government documents show authorities were far too slow to act in numerous cases. Some of Victoria’s most vulnerable children were left in dangerous, indeed deadly, environments.

It’s also reported that serious errors were made in individual cases, including the placement of children with entirely unfit carers. The case of Baby M, who died after warnings to the Department of Health and Human Services went unheeded, is heartbreaking.

Undoubtedly, as the government whistleblower has said, failures were made worse by last year’s 111-day lockdown — the result of failures by Victoria’s government in the management of hotel quarantine and contact tracing. The lockdown meant child protection workers were unable to carry out their important work by responding in person to the needs of vulnerable kids.

As a result of these shocking failures, I have called for the immediate instigation of a full, independent inquiry. Anything less would be a further insult to the vulnerable children and families that the government is failing so badly.

The last major inquiry into Victoria’s child protection and out-of -home care system was initiated by a Coalition government in 2011. After years of failures before 2010, the inquiry heard evidence of slow and inadequate responses to the complex needs of vulnerable children and families, and the regular placement of children in dangerous homes.

It highlighted exactly the same issues as those revealed by newly released classified government documents. It’s disgraceful that the Andrews government has learnt nothing.

What we discovered over the weekend is only the latest in a string of child protection scandals in Victoria. New data from the Crime Statistics Agency shows sexual offences against children rose by a staggering 88 per cent in Victoria last year.

Earlier this year the Commissioner for Children and Young People revealed children are being groomed and abducted from Victorian child protection facilities before being forced into paedophile prostitution rings.

All of this is sickening. It can and it must change.

As I know better than most, a well-run system to support vulnerable kids can be the greatest gift. In Victoria we need a full and independent inquiry to find out exactly what’s going so badly wrong, and then we must fix these problems. Only then will this gift be available to the children who need it.

Matthew Bach is Victoria’s shadow minister for child protection.