Wednesday, 18 February 2026

 Nicole WERNER (Warrandyte) (10:48): I rise to speak on the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025, and I want to start my remarks by making the point today that there is nothing a government does that is more important than protecting those who cannot protect themselves. We have seen that this has been an issue where it pertains to children in care in settings like childcare centres, and we have seen that is of absolute importance to our communities and the electorates that we represent, but it is even more important when the state has assumed responsibility for a child. The children that this bill is seeking to support are the most vulnerable children in our society. These children are in the system because something has gone wrong in their lives. When the state intervenes and removes a child, it assumes the role of guardian. That is an extraordinary power, and it carries an extraordinary moral obligation. If we get this wrong, the consequences can last a lifetime. Children only get one chance at a childhood. I have said that before, and I will say that again. For the children that our systems and our governments are there to be the parent for, essentially, when they assume that responsibility, that is so crucially important because these children only get one chance; they do not get another. They get one chance at a childhood.

Unfortunately, there is a recurring theme I hear everywhere I go from those who work in and around this system, that the system is broken. Stakeholders say it, frontline workers say it, carers say it, young people who have lived through it say it, and I have people contacting my office time and again who say it.

We know things need to change. We also know this sector is filled with some of the most kind-hearted people imaginable, the most incredible people in our communities, who give up their lives and give up so much of their time to be able to support vulnerable children in the out-of-home care system. We have got foster carers, we have got kinship carers, we have got permanent carers in all of our communities who open their homes to children they may have no relation to and carry burdens most of us will never understand. They are the heroes of this system and they must be upheld and supported. If we want to have any hope of fixing this broken system, we must properly resource foster care by lifting allowances, ending arbitrary payment downgrades and treating carers as respected partners in the system. We must reduce the risk in residential care settings by strengthening safeguards, improving therapeutic capability and ensuring children under 12 are placed in family-based settings whenever possible. In fact it was the Minister for Health – and I would not often quote the Minister of Health in this place – that said, as she debated government business yesterday, that is imperative that children should go into families, that children deserve to go into families. That is what we believe on this side of the house. To add to that, we also must close the service gaps in housing, mental health, drug treatment and family violence support so that reunification is properly supported and not prolonged with delays and system failure. Flourishing, healthy children and families are the backbone of a stable society. When we protect children well, we strengthen communities; when we fail them, the consequences ripple for generations.

To the bill at hand – it looks to introduce the supporting stable and strong families scheme, and as the bill introduces this, it is to promote a whole-of-government approach to supporting vulnerable children in the child protection system, their families and care leavers. It is based on the principle that when the state takes responsibility for a child, responsibility for that child’s wellbeing extends beyond child protection to other parts of government. It comes from the Scottish model. At first glance the bill sounds reassuring and has a comforting title: ‘supporting stable and strong families’. Unfortunately, nice titles do not guarantee good outcomes, and that has been the case with this bill at hand. The consistent feedback from stakeholders – and we have spoken to so many and had responses from so many stakeholders, carers and Aboriginal community controlled organisations – was this: the intent sounds good, but where is the mechanism that guarantees better outcomes for children? The best that I can say from the summary of the responses from stakeholders was that there were varying degrees of scepticism as to whether this bill will have any impact on improving outcomes. When you strip away the rhetoric, what remains in this bill looks more like plans and reports rather than any enforcement, and there certainly is no clear accountability. When you read this bill closely, when you strip away the rhetoric and the ambition – and we applaud the ambition – the plans and the reports, what you are left with is a scheme that offers little guarantee that it will deliver anything more than mountains of paperwork.

The coalition position on this bill is that we do support the ambition. We support a whole-of-government focus, we support recognising care leavers up to 25, and in principle there are many elements of this bill that are very good and that we are supportive of. However, it is important to note and to reflect the views of stakeholders that, unfortunately, ambition does not always lead to reform. Beyond the noble intentions, our concern is that this bill only creates the appearance of reform and does not fix the service gaps that delay reunification. It does not properly resource carers. It does not address the systemic failures pushing children into inappropriate placements. It does nothing about the roughly 50 children who are under 12 that are placed in residential care each year, which is not best practice, nor the broader residential care system, where around 500 children at any time face environments that we see in the media all the time, that are linked to drugs, to abuse and to criminality. These are not places where we should be putting children if we can create systems of reform that can actually keep them from going there in the first place.

While the coalition will not be opposing the bill, we remain sceptical on the side of stakeholders that it will deliver meaningful change unless the hard reforms are still yet to come. To now outline the concerns with the bill: firstly, this is a framework that avoids accountability. The government describes this bill as a whole-of-government response to child vulnerability, and that is not an unreasonable aspiration. As we said, we applaud the ambition. Children in care do not experience government services in silos. They are often failed precisely because these systems do not work together. However, it is unclear how this bill will remedy this effectively. There is a weakness in the bill that it explicitly creates, and I quote, ‘no legal rights’ and gives rise to no enforceable obligations. It means that when a department fails to deliver what is promised in a plan, there is no recourse for the child, no avenue for a carer and no remedy for a care leaver who has been left without support.

The bill also prioritises every other statutory function over these new responsibilities in this bill, meaning that ministers, department heads and other partners are told that they are not required to consider their supporting stable and strong families responsibilities if doing so conflicts with their primary duties. So then what is to stop an SSSF partner when challenged on why they failed to uphold their responsibilities from simply saying ‘It conflicted with our other obligations’ and leaving it at that? In practice it could give every decision-maker a built-in justification for inaction. How can this framework genuinely create accountability when it provides a ready-made list of excuses for noncompliance? That is not meaningful shared responsibility. What it is is a responsibility that exists on paper but evaporates the moment it becomes inconvenient, costly or difficult. Multiple stakeholders have raised this very concern with me, because their current experience is that it is a system that already fails to meet its responsibilities. Stakeholders have expressed to us that they have seen the government fail vulnerable children over and over again, and stakeholders know that good intentions do not lead to good outcomes. They want to see something that holds the government to a standard, and unfortunately, that is not the case in this bill.

Another concern of ours is a lack of genuine collaboration and a mechanism that is built in. One of the central claims about this bill is that it will improve coordination across government, but when you examine the detail there is no meaningful mechanism to make that collaboration happen. At best, the collaboration contemplated under this model occurs at the planning level. Ministers may prepare joint plans where responsibilities overlap, but they are not required to. There is no obligation to resolve conflicts between plans. There is no enforceable requirement that housing, health, education, justice and child protection actually work together when delivering services to vulnerable children and families. Planning together is not the same as working together. The government may say that the Children’s Services Coordination Board will help align and standardise these plans, but this board that they are referring to comprises departmental secretaries and the Chief Commissioner of Police, who are some of the busiest public servants in our state. Simply placing them around a table to oversee documents does not guarantee operational alignment on the ground. What is missing entirely is collaboration at the service delivery level where it actually matters.

There is no requirement or encouragement for the SSSF partners to collaborate in the exercise of their functions, to co-deliver services, to pool funding or to share operational responsibility for outcomes. That stands in stark contrast to the Scottish model, as previously mentioned, that this bill claims to draw inspiration from. Section 60 of the equivalent Scottish legislation requires:

Corporate parents must, in so far as reasonably practicable, collaborate with each other when exercising their corporate parenting responsibilities or any other functions …

including but not limited to information sharing, funding activities jointly or coordinating activities. There is no equivalent obligation in this bill that we are debating in the house. If vulnerable young people are to be genuinely supported, they need departments working together operationally, not simply drafting separate documents and tabling them in Parliament.

This feedback from the Bendigo and District Aboriginal Co-operative is emblematic of much of the feedback we have received. They said:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

BDAC’s experience is that multi-agency collaboration for children is already extremely difficult. The bill does not identify a regulating or oversight body, consequences for noncompliance, or any mechanism to compel agencies to genuinely collaborate. Without an accountability framework and independent oversight, improved collaboration will not occur in practice.

The Foster Care Association of Victoria has told me that one of the greatest frustrations that carers face is navigating a maze of fragmented government systems. Who do they call? Which form do they fill out? Which department is responsible? Carers are crying out for services that work together. For those that we have spoken to, this bill does not give them much hope that this will change. The core flaw in this bill is that it risks becoming a tick-box exercise for departments, a compliance framework that generates plans, reports and paperwork but very little real change. We already see hundreds of reports tabled in this Parliament every year, allegedly exposing failure, that are quietly released on what we call ‘dump day’ to avoid scrutiny. They bury us in a mountain of reports that we, as the opposition, are meant to comb through to find that these accountability mechanisms in Parliament are actually working. Well, I would not think so. In five years time, will the SSSF reports join the same dump day pile as ministers try to bury the gap between their grand promises and the reality that nothing has changed on the ground?

We have seen examples of how plans like this have not led to change. In 2020 the government released the Framework to Reduce Criminalisation of Young People in Residential Care. That did not work, because, according to Victoria Legal Aid:

… 51.3 per cent of children in residential care accrued criminal charges within two years of placement.

There was no meaningful change, even with that plan. I can give examples again and again of different plans, different intentions and different ambitions that in practice and in reality did not lead to outcomes.

Personally, I think the greatest issue that speaks to the core of the issue in the Allan Labor government is the fact that the consultation that allegedly took place about this bill was a sham. It is the most shameful aspect. You would know about this, member for –

Tim Bull: East Gippsland.

Nicole WERNER: East Gippsland.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): Through the Chair, please, member for Warrandyte.

Nicole WERNER: The most shameful aspect of this legislation is the absolute arrogance of the government regarding consultation. We have before us a government that treats consultation as a tick-box exercise, not as a genuine opportunity to listen to the community. Whether it is in the disability sector or whether it is in planning in people’s own backyards, community consultation is absolutely absent in this Allan Labor government. The government has stood before us and before the sector claiming to have consulted broadly. They have produced lists of forums and reference groups to create a veneer of consensus. But let us be very clear: this is a sham. It is a bureaucratic fiction designed to manufacture consent when none exists. It has happened here in this bill – and I am going to outline it – and it has happened time and again in so many facets of their alleged community consultation.

[QUOTES AWAITING VERIFICATION]

When we the opposition actually spoke to the stakeholders listed on the government’s own consultation list, many of them said they had never heard of it. For example, the Foster Care Association of Victoria, the key body representing the very people who open their homes and hearts to vulnerable children, told us directly they ‘didn’t know the bill was coming’ prior to its introduction. Then it gets worse. The government listed one specific organisation not only as a party briefed on the legislative proposal but as one to whom they provided follow-up information when they showed interest. Yet when we asked this organisation if they had been consulted, they said that the proposal was mentioned only ‘briefly and without context at a meeting unrelated to this specific legislative reform’. Here is the badge of shame that unfortunately the minister must wear: this group said that despite ‘expressing clear interests’ in further information and consultation, the very first time they had been ‘contacted around this legislation was from the Opposition’s office’ – from my office. The government said that they had consulted, but that was the first the organisation had heard about it. It does sound familiar that the government did not call them, the department did not engage, and they did not get any follow-up information despite wanting it and despite the government saying they had provided some. Yet they were on the list as having been consulted. The government merely ticks the box, as they always do. Another group was listed as an attendee at legal reference groups, yet this group explicitly told us that the process was ‘inadequate’ and that the government ‘did not seek advice’ from them on the bill. This speaks to a culture of paternalism and, honestly, corruption that rots this government from the head down.

They talk at carers, never to them. They talk down to the sector, telling them what they need rather than asking them what will work. The member for Gippsland East will tell you that is the case in the disability sector, and unfortunately that is true. Our carers are crying out for respect. They are crying out to be viewed as partners, not as resources to be managed. They just want to be listened to. They just want to be heard. They want the practical, frontline solutions to be assessed, but instead this government hides behind cherrypicked stakeholder claims of sector support while ignoring the frontline agencies, the legal services and the foster carers who are actually doing the heavy lifting. They then tell the sector what to do. They fail to listen to the warnings, and they turn around and tell a mistruth to the Parliament and say they have consulted. It is performative, it is disrespectful and it is a betrayal of all the people who hold our broken child protection system together. That leads me to my point that this bill and the previous bill, the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025, seek to reform and work together to remedy what is happening in the child protection system. On this side of the house we would contend that they ignore the glaring problems in the child protection system and the areas that actually need systemic overhaul and reform.

I want to take us to, in the time that I have left, the crisis that is taking place in our residential care system – it is a crisis. The stories and the exposés that come out of the horrors that take place in residential care homes are truly horrifying. There are 50 children under 12 on average at any point in time in residential care units. Kids under 12 should not be housed in residential care, not when Victoria Legal Aid showed that over 50 per cent of them end up in criminality within two years. Lots of these children could be better suited with good families, but too often there is no foster family available; too many are fleeing the system. What we have seen in the residential care system is that it is a pipeline to crime. There are pathways to drugs, there is violence, there is teen pregnancy and there is grooming that happens in these houses. It is a pipeline to the youth justice system.

A report from the ABC on 6 January tells a story of a 13-year-old-girl who fell pregnant in the residential care system:

Court documents reveal that, at the age of 13, Sadie was leaving residential care to “travel across Victoria at night to meet a variety of different men and women”.

Workers reported that Sadie was spending time with two “known male persons of interest to Child Protection”.

I have no words for that –

Not long after, Sadie reported being “sexually assaulted and raped” by the same two males, aged 17 and 19.

That same month, Sadie reported another sexual assault and rape, this time from an “unknown male”.

Sadie became pregnant at 13 years old.

Sadie’s mum said the state care system is ruining lives.

Then last year whistleblowers from the child protection system told the Herald Sun that scores of young gang members and repeat offenders were under government care, with many allegedly criminalised while living in state units. One caseworker said that children as young as 10 were becoming recidivist offenders. Children as young as 10 are in these homes where there are reports of children being groomed, taken out and prostituted in these residential care units – children as young as 10, when the state is responsible as their guardian. Other reports in the Herald Sun last year tell us of how vulnerable children in state care say they live in constant fear of violence or sexual abuse amid shocking claims youths are being raped, coerced into sex work, threatened with murder and fire bombs. A girl with special needs is alleged to have been raped by a teenage boy who was housed with her after claims he had molested her were ignored for several months. This speaks to the systemic issues within our child protection system.

Whistleblowers have told of pimps menacing both workers and youths in unsupervised homes, with some consequently forced into sex work, and a residential care unit was targeted in an arson attack where several teens were inside. While we laud the ambition of the bill before the house today, where does it go to and where does it speak to this crisis that is taking place in our residential care units? Why is the government not doing anything to improve outcomes there? Why is this not the core of the bill, when reforms are so desperately needed in our residential care units?

There are again reports from within the sector of the staff having to be driven home after work because of being drug affected, second-hand drug affected, because of the use of illicit drugs from the children that are housed in these homes. There are children that have gone missing from these homes. There is story after story of these residents that prove that the residential care system is broken and urgently, desperately needs to be fixed because of the vulnerable children that are housed here, who are our responsibility in government. This also speaks to the case where if we supported the sector – if we supported foster carers, permanent carers, kinship carers like they have been begging to have been – then there would be more placements to put them in foster care so that we could stop the flow of how many need to end up in residential care. The truth is that Victoria has the lowest-paid foster carers in the country. In real terms, they are worse off than they were years ago because payments have not kept up with inflation. The base rate is just $458 a fortnight, around 20 per cent below the national average, and it is no wonder that carers feel undervalued. In fact, Victoria suffered the largest loss of foster care households in Australia, down 1383 households in just four years to 2023–24, leaving only approximately 1500 households. That is nearly half that have disappeared from the system. That is a system that is driving carers out.

To add insult to injury, last year the government moved to effectively cut allowances for children with complex needs by quietly downgrading their need categories. Children with high psychological, medical, physical or behavioural needs have been quietly downgraded from the top levels of need, 4 and 5, to the lowest level, 1, decreasing their allowance. One example, as reported by the ABC from a carer, Mary, was told that her $1800 fortnightly allowance for 12-year-old Emily was under review to ensure she was – and get this –‘not just doing fostering for the money’. What an utter insult. Her payment could be slashed to $520 per fortnight, while Emily has intense emotional and behavioural needs, including aggression and violence. How dare the government tell carers who take on difficult situations like this that they are just in it for the money? Another foster carer, Sara, who quit last year after 18 years, said, ‘In the 18½ years I’ve done foster care, I’ve never felt so disregarded, disrespected and unappreciated.’

Foster carers are extraordinary people who open their homes to children in crisis. Yet too often the government treats them as an inconvenience. If we want to give vulnerable children a better life, that starts with properly supporting those who are willing to open their homes and their lives to them. The emails that I get into my office from different carers: permanent carers, kinship carers, foster carers, from the different stakeholders that represent all of these individuals – there are mountains of emails that I get that tell story after story of the disdain that these foster carers specifically have written into me about, the disdain that they are treated with, the disrespect that they say they are treated with. Can I put to you the words of the carer that wrote to my office, who said:

[QUOTES AWAITING VERIFICATION]

I believe the State Government outwardly stating there is no policy change here is merely them passing the buck and not taking responsibility for a struggling system in crisis … Whether this is acknowledged policy change, it is occurring and this is only part of the cutbacks the state government are making to these vulnerable children and their carers.

I have noticed over time, there are more and more restrictions being placed on Carers and the Foster Care agencies due to limited funding, and additionally there are many significant issues with the foster care and child protection system that are not only contributing the complexity of children in care, their mental health and wellbeing but are leading to record numbers of Victorian Foster Carers leaving the sector.

This carer writes to me and says:

The longer I am a Carer, the more it feels that the whole system and the Department have turned its back on these children.

Another email from another carer who wrote to me says:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

I would appreciate confidentiality, as I fear retribution. I wish to continue to be a foster carer, and we have been threatened that if we speak out we will have our children taken away from us.

This is the cover-up culture, where there cannot even be a level of accountability so carers can speak out about their concerns of what is going on in a broken system – the fear of the fact that they will not be able to foster children, when they have found it in the goodness of their hearts to be able to do this for our community and for vulnerable children who deserve love and care and who belong in families. This is disgraceful. The fact that foster carers feel like they are gagged from being able to speak out about the instances of abuse and the instances of –

Tim Bull: It is almost blackmail.

Nicole WERNER: Absolutely, it is almost. It is tantamount to blackmail. Can I read this from this foster carer, who says:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

Even the base level allowance doesn’t come close to covering actual costs. We are being asked to not only provide 24/7 care to traumatised children but to pay for their basic needs out of our own pockets.

No wonder they are leaving in droves. No wonder it is that I have case after case of complex needs, of different emails that come into my office where foster carers simply do not feel supported. They wrote to me saying ‘We need your help’:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

The system is unsustainable. Carers are leaving faster than we can recruit them. Those of us who remain are being asked to do the impossible: provide therapeutic, trauma-informed care while being financially penalised for doing so and while being denied the resources and support we need to help these children heal.

This is a system in crisis. This is a system that, while there are ambitions in this bill and ambitions in the prior bill, is broken – that needs more than ambition to fix. This is a system that we on this side of the house are determined to fight for – for these vulnerable children, these children who deserve to be protected under our care. This bill allows the government to look active without actually being accountable. It allows ministers to table plans and progress reports while avoiding responsibility for outcomes. It creates a structure that can generate significant administrative activity without guaranteeing meaningful change for the children it is meant to serve. Children in care do not need another framework. They need safe placements, stable relationships, timely services and a government that is prepared to accept responsibility when things go wrong. This bill does not deliver that, and while the opposition will engage with it responsibly, we will not allow it to be used as a shield.

 Nathan LAMBERT (Preston) (11:18): I rise in support of the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025. I might, if I can, turn to some of the comments by the member for Warrandyte, maybe in chronological order. I suppose we can at least agree with the comments she started on. I was pleased to hear her comments about the dedication and the hard work and the professionalism of our child protection workers. I am not sure if the member for Warrandyte was here, but I had a slightly different exchange with the member for South-West Coast on a previous bill, the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025. There seems to be a bit of a difference of opinion between the member for Warrandyte and the member for South-West Coast, as in fact we saw recently apparently a disagreement of opinion between the member for Warrandyte and the Liberal candidate for Malvern on the subject of housing. But on both those topics I agree with the member for Warrandyte and thank her for her contribution on that particular front.

I was also pleased to hear that the opposition will be supporting the bill and, as the member for Warrandyte said, are supporting the ambition of the bill – indeed its noble intentions, as she called them. She did, as members have just heard, set out what sounded like the outline of a further very significant reform program, and I just hope that further speakers from the opposition will provide more detail on this significant reform program they are apparently announcing today.

Certainly, I will make it very clear, as all government members know, that this is not our first bill in the children’s portfolio – I think it is Minister Blandthorn’s ninth bill in this portfolio; I am sure it also will not be her last – and we look forward to any further suggestions coming from the opposition in terms of future reforms. But as the member for Warrandyte is aware, this bill implements a very specific program, one that is well known in the sector and has a well-known history, particularly in Scotland, where it is called the corporate parent scheme. It has been in effect there, I think, for 12 or 14 years, for a significant period of time and, I should add, has achieved or has contributed to a very significant reduction in the number of children in care in their system. They do have a different system, but that significant reduction in care holds out great promise, I think, for the particular bill that we have here in front of us today.

The member for Warrandyte talked at great length about accountability and effectively claimed that the accountability mechanisms in this bill were meaningless, because while the reporting components were mandatory, actions were not mandatory and people could not take a legal action through courts or through an appeal process to enforce actions. I would point out to the member for Warrandyte and to the opposition that in fact that is the character of many accountability mechanisms in government, indeed ones we are all very familiar with. To just take an obvious example, question time does not create legally enforceable actions. You cannot take a minister to court or through another appeal process because they do not take an action out of question time. I do not think any of us would suggest that question time is not valuable to our democracy. We would not suggest that the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee hearings are not valuable to our democracy. I could go on and on about many, many government programs where we have seen very significant, positive accountability and transparency outcomes that have led to actions, even though there is not strictly a mandatory requirement for people to implement those actions. I would suggest to the member Warrandyte that that is in fact the nature of most of our transparency and accountability mechanisms. There is certainly good reason – which I will come to – for that particular design element of the bill in front of us today.

I will address also the member for Warrandyte’s comments on collaboration. She may, I hope, have noticed that the Premier, Jacinta Allan, has made this an absolute focus of her work in this area. The Premier knows of course that the development and wellbeing outcomes of a child are not separately the product of their education, their health, their family circumstances, their housing or their cultural circumstances but are the result of all those things interacting. That is why she has established the children’s portfolio in the way she has done. That is why, to her great credit, she has brought together the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, the Department of Education and the Department of Health in this one portfolio so that we can do exactly that. I would make the point to the member for Warrandyte that, as many of us know from our working lives, it is sometimes said that when everyone is responsible, nobody is responsible, and there is great value in making a single person know they have a single requirement to do. One of the strengths of this bill is it very clearly sets out the supporting stable and strong families partners – the specific people who have obligations – and gives them very specific obligations in order to ensure that we will get those reports. Of course, all of those people will collaborate in order to get to the mandatory outcome areas that are set out in the bill, but I think that direct, one-on-one accountability is a feature of the bill, not a flaw.

Finally, if I can, the member talked about consultation, and I do not believe her facts were correct. Having said that, she was also somewhat vague in her language. I would point out to her that the nature of the bill that we have in front of us is that it sets out what is to be achieved. We can all read the mandatory outcome areas, and it is very clear what we are trying to get to. It very deliberately does not set out the ‘how’; that is left for department heads, for ministers, for the Chief Commissioner of Police and the other partners to determine, and they will no doubt determine it in ways that involve a consultation. They will – and I think this is directly in the bill – determine it in ways that involve self-determination for our First Nations people. Of course, all of us read the Yoorrook for Justice report, which touched on that particular topic – well, it did not touch on it; it covered that topic in significant detail. That ‘how’ is to be decided, and that is an important part of the way that this particular bill is designed.

As the member for Warrandyte herself conceded, the fundamental aim taken from the Scottish corporate parent example, which she specifically referred to, is one upon which the sector agrees, we agree and she herself said she agreed in her opening remarks on the bill. She said she supported the ambition and its noble intention. If she supports the outcome, as she has said, then she should surely be happy with the fact that we have set that outcome down in stone, in legislation, whilst leaving the ‘how’ of how a department or a minister or the Chief Commissioner of Police or anyone else tries to get to that outcome as something that is to be determined by them in the plans they produce under this bill and then the reports that will come here for all of us in Parliament to read.

I will turn to some of the other remarks towards the end of the member for Warrandyte’s speech in a moment. I suppose, just as an important point of clarification, I have talked about the supporting stable and strong families (SSSF) partners that are involved in this bill, but I think it is very important to be clear about the groups who will be supported through the bill: children under 18 who are either currently involved in the child protection system or have previously been; children under 18 who have previously received services from a community service as defined in the act, or those who require such care; children whose primary family carer meets those criteria; as the member for Warrandyte said, care leavers who have left the care of the secretary of the department and are under the age of 25; and then finally, parents and family members of children subject to family preservation orders and family reunification orders. As anyone familiar with the area will know, there is significant overlap between those categories I have just gone through, and they do describe children and young people in a wide variety of circumstances. As the member for Warrandyte touched on, often those children or young people are being supported by wonderful kinship carers, foster carers, permanent carers and other carers. Very often they are being supported by fantastic staff through our child protection system or community service teams or family service teams. But as all of us as MPs know, sometimes those children are facing very, very difficult circumstances, and I know they are the driving force behind the minister’s reforms in this area.

The other day we had an unfortunate video circulated that sensationalised public housing in Reservoir, and part of it was that the people making the video went into some unoccupied, untenanted buildings and showed pictures of the squatting that had been going on. We went down and had a look, as a result of that video, at a couple of other properties. It was very, very confronting to walk into these properties and see smashed furniture, smashed windows and drug paraphernalia and to see, as I did in one, children’s books – a My First Numbers book, those books for young children – and to think of the circumstances that that child might have been facing. The member for Warrandyte touched on some other very confronting circumstances. They are the driving rationale for why it is that the minister is bringing this reform forward.

We know that when you see those very confronting circumstances, they are the product of multiple factors. They are not because one thing has gone wrong for that child or that young person, because lots of things together have gone wrong. That is why we have the bill and why I think the minister is to be credited for bringing a bill forward that requires all of us, across all of government, across the child’s health, across their education, across their housing, across their cultural circumstances, across their family circumstances, across their need for cultural recognition and the need for Aboriginal self-determination, if that applies – all of those things are in the bill before us. I think her push for a whole-of-government response that recognises the complexity and difficulty of some of those most challenging circumstances is absolutely to be commended. I think the bill is a fantastic piece of work, and I commend it to the house.

 Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (11:28): I also rise to speak on the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025. I do not envy your role, Acting Speaker. This is going to be a huge few hours, but it is important to make sure that all of our opinions and debate go towards improving the lives of very vulnerable children, as well as foster carers and the whole support system. So I appreciate your role in navigating the next few hours.

There is nothing a government does that is more important than protecting children who cannot protect themselves. When the state removes a child from their home, it does take on the role of a parent; it is not a supervisor, not a coordinator, but a parent – someone to nurture it, to keep it safe and to make sure it has the best opportunity in life. It is a hard role. As all of us as parents know, you always wonder if you are doing a good job. But if the state takes on that role, that is the expectation as well. It is an extraordinary power that comes with extraordinary responsibility, because if we get it wrong, those consequences last a lifetime, and it can go on and have a generational impact.

[NAMES AWAITING VERIFICATION]

I want to start by acknowledging the foster carers across Victoria, including many in my electorate, who open their homes to children they have never met before and love them as their own. They attend school meetings, they manage trauma and they sit through sleepless nights and difficult behaviours and do it all while navigating a very complex system that often makes their job harder and not easier. I want to take this moment to thank Michelle in my electorate, Michelle from Murchison, who has fostered 15 children – a remarkable woman who reached out to me and said ‘I really need you to understand the cracks and the issues in the system’ as she stepped away from being a foster carer after changing the lives of 15 children. She inspired my work with a parliamentary intern, Sheridyn Sandford, who did a report for me focusing on regional carers and the challenges that we have keeping out-of-home care strong in Victoria. What went on to become research to inform changes for regional foster parents was quite alarming about the neglect of our foster parents, the issues around payments and the cost that is incurred, and why we have seen such a rapid decline in foster parent carers in Victoria. Foster parents are the backbone of the system and we must listen to them at every step of the way, but too many are walking away, as we have heard.

This bill introduces the supporting stable and strong families scheme. On the surface, as we have heard, it sounds good. It is a whole-of-government approach – tick – with shared responsibility across departments and plans to improve those outcomes. No-one in this place is going to disagree with that ambition, but we need to make sure it is practical, it is effective and it involves speaking to those that it is going to actually impact, because ambition is not reform. We heard that from the member for Warrandyte. Who are we speaking to to make sure it is actually going to have a tangible impact on the lives that this legislation is going to impact? We cannot just be focused on more bureaucracy if we are already hearing from the foster carers that that is not working or about the children in residential care that that is not working. It does not create enforceable rights for children, it does not require departments to act and it does not compel agencies to work together, so it does not fix the real problems pushing children into unsafe and inappropriate placements. It risks becoming another structure in a system that is already failing. No-one can argue that the system is failing in Victoria, because the stories are heartbreaking and they are too frequent.

The biggest issue raised with me by carers, caseworkers and organisations is that the system is too fragmented. If a child needs housing support, that is one department; mental health support, another department; school support, another department; and family violence, another department. Everyone has a role, but in this legislation no-one is responsible. The bill says agencies should collaborate but it does not require them to, so if a department fails to deliver what is promised, nothing happens. There is no recourse for the child, no avenue for the carer and no consequence for a system that is failing our vulnerable children. That is the central weakness here, and that is something I think that the government must listen to, because we come with good faith that we want to protect our most vulnerable children. They do not need more plans and they do not need more bureaucracy; they need a system that is helping them and listening to them.

Last year I had the privilege of attending the opening of Odyssey Victoria’s Circuit Breaker rehabilitation program in Molyullah in my electorate. My family have had a really close association with this facility, which is absolutely a circuit breaker. It allowed my sister to be reunified with her children after my parents stepped in to help her through a really, really hard time. She is remarkably brave, and she stepped up and asked for help when she needed it. I met so many parents like her. It is so brave to make that hardest decision a person can make. I could not comprehend being that brave to say, ‘I can’t parent my children right now, but I really want to; I need to, but I need to make sure I am healthy enough to do that first.’ They stepped away from parenting so they could become healthy again. This was not because they did not love their children; it was because they loved their children that they did that.

Every single parent I spoke to was there for one reason – to reconnect with their children and be the parent that they know they need to be. They trusted that temporary care, properly supported, would protect their children while they rebuilt their lives, and that is what the child protection system should be, not bureaucracy but a bridge back to family, to allow them to get healthy enough and be the parents that they know they can be.

The risk, the crisis in the bill, is that it does not address so many of the issues that we are actually talking about. It is actually adding more bureaucracy, and we are losing foster carers at such an alarming rate. Carers are telling us they are undervalued, unsupported and financially stretched, and many effectively subsidise the state to care for its own children. When carers leave, children do not disappear, they end up in residential care – children under 12 in residential care units. Something is wrong. We need them in homes. We need them nurtured and loved.

This bill does nothing to address the workforce collapse in family-based care. There is no meaningful action on carer support, no structural change to recruitment and retention, no serious resourcing reform. We cannot fix child protection while ignoring the people who actually care for the children. We have had strategies before. We have had Parliament intern reports before. We have had plans before, and we have had reports. The same issues keep getting raised, and we are skirting around the edges when it comes to substantial reform, with workers spending more time navigating the process than helping families and carers spending more time filling out forms than supporting their children.

Young people leaving care say they fall into a gap the moment they turn 18. The bill expands recognition of care leavers to 25, and that is welcome.

[NAME AWAITING VERIFICATION]

I want to do a shout-out to Alex, a branch president in the Nationals, who has also guided us. He was a foster child himself, and he spoke so passionately at one of our state conferences about the need for that safety net post 18. He is a remarkable human, because he had remarkable foster carers that carried him through his young, formative years.

A young person does not need to be recognised as vulnerable. They need housing, they need mental health support and they need stability. One of the most concerning elements in this legislation explicitly allows agencies to prioritise their existing duties over these responsibilities. Every moment coordination becomes difficult, costly or inconvenient, departments can simply say their primary obligation comes first. That is deeply concerning.

Please, we actually need reform, and we need to make sure that we measure success in the child protection space by outcomes in children’s lives, not reports on a table, because every time we prioritise process over people, a child in Victoria is paying the price. This legislation is a step, but it is not the reform the industry is crying out for.

 Nina TAYLOR (Albert Park) (11:38): We are all agreed, I would hope, on the premise and the fundamental underpinning of the imperative of reforms in this space, and that is to provide the best protection and stable homes for Victorian children. The vulnerability element goes without saying. I would like to think that there is a positive and definitely good will. This is more than goodwill, I say, an underpinning of the driver to see the best possible outcomes now and into the future.

I will pick up on some points raised by the opposition. I think it is important for the purposes of debate here that we really examine what this bill is seeking to deliver. Firstly, there was a point raised by the member for Warrandyte regarding the issue of residential care. Just to note for the Parliament: for children in residential care the government invested $548 million in the 2023–24 Victorian budget, and this is the biggest single investment in care services in a decade to improve outcomes for children and young people in residential care, recognising the incredible importance of investing in this space.

From 1 July 2025 all residential care homes in Victoria have been funded to deliver a therapeutic model of care and provide children and young people with access to therapeutic supports. Therapeutic specialists help staff understand how past trauma is impacting on behaviours and develop plans to identify the supports needed to address the causes and respond to the behaviours. I just also reassure the member for Warrandyte that that is part of these reforms. We are not only focusing on residential care, and I was not sure if that was what the member was seeking. That is part of this whole reform that we are bringing forward here today. I just say that is a key focus as part of these reforms.

I should emphasise that the bill proposes to introduce a new model of shared responsibilities across the Victorian government to improve outcomes for at-risk children, young people and families. As has been stated, it is modelled on Scotland’s successful corporate parenting approach. There has been very careful and prudent evaluation of a model which has proven to be successful in Scotland; hence this is what is backing in the reforms that we are bringing about here. It is a new model. I do want to emphasise that. It makes clear that supporting vulnerable children and young people is a whole-of-government responsibility, not just for the Minister for Children – factoring in that with children there are so many different elements that can go right or can go wrong, whether it is being able to get to school every day, getting appropriate nourishment or getting the love, care, support and medical care et cetera that they need and deserve.

I am a little bit confused by the opposition stating that they basically are not supporting parliamentary processes that have been long established. It is a little bit confusing.

Mathew Hilakari interjected.

Nina TAYLOR: Yes, they do not want a plan. It is just sounding a little bit loose. I know there was a concern about operational matters. The plans actually proceed, feed, nurture and support the operational implementation. That is a very decent and fundamental process. I would have thought, when you are talking about accountability, having a reference point as a minimum, I am saying, is absolutely fundamental. I am not sure what the alternative is that they are proposing. I do want to explore this issue, because it has been a recurrent theme raised by those opposite in terms of accountability. Each minister will be required to table a supporting stable and strong families progress report. It is not only the plan but the progress report in Parliament and the conclusion of each supporting stable and strong families plan reporting on the progress against the actions within the portfolios. That is in this Parliament. That enables, I would have thought, based on precedent, a considerable element of scrutiny, and it allows for all in this chamber to evaluate those reports and the outcomes against the plan. Stating that this is merely a noble ambition I think is fundamentally querying the processes of our democracy and what we all agree to in terms of being part of this democratic institution that we are here in today. I know that might seem a fairly large and encompassing point to make, but I just think when they are repudiating parliamentary processes they might wish care to be taken, because it may be that in future they wish to lean on those processes that they are fundamentally devaluing in this moment.

To ensure there is adequate monitoring of progress between supporting stable and strong families plan periods, outcome measures across government will be prescribed in regulations, which responsible individuals will be required to have regard to in their plans and tracked in their reports. What are the areas that are going to be tracked? Outcome measures will be across health, education, justice and housing. I know in matters such as housing the fundamental element is obviously having safe shelter. These are the areas where outcomes will be specifically measured, and I will go further: Aboriginal self-determination, employment and other prescribed areas.

It is being spelt out here, and that in itself, let alone the progress reports that will be delivered in Parliament, is actually spelling out the accountability frame. So I hope that that allays some of the concerns that are being raised in a way that I think could distort not only the intention but the trajectory of this bill’s implementation – because we know that there are many very hardworking people in child protection who do an incredible job, day in, day out. We know it is not from 9 to 5, it is a 24/7 role for those foster carers as well, and it is absolutely fundamental that they are supported. This is why we are making this a whole-of-government responsibility, recognising that we do need to do things differently, hence this new model.

I also want to speak to that element of consultation. During discussions with stakeholders on the bill, they spoke to the importance of partnership and working together to achieve positive change, both for individual families and Victorian community more broadly. In discussions with members of the Aboriginal Children’s Forum, members spoke about parallels in Aboriginal culture, the importance and strength of community and shared obligations to raise children and assist those doing it tough. As one member of the Aboriginal Children’s Forum put it, when Aboriginal people gather around the campfire, everyone is expected to bring something. Just speaking to the central tenets of the spirit within which that this these reforms are being brought forward, I should say since the bill was introduced to the Parliament it has also been welcomed by stakeholders such as the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare and Anglicare Victoria. I am not sure how the opposition view those particular stakeholders, but they have certainly endorsed the reforms that are being brought forward in the chamber. The Ministerial Youth Advisory Group described the importance of making significant and lasting difference to children and young people, providing a launch pad for the next chapter and delivering both roots and wings for those in need. As one member simply put it: together we thrive.

Just on that aspect of consultation, I think that was perhaps severely sledged by the member for Warrandyte and I think it devalued the incredible input of various stakeholders who have had their role in terms of informing the fundamental tenets of this bill. I think we should take a little bit of care when we are considering how such reforms come about, noting that we are absolutely dedicated to driving the best possible outcomes for Victorian children, particularly those who are unfortunately in very vulnerable situations. I would hope that the opposition will come to see that there are legitimate parliamentary processes that back in our democracy and that continue to be valued, making sure, as is stipulated by this bill, that those progress reports are put before the Parliament and that there are direct measures in terms of outcomes that can be scrutinised by all. I have confidence in moving forward.

 Roma BRITNELL (South-West Coast) (11:48): I rise to speak on the Children’s Youth and Family Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025. At the outset, let me say the intention behind this bill is good. No-one in this place disagrees with the concept of strong and safe families. But when the state takes the responsibility for a child, responsibility for the child’s wellbeing should extend beyond protection to housing, to health, to education, justice and employment. We on this side of the house believe that is obvious and moral. But aspiration without accountability is not reform. Cooperation without responsibility is not protection. And legislation that relies on goodwill rather than obligation for outcomes does not keep children safe. With this government’s track record of disorganisation and drift, a plan that relies entirely on departments to voluntarily cooperate without binding duties, without consequences for non-performance and with wide-open escape clauses looks less like reform and more like another glossy binder for the shelf – more spin.

This bill is the second major child-related legislation by this government in the past six months, yet neither addresses the catastrophic failures of the Victorian child protection system – failures confirmed by my own personal involvement with children, carers, parents, frontline workers and police and also reiterated by the member for Warrandyte in her findings, as she has been talking with similar groups. It is heartbreaking, it is heart-wrenching, what we hear, and it is impossible to not feel completely confronted by it, as the member for Warrandyte very capably articulated in her lead speech.

Those who actually experience the system tell us it is broken, it is overwhelmed, it is siloed and it is failing the very children the state has assumed the role of parent and protector for. This is a system in crisis and a government that is failing our most vulnerable children, and the evidence is clear. I suggest that the member for Albert Park go and talk to the families, talk to the children and talk to the workers. They are at their wits’ end, and they are caring people who just want to help. This government has been responsible for child protection for more than a decade, and in that 10 years we have seen escalating numbers of children entering care – an explosion of residential care – rather than the loving arms of a family-based placement like foster care, because the system is not supporting those people and they are fleeing from the system, not because they want to but because they have to. They cannot afford to stay in it. They are unable to look after a child without the appropriate allowance, and they are not getting that.

There is a chronic workforce shortage. Children are disengaged with education. There are reports to the government that demonstrate that. One child I know who has been in the system from 12 years of age who turns 18 soon has not been to school for that whole time. Untreated mental health issues actually plague some of these children; they are going completely unaddressed. Rampant drug use and addiction are absolutely infiltrating particularly residential care facilities. Despite what the government say, that is exactly what is happening, and the workers tell me. One woman who actually runs some of these places said to me, ‘You couldn’t say every young girl is involved in prostitution’ – I will say it for what it is – ‘but almost all’; they were her words to me. Sexual exploitation and sexual assaults are occurring within these state-run facilities. It is not an unusual occurrence, it is frequent. Yet after a decade of failure what is being offered to this Parliament is not structural reform, not enforcement standards and not mandatory accountability, but a weak and loose framework encouraging departments to work together – well, we would all like that.

On paper the bill establishes a supporting, stable and strong family scheme. It designates ministers, department heads and chief commissioners of police as partners. It defines a target cohort. It requires two-year plans and then two-year progress reports to the Parliament, and it sketches big outcomes in areas of health, education, housing, employment, justice and Aboriginal self-determination to be tracked by future measures – still to be defined, I might add. But the bill explicitly does not create any enforceable rights for children, families or carers. It cannot be relied upon in civil proceedings. It does not override existing statutory duties or powers. It does not require action where scheme responsibilities conflict with existing portfolio priorities and it does not compel ministers or departments to implement the actions in their own plans. Ministers must prepare plans, but joint planning is optional. Collaboration is encouraged but not required. That is the very definition of a silo: everyone writes a plan, nobody has to line them up, and when priorities collide the bill tells departments to follow their normal business first. There are no new powers to require coordination, reconcile conflicts, direct action or hold anybody to account. In other words, it is useless. It is procedural rather than directive – plans and reports, no teeth, no way of making sure outcomes occur and a child is cared for and protected, which is actually the purpose of child protection. I will repeat it: no way of making sure outcomes occur and that a child is cared for and protected.

We are talking about basics such as going to school or not being sexually assaulted. Wow – where have we come to that I am saying that here in the Parliament, that that is something I am saying? ‘Please help. Please stop.’

If you want to understand why cross-government cooperation is unlikely, just start there. This bill creates responsibilities and then makes them optional the moment they become inconvenient. That is not a lever of collaboration, it is a manual for avoidance. Experience shows us bureaucracy retreats into silos. I think we have all said it and we have all seen it. Responsibility is deflected and children fall through the cracks. That is what we see every day in the state of Victoria. Children need decisive actions, they need accountability and they need strong outcomes.

Stakeholders warned that at its weakest this framework could do little more than make high-level plans and reports with no meaningful change. The bill’s own analysis concedes that the practical impact will depend on the quality of the plans, the willingness of the portfolios and the future resourcing decisions. Well, let me tell you: the police are willing. They are standing ready to act, but they do not have the legislation to be able to do that. That is why this bill is a bill without any teeth.

Let me tell you about a young person who I have been dealing with – and this is an example that demonstrates the utter failure of this system. A child who was 16 last year was placed in a secure welfare unit for her own protection, and yet despite this, she was picked up from that secure unit – that was her own home – by a man in his mid-30s who had an intervention order out against contact with the child. Let that sink in: a child in state care in a secure placement collected by an adult man. What do you think goes on? These young girls are fooled into believing these men care for them. They are children who are starved for attention. You can just imagine it: ‘I love you, but I need you to do this for me. If you can do this, we can get the drugs and we can have so much fun.’ You can just hear it being played out. And this is what she has told me. Of course this is pure sexual exploitation, and the police do not have the legislative tools to stop this ongoing sexual exploitation. To be completely honest, it is not anything other than state-sanctioned sexual assault. The state are failing to protect her and the state have not intervened. She will speak out. She tells me she will speak out, but she also says she is not allowed to. One of the workers who is working with her wants to speak out, but the government is strong in saying no and not allowing it. As the member for Warrandyte clearly articulated as well, they are being stopped from telling what should be told.

So this is not a bill that, if it passes, will do any more than produce plans, more reports and no change where it really matters for our vulnerable children in homes who cannot be cared for in the environment the government has put in place, so we should pause the self-congratulations and strengthen the substance. We should put outcome measures in place now and put the child at the centre of care.

 Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (11:58): I say to the member for South-West Coast: if you are aware of laws being broken in this state, you have an obligation to report it to police. You have an obligation to do it, especially in cases of sexual assault of children and especially in cases where drugs have been dealt. I say that to all members as a standing matter.

Nicole Werner: On a point of order, Acting Speaker, the speaker need not labour the point when it has already been done.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): There is no point of order. It is a matter for debate.

Mathew HILAKARI: I think my point is made. Members, if they are aware of criminality, should report it immediately.

The member for Warrandyte had 30 minutes as a lead speaker to put forward the new ideas of the opposition, and what was there? There was 30 minutes of observation of the problems. There was 30 minutes of identifying the problems. There was 30 minutes of gazing at those problems, but no solutions. Not a single one was put forward. Not a single idea was put forward on how this system can be improved in this state – and it does need improvement. It is certainly not perfect. It is far from it, this system.

It has workforce who are working hard every single day within it. But we are not blind: this system does not achieve all the goals that we seek to achieve – to keep young people safe, to see them have the life that we all hope that they can have. But the observation of the member for Warrandyte was that she has no solutions. That was her contribution to this place. She said, ‘Ambition does not mean reform.’ She does not even have ambition for reform. There are reforms right in front of her. I see that the member for Warrandyte, thankfully, is supporting the bill in front of her today, but she put forward no reform whatsoever – an observation of the problem, a gazing at the problem, an identification of the problem, but no solution whatsoever. This is part of the solution. It is not its entirety. It is not its whole – of course not. We will continue to address the challenges of keeping young people safe. We will keep bringing bills to this place. As the member for Preston mentioned, this is the ninth bill of this minister that has been brought forward to this place, and it will not be the last. But just to observe the problems is not good enough for members in this place. Just to observe them is not good enough.

I want to bring us to the bill itself. The bill identifies and has a focus initially on those children who are under the age of 18 who are or have been child protection clients. It will be focused on children under the age of 18 who are receiving or have received or require but are not receiving services from community services, those under the age of 18 whose primary family carer is receiving or has required services from community service organisations across this state, care leavers who have left the care of the Secretary of the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing under the age of 25 and parents and family members of children subject to family preservation orders and family reunification orders. This is the starting point – this is the starting focus of the changes that we are making in this bill. Those opposite would say that there are no accountability measures in this bill. I am very surprised by that, because there is a really clear setting out of plans that the police commissioner, departments and secretaries are required to put towards this Parliament and, two years later, an assessment of how those plans have worked, whether they have worked, what achievements have been made and those things where we have failed and we need to improve and reset our ambitions and our standards. The initial focus of the scheme is also specifically on children for whom the Secretary of the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing has parental responsibility. This is an incredibly important point because this state so often is the parent for so many children – and too many. I think that is one thing that we can all agree on in this Parliament: there are too many people in the care of the state. Our focus is to make sure that those people in the care of the state have the best life that they can be set up for as possible. That is why the focus of the scheme will be on this subset of children first, who have the highest need.

Budgets set out what your ambition is and what you care about. We will have a budget later on this May, and the last six budgets in this state have put $4.4 billion towards child protection and family service portfolios. What I did not hear from those opposite is their announcements of what dollars they will be setting forward. They talked a lot about the current payments to those people who are doing extraordinary jobs in foster care. Their announcement was not that they will pay them more. It is just an observation of the problem.

Nicole Werner: I’m not announcing it to you, buddy.

Mathew HILAKARI: No, that is right. There was an observation again from those opposite not about the dollars that they will put forward but that it is too low. I look forward to their announcement. They did not announce it today, but I do look forward to their announcement sometime soon to have more to say about their future ambition. Government is not just about observing a problem, it is about doing something about those things. In the 2025–26 budget we supported $14 million to continue programs that support our frontline child protection services.

That particular subset of funding – this is part of that $4.4 billion I mentioned a moment ago – is about recruitment of staff both here in Victoria but also looking internationally, because in Victoria one of the real challenges we have – and we see this across every part of our economy, whether it is the police force, whether it is nursing or whether it is teaching – is getting the staff that we need. We have such a high level of engagement with employment in Victoria – a huge number of people in employment in Victoria and a reasonably low level of unemployment. We can always do more in that space as well. But we have had such strong engagement that people across every industry are trying hard to find the adequate and appropriate workers. So that $14 million was focused on recruitment, international recruitment, investment into kinship engagement coordinators, Aboriginal cultural support and awareness advisers and the child protection litigation office.

The closest that we actually got to an idea – a kernel of a policy – of those opposite was that young people should have a greater right and involvement in taking litigation against the state. I hope that that kernel of an idea forms into something real, because I just think that they need to have an understanding of the vulnerability of young people and the lack of resources of young people in state care, and understand that they are probably not the primary people to be going out there and seeking legal action unless they have a great deal of support to do so. But our focus of support is actually making sure that young people are as safe as they can be, rather than enabling litigation through the courts, which sounds like probably the least of the priorities of young people in care.

Since 2014 this government has put on about a hundred extra child protection practitioner roles every year, so we have had 1180 across the course of this government over the last 11-and-a-bit years. That means there are more people across our community undertaking this really important work, and I thank those workers, because this is one of the most important and one of the toughest roles that there are across our community. One of the important things, and I mentioned kinship carers and kinship engagement coordinators a moment ago, is the role of seeking to have less Aboriginal children in out-of-home care and reducing that over-representation. We know it is an over-representation, and the member for Geelong has always been a strong advocate in this place, and I thank her for her ongoing work in this area.

We were recently debating the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025, which acquits recommendation 25 of the Yoorrook for Justice report. That cultural understanding and that cultural engagement with Aboriginal people is of course a fundamental factor in making sure that young Aboriginal people feel part of our community, and that is probably one thing that we all want: every single person in this place wants to feel part of a community and safe in their home. This is just one piece of that effort to see that happen. I thank the minister and her team in bringing forward this bill to the house, and I commend its speedy passage.

 Rachel WESTAWAY (Prahran) (12:08): I rise to speak on the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025. As the shadow minister has outlined, the opposition will not oppose this bill; we support its intent. But I must be direct with this house: intent alone does not protect children. Intent alone does not keep families together. Intent alone does not support young people leaving care with nowhere to turn. This bill establishes a supporting stable and strong families scheme. It designates ministers, department heads and the Chief Commissioner of Police as partners in supporting vulnerable children. It requires them to prepare plans every two years to report to Parliament, as the member for Albert Park mentioned.

The principle is sound: when the state takes responsibility for a child, that responsibility should extend beyond the child protection portfolio. Housing, health, education and justice – all of these shape outcomes for vulnerable children and families. We also welcome the formal recognition of care leavers up to the age of 25, responding to longstanding advocacy from the Home Stretch campaign.

But let us be equally clear about what this bill does not do. It creates no enforceable legal rights for children, families or carers. It cannot be relied upon in court. It does not compel ministers or departments to actually implement the actions in their plans. Most remarkably, it contains an explicit escape clause. Departments can opt out of their duties to vulnerable children simply by claiming a conflict of interest with their core business. This is a toothless tiger with a built-in excuse for inaction. The government cites Scotland’s corporate parenting model as inspiration. What it fails to mention in this regard is that independent reviews found that the framework became overbureaucratic and process-driven. Scotland has since moved to something different, the Promise reforms, which emphasise relationships and outcomes over compliance and documentation. Yet this bill learns none of those lessons. Unlike the Scottish model, which mandates collaboration between public bodies, this bill makes joint planning optional, and it fails to combat the very siloed decision-making it claims to address. We risk creating mountains of well-meaning documentation while nothing changes for the children who need help the most.

I want to bring this back to my electorate of Prahran. My community understands that vulnerable children and families exist everywhere, not just in disadvantaged postcodes. Prahran is home to significant public housing, to families under pressure and to young people ageing out of care with absolutely limited support. We see the consequences when systems fail: young people couch surfing because there is no transitional housing, families in crisis because they cannot access mental health services and the devastating ripple effects when early intervention just simply is not happening. A plan tabled in Parliament every two years does not help a young care leaver in Prahran who cannot find stable accommodation. A progress report does not support a family in St Kilda East struggling to access the services that could keep them together.

This bill cannot be considered in isolation from the broader state of Victoria’s child protection system. According to the 2026 report on government services, Victoria spends approximately $1.2 million per child a year on residential care. That is the highest in the nation. It is over 17 times the cost of foster and kinship care. Total residential care spending reached $566 million for roughly 477 children. What are the outcomes from that record expenditure? Recent reporting paints an absolutely devastating picture. Residential care staff are reporting that they feel drug-affected at work from second-hand exposure to ice – ice being used by children in their care. A 13-year-old girl fell pregnant in the state’s care. Infants are dying in a system described as broken. We are spending $1.2 million per child a year, and children still are not safe.

Meanwhile the foster care system is buckling under pressure. Carers for high-needs children have had support slashed by $100 a day. Experienced foster carers, people who have cared for hundreds of children over decades, are walking away. One carer told the media, after 18 years and over 400 children in their care, ‘I have never felt so disregarded.’ When we lose foster carers, where do those children go – into residential care, at 17 times the cost with worse outcomes? This is a false economy of a system in absolute crisis.

Let us be clear about where the pipeline leads. Victoria Legal Aid’s data shows that two out of every five children placed in residential care face criminal charges within 12 months. Within two years every second child is being charged. The Sentencing Advisory Council found that 38 per cent of children sentenced or diverted in Victoria’s Children’s Court have been the subject of a child protection report. Forty-five per cent of young people in youth justice have been on a child protection order. We are not just failing these children, we are creating the next generation of offenders. A broken child protection system is feeding the youth crime crisis. This government talks tough on youth crime, but you cannot arrest your way out of a problem you created by neglecting vulnerable children.

You cannot bail your way out of community safety when the system that is meant to protect children is instead criminalising them. The Commissioner for Children and Young People said residential care is acting as a pipeline into the criminal justice system for the state’s most marginalised children, whose histories of trauma brought them into care. For that system to then deliver them to police and courts is a profound failure of the state. Every child we fail in care today is a headline about youth crime tomorrow. That is not a law and order problem, that is a child protection problem, and this government owns it.

Nowhere is this failure more stark than for Aboriginal children. Victoria has the highest rate of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care in the nation. Aboriginal children make up less than 2 per cent of Victoria’s child population, but they represent more than a quarter of all the children in care. The rate of Aboriginal children in care is more than 20 times the rate of non-Aboriginal children in care, and it is an indictment on this government. These figures are not improving; they are getting worse. The Yoorrook Justice Commission made 20 recommendations for urgent reform, yet here we are debating another bill that creates no enforceable rights and no real accountability. Aboriginal community controlled organisations have proven they deliver better outcomes when empowered to care for their own children, and this bill does nothing to accelerate that transfer of responsibility.

There are also serious questions about consultation on this bill. While the government claims wide engagement, stakeholders have told the opposition a different story. Many organisations were not consulted at all. Some first heard substantive details from the opposition and not the government.

While we debate this bill, the government has been quietly slashing funding for the very programs that actually work. Youth crime prevention funding has been cut by 46 per cent. Under the previous Liberal–National government nearly $13 million a year was invested in youth crime prevention. Under this government that has fallen to just $541,000 annually over the past three years. Programs like Boys to the Bush in Bendigo, like Operation Newstart – programs that engage at-risk young people before they offend – are being defunded or wound back. The government is spending billions on the consequences of failure while cutting investment in prevention. That is not a strategy, that is negligence. There is no evidence of meaningful engagement with foster carers, permanent carers, adoptive families or frontline child protection workers – the very people that are directly affected.

The opposition will assess whether there is scope to strengthen the bill in the Legislative Council. In the meantime I will be watching closely, because the measure of this bill will not be the plans it produces. It will be whether a single child is safer, whether a single family stays together or whether a single care leaver finds stable ground.

I would like to say at the request of our lead speaker and in line with her ‘not opposed’ position, whilst the quote provided by the Bendigo and District Aboriginal Co-operative is accurate, we acknowledge that this was an initial response and there was subsequent feedback on the matter, and that they are supportive of the legislation. I thank you for your time.

 Eden FOSTER (Mulgrave) (12:18): It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025 today, and I thank the Minister for Children for the extraordinary work she has done to bring these reforms to Parliament. I know that this is a particular area of passion for the minister, as it is for many of us here in this place, including me, and I welcome the opportunity to contribute to today’s debate.

This bill reflects our understanding that we have a responsibility and a duty of care to the children and families doing it tough across our state, and in recognising that we are acting on that responsibility. This practical reform is the latest in a series of amendments to the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 undertaken by this government, modernising and streamlining the stability provisions and protections featured throughout the standing legislation. Specifically the bill amends the Children, Youth and Families Act and the Child Wellbeing and Safety Act 2005 to put beyond doubt that supporting vulnerable children is not the job of one minister, one department or one service alone. It establishes a clear legislative framework that requires government to work together earlier, more deliberately and more effectively to support children, young people and families who are at risk of entering or are already involved in the child protection system.

Much has been made of the stonewalling and obstacles those seeking the support of their government services face.

When I was first selected as the member for Mulgrave this was a common refrain amongst constituents and one that I recognised from many years before that, whether it was as a councillor and later mayor of the City of Greater Dandenong or in my work as a school psychologist. The fault does not lie with any one government, but rather, the natural consequence of overlapping bureaucracies, powers and internal obstacles to co-working and communication between them.

I am proud to say that over recent years the Victorian government has made real progress in improving collaboration across portfolios. Departments have worked more closely, shared responsibility has been better recognised and existing resources have been used more strategically. One tangible example is the recognition of parents seeking family reunification as a priority cohort on the Victorian housing register, a change that acknowledges the central role safe and stable housing plays in enabling families to stay together or reunify safely. But what has also become clear is that goodwill and ad hoc cooperation, while serviceable, are not enough. Without a durable framework, collaboration depends too heavily on personalities, priorities and circumstances.

The bill responds directly to that challenge by creating an enduring whole-of-government approach that survives changes in ministers, machinery of government and policy cycles. By legislating the supporting stable and strong families scheme the bill formally recognises that when the state assumes responsibility for a child’s care, that responsibility extends across government. Housing, health, education, justice and policing are not peripheral to a child’s wellbeing. By contrast, they are central to it. This bill gives practical effect to that principle by embedding shared duties, integrated planning and accountability across government, drawing on the successful corporate parenting model used in Scotland. Far from inviting too many cooks to the kitchen, the intent is clear: intervene early, reduce the number of families drawn into the statutory system and shorten the time children spend in it when involvement cannot be avoided. As the minister has noted, in this way the bill complements the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025 reforms, which will extend the time available to parents to reunify with their children who are subject to a family reunification order made by the Children’s Court of Victoria.

This bill is not merely aspirational; it establishes a strong accountability framework, requiring ministers and senior officials to plan, act and report on how they are meeting their responsibilities to vulnerable children and families. Regular reporting to Parliament ensures transparency, while outcome-based measures make it clear that responsibility does not rest solely with child protection or the Minister for Children, but with government as a whole. This entrenches accountability, reduces operational opacity and fosters institutional memory for far longer than any minister, public servant or indeed family of interest will be in the system.

The name of the scheme, supporting stable and strong families, serves as a symbol not only of its purpose but also its values. It recognises that stability and strength do not come from crisis response alone but from sustained support, partnership and opportunity. That language was informed by extensive consultation, including powerful contributions from Aboriginal stakeholders, who spoke about longstanding cultural understanding of shared responsibility for raising children, and from young people with lived experience of the care system, who described the potential of these reforms to provide both roots and wings. I encourage each and every member in this place to read their contributions and reflect our individual obligations to our First Nations peoples in the context of this legislation and the broader call to action of Closing the Gap. It makes for powerful reading and has steeled my resolve to support this bill in its passage throughout the Parliament.

Under the scheme ministers, department heads and the Chief Commissioner of Police will be required to actively consider how their decisions affect children and families in the supporting stable and strong families group to develop and implement clear plans within their portfolios and to report publicly on progress.

Those responsibilities include improving access to services, promoting wellbeing and cultural identity, ensuring equality of opportunity and monitoring outcomes, again, with particular attention paid towards Aboriginal children and young people. The framework prioritises those with the highest needs, identified as children involved in child protection and recent care leavers, while allowing the focus to expand over time to include families at risk, strengthening early intervention and prevention. This ensures that the urgent does not overshadow the important and gives me significant hope that the public service will perform better in breaking cycles of estrangement and instability in our great state.

For too long the views and needs of the youth have been overlooked or undersold. In a past life, as I said previously, I was a school psychologist and saw firsthand the pain wrought by unstable family life and that even slight delays in processing, support and direction could bring families and displaced children to their lowest and most vulnerable state. I worked with a number of children in the child protection system. Having that stability is so important; for kids to know that there is an opportunity to be back with their families is so important. I do not often mention it in this place, but I too was a foster parent and saw just how important family connection is for our young people. I will not talk personally about my experiences for the sake of the privacy of the foster child that I had briefly. Maybe it is in my surname; maybe I was born for it. There may be an opportunity to go back to it after this place. A big shout-out goes to all of those foster parents out there, whether it is kinship care or someone that is just doing it because they want to help young children, young people and families. They do so much for our vulnerable kids. I know from my time as a foster parent, although brief, that it is a big sacrifice that many are making.

This bill supports those families, those foster parents and those young kids. Credit goes to the minister for putting together such an important bill for our community, for our most vulnerable. We all know that it takes a village to raise a child, and we are part of that village. All members of this place are part of that village, and we do every bit that we can to support those most vulnerable in our community. I commend this bill to the house.

 Tim READ (Brunswick) (12:28): I am speaking today on behalf of the Greens on the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025. Before I begin I want to acknowledge the contributions from both sides of the chamber that have been particularly strong, especially the last one from the member for Mulgrave.

This bill creates a legislative framework where ministers, the Chief Commissioner of Police and heads of government departments are jointly responsible for supporting the needs of children who have come into contact with the child protection system, care leavers and their families. It does this through the supporting stable and strong families scheme. The Greens support the policy intent of the bill and want to see system-wide improvements that provide stronger support for children in out-of-home care, care leavers and their families, but the government must guarantee that a shared responsibility does not become no-one’s responsibility.

I am sure all of us in this place want to see better outcomes for children and young people who have come into contact with the child protection system, especially for First Nations children and their families. In 2024 Aboriginal children were 20 times more likely to be in out-of-home care than non-Aboriginal children. Right now Victoria’s child protection system has removed about one in 10 Aboriginal children from their families. This over-representation is the worst in Australia and a national disgrace. We must do more to provide early, holistic and culturally safe supports to these children and their families, delivered by the Aboriginal community. Every effort should be made to reduce the trauma of removal in its first instance, and children and young people should be supported to remain safely with their families. Then, failing that, the amount of time children and young people spend in out-of-home care should be reduced to the minimum necessary to keep them safe and ensure an enduring reunification with their family.

The Commission for Children and Young People’s report In Our Own Words spoke to 200 children and young people in out-of-home care, and the report found too many children in state care experience instability, constantly changing placements, unsafe environments and a revolving door of workers, leaving them feeling unsupported and unheard. Children in residential care reported feeling particularly unsafe and isolated, with First Nations children experiencing cumulative harm, including disconnection from culture, kinship and community. A system meant to protect children is too often causing further harm. One 17-year-old told the inquiry:

DHHS take us out of our parents’ care for whatever reason and put us in a resi which is just as bad. […] If someone’s being taken out of someone’s care because there’s been violence, you don’t put them somewhere where there’s more violence – it causes more trauma …

A whole-of-government approach to support the best outcomes for children and their families is necessary to tackle the many issues we have in Victoria’s child protection system – issues like growing rates of disproportionate removal of Aboriginal children and young people from their families, a pattern which repeats the harm of the stolen generations and continues a painful colonial legacy that this state has a responsibility to confront and end.

However, the Greens acknowledge that this bill is a step in the right direction. There are potential benefits to the framework outlined in this bill. For example, where a parent has been directed by the courts to complete an alcohol or drug program as a condition of reunification but faces an eight-week waitlist to enrol, this framework could allow the relevant minister to seek additional funding to improve access to these services. The Greens are supportive of enhancing early intervention frameworks and building a system that works together at all stages to prioritise family reunification.

However, this bill lacks true accountability, has no teeth in its mechanisms and has no reporting on how the support is going to play out. If a minister fails to deliver on core actions in their Supporting Stable and Strong Families (SSSF) scheme plan, how will they be held accountable? In Victoria we already have many cross-government frameworks in place to improve the safety and wellbeing of children in care and to prevent their removal into care, but most remain largely unimplemented – for example, the out-of-home care education commitment, a partnering agreement between the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing and the Department of Education to provide extra supports for children in care so they can remain at school and thrive there. The Commission for Children and Young People reported, in their 2023 report Let Us Learn, poor implementation of this partnering agreement by child protection and schools alike, resulting in kids missing out on critical supports to help them stay engaged in learning. There is a risk that the legislative framework introduced by this bill once again could fail to deliver and that the blame for child protection failures may be shifted across ministers or, worse, onto families.

The Greens have also heard from stakeholders that there was a lack of consultation and meaningful engagement, in particular with Aboriginal stakeholders. The Greens remain equally concerned that the current drafting does not mandate a duty to consult with Aboriginal people through the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria; nor are SSSF partners required to engage with the Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People on the development of those plans. As I have already noted, Victoria has the highest rate of First Nations children in out-of-home care, almost twice the national average. Reducing this over-representation must be central to any child protection reform, not treated as an afterthought. The government has a duty, bound by the newly passed Statewide Treaty Act 2025, to embed Aboriginal self-determination into every aspect of child protection reform. We know the solutions to some of the issues in the child protection system already exist, and the Greens will continue to advocate for the implementation of all Yoorrook Justice Commission recommendations as well as those recommendations put forward previously in various reports by the Commission for Children and Young People. We also call on the government to work with the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and Djirra to implement the child protection notification and referral scheme model. Community-designed solutions are already on the table, and this Labor government has made a political choice not to prioritise or properly resource them.

While this bill is a small step in the right direction, we must first address the root causes of involvement with the child protection system: poverty, housing insecurity and family violence. Without properly funding prevention and community-based supports, no ministerial and department coordination framework will be enough. The Greens hold concerns about the bill’s ability to deliver effective outcomes, the risk of it becoming a tokenistic tick-box exercise and whether it will meaningfully support early intervention. The Greens will continue to call for real, enforceable outcomes for children and families. This bill must achieve what it intends: advancing children’s wellbeing and safety in practice, not just in principle.

 Josh BULL (Sunbury) (12:35): I am pleased to have the opportunity this afternoon to follow on and make a contribution on the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025, which goes to creating a legislative framework to improve collaboration across the government to improve outcomes for children, young people and families that are at risk and those that are involved with child protection. What we saw last year, and members have touched on these matters as well, are situations where we know our young people are exposed to significant and serious risk. We have a very important obligation to minimise those risks and to take the opportunities within all of our agencies to improve the system whereby collaboration is improved across the board. I note that the contributions that have been made thus far go to many of those references.

The objectives of the scheme, which are set out in a new section 20C of the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005, are: to support collective responsibility of a whole-of-government approach to child wellbeing and safety, to consider the wellbeing and best interests of vulnerable children and care leavers by supporting stable and strong families (SSSF) partners and responsibilities, to enable the early intervention and provide more timely and adequate services to support families caring for vulnerable children, to support preservation and family reunification for persons engaged with child protection, the coordination of a multi-agency approach to child wellbeing and safety and to promote enhanced accountability through those processes as well.

We know, and we have heard in the course of debate today, that there has been a considerable amount of work, both through extensive consultation and a number of different stakeholders that were worked through from June 2025 to October 2025 with a broad range of information sessions that were held, including with the Children’s Court of Victoria, the Commission for Children and Young People, the Ministerial Youth Advisory Group, community service organisations, legal stakeholders, Aboriginal community controlled organisations, the Victorian Children’s Council, the Victorian Council of Social Service and Kinship Carers Victoria, providing for those certainties in going forward. The department presented significant general information on corporate parenting and its responsibilities and its application to Victoria at the children and family sector forum in June 2025, which others have mentioned as well. This invited representatives from 85 sector organisations across the community: legal service organisations, Aboriginal-controlled organisations and peak bodies, as well as lived experience representatives, including representatives of peak bodies. They include the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare, the Foster Care Association of Victoria, Kinship Carers Victoria, Permanent Care and Adoptive Families and the Victorian Aboriginal Children and Young People’s Alliance.

The key point with this work in relation to lived experience goes to the Ministerial Youth Advisory Group being engaged during the development of the bill, and members have talked about the potential of these reforms to make significant and lasting differences to children and young people. Members spoke of ‘lifting up their lives’, ‘improving their launch pad’, ‘the next chapter’ and making sure that they work together to address a number of those barriers that have been identified, and working and moving forward as well.

Going to further opportunities for consultation if the bill passes, and this is yet again another important point, further consultation on priorities and proposed initiatives will occur through the initial implementation of the bill. The new section, which will be 15(2) of the Child Wellbeing and Safety Act 2005, will require a children’s services coordination board, which will consult with people with lived experience, and the board may also wish to seek further work on that.

There has, of course, been that important period of consultation that I mentioned earlier, which goes to the measures and the mechanisms that are contained in this bill that are overall important when it comes to safety improvements for standards going forward. The work that is being done is ongoing and continues. Making sure that the agencies are supported is something that the government stands committed to doing. We are making sure that the implementation and the work that is done via the consultation and the changes that are contained within the legislation before the house this afternoon go to making for an improved act. The amendments to the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 and the creation of that legislative framework, improving cross-collaboration and shared responsibilities across the government, are something that we remain committed to.

I want to take the opportunity, as a number of other members have done, to thank all of those that work in this very important sector; they do an incredible amount of work in supporting families and making sure that our agencies are supported in their work as well. What is really critical is continuing to invest in making sure, whether that be through the budget or whether that be through other programs and mechanisms, that our system is as robust and as strong as it can be, and that is something that we remain committed to doing. There are a series of provisions that are detailed – and they have been outlined at length by a number of other speakers – within this piece of legislation. But I do want to go back to that central work, that very important work, Acting Speaker, which I am sure you know within your local community and so many members know within their communities is central to providing for the best possible structure and system, knowing and understanding that these structures and systems are important in each and every way. What we remain committed to doing are those improvements and ensuring that that work continues to be done and that those matters are addressed as we move on and move forward.

The most important thing, of course, that needs to occur is the continual improvement process, and to be able to make these provisions in the legislation is very important. That becomes important work across governments, across ministers and department heads and involves the chief commissioner. Making those important provisions is something that we remain, as I mentioned earlier, committed to following through on, making sure that the work of the department and the work of all of our agencies is supported as we move on and move forward through this process.

The new section of the Child Wellbeing and Safety Act 2005 does require those amendments, those changes, to be embedded, and I think that that is a very important thing. We remain committed to ensuring that that work is sustained and continued. We remain committed to making sure that this work continues, because we know how important it is for local communities and individuals. It is something that the government, as I mentioned earlier, is committed to doing. More broadly, when it comes to supporting our young people, through the provisions that the Deputy Premier has within his portfolio of education, and also within health, we are providing for additional services and additional funding, ensuring that a range of programs and initiatives that take place go to those important provisions for young people. I am sure you know within your community, Acting Speaker, just how important those investments are. To be able to give a child the best start and give them the best life is something that is very, very important. Those provisions and that support, whether they be in the budget or through a whole range of other programs or initiatives, go to making for a better support system and a more safeguarded and better approach. We remain committed to those systems and that investment. This bill is yet another example of that.

I will just finish off where I started, and that is that making these provisions and providing for that support is something that we remain committed to. For all of those that have worked on the bill, I commend the bill to the house.

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (12:45): I am very pleased to be able to rise to speak on the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025. There is no member of this house that would oppose stable and strong families. No member would oppose better outcomes for vulnerable children, as we have heard from previous speakers, and no member would dispute that when the state takes responsibility for a child, that responsibility extends beyond a single department. In principle this bill recognises that and recognises something important: that child protection does not and should not operate in isolation. A child’s wellbeing is shaped by all of the factors we have heard about today: housing, health, education, justice and employment. So the intent of this legislation is sound, but as we heard from the member for Warrandyte earlier, and I cannot remember her exact words, good intentions are not the same as good legislation, and aspiration should never be mistaken for accountability.

This bill establishes the supporting stable and strong families scheme. It requires ministers and departments to prepare plans every two years, and it requires progress reports to be tabled in Parliament. It identifies outcome areas, as I mentioned – health, education, housing, justice, employment – and expands the advisory role of the Children’s Services Coordination Board. On paper that sounds comprehensive, but there is a central question: what happens if nothing changes? And that would be the worst outcome.

This bill expressly creates no enforceable rights, and it cannot be relied on in civil proceedings. It does not compel ministers or departments to act, either, and it provides a broad escape clause where responsibilities conflict with existing portfolio priorities. In other words, if this scheme competes with business as usual – and we have heard from previous members, starting with the member for Warrandyte, who has done an incredible amount of work on this bill – and if business as usual prevails, then that is a terrible outcome and that is a significant legislative weakness.

There has been a lot of talk around Scotland’s corporate parenting model, but again, aspirations are not the same as accountability and good legislation. What we have here is a lighter, less enforceable version. In Scotland the collaboration between agencies is mandatory. We often hear – and it is not just the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, although that is probably the primary one I hear most about – where departments tend to work in silos and there is no collaboration, or in fact sometimes there is inability within the frameworks to work collaboratively. There is that siloed work, which is an incredible barrier, especially when you have the tyranny of distance from the departments themselves. Here joint planning is still optional. It should be mandatory. The Scottish model is a good one. In Scotland public bodies have statutory duties. Here we have got planning and reporting requirements – just requirements; guidelines, if you will. That might create better documents, but is it going to create better outcomes? You would certainly hope so, because the stakeholders here have been clear in their caution. They support the intent, but they do want coordination. There needs to be that mandatory collaboration across agencies. They are concerned that this risks becoming another level of bureaucracy – and incredibly bureaucratic, more so than it is already – and risks plans becoming an end in themselves, which we see already with the amount of red tape that you have to work through.

That is something Victoria does not need – we do not need more red tape. We do not need more paperwork. We need earlier intervention, stronger supports and real collaboration.

In my electorate of Mildura – and this is what I am talking about with the tyranny of distance – we often see the consequences when systems do not align, when agencies do not collaborate and communicate, or will not because the frameworks do not allow them to. We see children sometimes placed hours away from their home in their local area because housing options are severely limited. We see kinship carers stepping up – grandparents in their 60s, 70s, even 80s at times – and navigating a complex system with minimal support. Often they are pointed online, and a lot of those grandparents do not have the resources to jump online and do what the bureaucracy wants them to do. In a lot of cases also they will not jump online, but more often than not they do not have the resources to or the knowledge. We also see families trying to reunify while stuck in unstable housing because of the lack of social housing, affordable housing and very, very low – in fact historically low – rental stock.

We see young people leaving care at 18 – I will get to that shortly – or even supported to 21 or 25 but still struggling to secure employment or safe accommodation. On that note, we are very, very spoilt – and I have spoken about MASP in this place before – in the Mallee to have the Mallee Accommodation and Support Program operating with the head office in Mildura, and they have extended their scope down into Swan Hill and down through the Wimmera as well. They were started by volunteers many, many years ago. They have just built another four units for assisted living. MASP do an incredible amount of work in the youth space and in the disability housing space – that transitional housing. They are there to fill the gaps that are left by silos. That is what is needed here, and that is what this bill does not provide. But the Mallee Accommodation Support Program – MASP, as they are affectionately known – do a remarkable job in all of that and in all of those areas. In fact what they do, because they are able to be community led, is if they get a grant for accommodation – and we saw this with Doug’s Place, which was named after the gentleman that set up MASP – and they receive a grant to build, they actually do it before time and well under budget to the point where they can build additional housing now because they are so proficient and manage their projects so very well. They can actually do things under budget to the point where they can build additional housing – that is remarkable. So we need less red tape. That is what allows that to happen.

If this bill results in housing departments genuinely prioritising family preservation and working with agencies like MASP – and I have spoken about MASP before – we do not need to reinvent the wheel. There are programs out there all the time, and MASP is just one. I just know it is the beacon of light and hope in my electorate, but organisations like that exist all over the state, and they work really well – in fact remarkably well – and are where people turn, oftentimes, rather than turning to the departments, because of course the departments in Mildura are often under-resourced to the point where the office is sometimes not open and the phones do not get answered, which leads to horrific outcomes that we see for vulnerable children in the Mildura electorate.

I did tell the member for Lara that I was not going to take my full 10 minutes. Obviously once again that has not happened and I have only got through the first page of my notes. But again, this is one of those bills – no-one in this place would oppose supporting stronger families and oppose supporting vulnerable children. That is our fundamental job in this place, to protect those most vulnerable.

 Ella GEORGE (Lara) (13:00): I too rise today to speak on the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025. I echo what the member for Mildura has just finished her contribution with: no-one in this place is opposing strengthening protections for vulnerable children, vulnerable Victorians. We have heard in contributions today an incredible amount of passion and care for children in Victoria, and I think this is something where, in this place, we can all put our political views and differences aside and agree to come together on an important issue in terms of supporting Victoria’s most vulnerable children, who do need our support. This is an incredibly important bill that is before the house today, because this bill has been introduced to help families reunite, to keep families together and to make sure that children can grow up in safe, secure and stable homes. Today we are talking about the stability of children in care and the supports and services that some families require for reunification.

I thank the Minister for Children, her office and the department for the work that they have done on this legislation but also on other legislation that they have put through this place in recent months. The member for Preston earlier mentioned that there are nine pieces of legislation that this minister has led that all go to supporting children and to strengthening our child protection system here in Victoria. That is a huge workload for a minister, and I commend the minister for leading this incredibly important work here in Victoria. I also thank all the stakeholders who took part in the consultation for this legislation, including sector organisations across community services, Aboriginal community controlled organisations and peak bodies, as well as lived-experience representatives. I know that this includes the ministerial youth advisory group, who engaged during the development of this bill and provided some very important views and perspectives to ensure that these reforms will make a significant and lasting difference to children and young people.

As others have noted in their contributions to this bill, there is nothing more important than protecting Victoria’s most vulnerable children in our roles as members of Parliament, and that is exactly what this government strives to do with this bill. The reforms in this bill are modelled on Scotland’s successful corporate parenting approach. This approach changes the traditional model, whereby supporting children and families at risk is the sole responsibility of child protection, to a new approach where every portfolio has a role to play. Whether it is education, health, housing or community safety, every minister and department and the Chief Commissioner of Police will be jointly responsible for improving outcomes for at-risk children, young people and families. This whole-of-government approach will aim to deliver a more coordinated approach and complement our government’s Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025, which we introduced in October last year, to create more opportunities for families to safely reconnect. Collectively these reforms are aimed at ensuring all Victorian children grow up in safe and stable homes and providing families with greater opportunities and support for safe reunification.

I am limited by time today, and I know everyone is eager to get to the lunchbreak, so I will keep my contribution brief. I would like to touch on the incredible support services that we have across the Geelong region and in the Lara electorate, where we are seeing the state government’s investment in local service providers. We have Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative, who offer a range of culturally appropriate supports for families experiencing family violence or needing to engage with the child protection system. Wathaurong also operate a youth hub in Norlane, which has become an important place for young people to gather and be supported by their community. Meli are another example of community service providers offering extensive family support, including parenting programs, foster care, family violence services, housing support and financial counselling. I thank these organisations for the incredible work that they do and thank all of their staff for their passion and commitment to supporting Victoria’s vulnerable children.

We have heard from many people and will hear from many more about the importance of this bill that is before the house today. It is clear there is much passion for this bill and care for Victoria’s children from people on both sides of this house. This bill aims to ensure that children and young people experience greater stability and safety, while empowering families to overcome challenges and thrive. I commend the bill to the house.

Sitting suspended 1:00 pm until 2:03 pm.

Business interrupted under standing orders.