Grace Portolesi admits fault on schools

EDUCATION Minister Grace Portolesi says she and her Labor predecessors are partly responsible for a culture of cover-ups.

EDUCATION Minister Grace Portolesi says she and her Labor predecessors, including Premier Jay Weatherill, are partly responsible for a culture of cover-ups within South Australian government schools.

Ms Portolesi, who ducked for cover on Wednesday over a leaked KPMG report into the under-reporting of critical incidents in schools, yesterday said she was trying to change a "disturbing" culture that suppressed bad news and kept police in the dark to protect reputations.

Asked on ABC radio how this culture had developed, she referred to previous Labor ministers including Mr Weatherill and Jane Lomax-Smith.

"Organisations develop a culture of their own," she said.

Asked if she or Mr Weatherill took any responsibility, she said: "Of course I'm responsible . . . but the previous minister (Mr Weatherill) and myself, everything we do is about a culture of openness, everything."

But when asked if a culture of cover-ups, identified in the KPMG report, contributed to parents not being told for two years about a child-rape case, she said, "there is no doubt . . . this is a serious matter".

She conceded the rape case in a western suburbs primary school had continued to be covered-up, despite her chief of staff, Jadynne Harvey, and the Premier's office being alerted to it in December 2010, until the opposition exposed it in parliament on October 30.

When it emerged last month that senior Weatherill government political advisers had been drawn into the alleged cover-up, Ms Portolesi commissioned former Supreme Court judge Bruce Debelle to conduct an inquiry into the case; "Justice Debelle will get to the bottom of what actually transpired . . . I think his work will add to the work that KPMG has identified here."