Tuesday, 2 December 2025

 Nicole WERNER (Warrandyte) (19:00): (1449) My adjournment matter is for the Minister for Children, and the action I seek is simple and urgent: that the government must appoint a new genuinely independent commissioner for children and young people. The Commission for Children and Young People exists to be an independent watchdog for those who cannot protect themselves. Its role is to hold governments and organisations to the highest standards, to expose failures that put children at risk and to advocate for the safety, rights and wellbeing of children in out-of-home care, child protection, youth justice and child care, yet since March 2025, for more than eight months now, there has been no permanent principal commissioner in the top job. Where is the urgency to ensure children are kept safe? Who is meant to be ensuring schools, childcare centres, residential care providers and government departments comply with their obligations in child safety? Not the independent commissioner, because there is not one.

Instead of appointing an independent leader, the government has installed the secretary of their own department as the acting overseer. That is a blatant conflict of interest. Are Victorians seriously expected to believe that a government department is going to call itself out on its own failings? The government is marking its own homework at the very moment Victoria has faced the most serious childcare scandal in our state – in fact in our nation’s history – with children raped and abused in centres operating under the government’s watch.

Perhaps this government is avoiding oversight because the warnings were clear. Three years ago the commission told the government that ‘children will be abused’ if the reportable conduct scheme continued to be underfunded. The government failed to act, and sadly, children were abused. This is not an isolated failure. The commission has repeatedly exposed dangers the government ignored. In 2017 it revealed children in residential care were living amid violence, drugs and exploitation. In 2019 it called out the practice of placing vulnerable children in motels and caravan parks, where they were being assaulted, groomed and sexually exploited. In 2021 it warned that childcare providers were failing child safe standards and that risks to children had been unaddressed for years. It has documented case after case of grooming, sexual abuse, violence and neglect occurring in the very homes that are meant to be keeping children safe. The risks are rising. In 2024–25 alone the commissioner received 705 reportable conduct notifications. There has never been a more critical time for strong independent oversight. The government must immediately appoint a permanent independent commissioner.