Tuesday, 3 March 2026

 Georgie CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (16:41): This is the second bill we are debating in the house today, the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025, which leads on from the bill we have just finished. I am not going to repeat a lot of what I said in the previous debate. I think I made my points very clearly in that debate around the issues that were highlighted many years ago through the Cummins inquiry. Without labouring the point too much, what this bill does is seek to amend the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 to revise the legal framework governing children subject to protection orders, with the stated aim of maximising safe, timely and sustainable family reunification. It does a few things. Basically it is replacing the term ‘permanency’ with ‘stability’, and whilst that might not seem a lot to those that are not involved in the system, it actually does take away a lot of reform that was done in the past.

I will go back to the Cummins inquiry just very briefly, because the conclusion of the Report of the Protecting Victoria’s Vulnerable Children Inquiry did highlight, as I said in my previous speech in the previous debate, around the system goals and the major system reforms – and we have been talking about the framework that will come into place given what has just passed the house – looking at:

Reducing the impact of child abuse and neglect including addressing the immediate and long-term needs of the child …

I want to stress the ‘long-term needs of the child’: safety, health, developmental, education and for the child to be heard. And in the conclusion:

The Report concludes that there has been a significant failure to recognise the crimes of child physical and sexual abuse.

I think that is important, because far too often there are crimes that are committed against children by those that are closest to them. It continues:

The Report shows the way forward for this recognition, for holding perpetrators responsible, and for the protection of vulnerable children from these crimes.

The 10 major system reforms … contain major changes to address the contributing factors to child abuse and neglect and the potential for increased prevention through effective, coordinated early interventions.

Again, that is the key – effective, coordinated early intervention. It goes on:

This requires a whole-of-government strategic approach, driven at Cabinet level by government, supported by a strengthened Children’s Services Coordination Board –

and we have basically just debated all of this, given what has just been passed –

and overseen by a Commission for Children and Young People. The implementation of the Inquiry’s recommendations requires many parts of Victorian Government, its departments and agencies, and government funded CSOs to work together and share responsibility to protect Victoria’s vulnerable children.

I am putting that in at the start of this debate, given what we are about to debate now. I want to make the point again that out of that inquiry there was reform that was undertaken and it was for the best interests of the child. In the previous debate I spoke about some of the appalling situations that are occurring with children in state care – the exploding numbers and the vulnerabilities – so I am not sure that that ‘effective, coordinated early intervention’ that Cummins talked about has been undertaken for the past decade.

This bill replaces the term ‘permanency’ with ‘stability’, including a holistic definition of ‘stability’ to include legal, physical, cultural and relational stability. It changes the duration of the extension of a family reunification order when it is in a child’s best interests by enabling courts to issue an initial FRO for up to 24 months, which is doubling the timeframe from what it was – 12 months – allowing courts to issue extensions for orders when it is in the best interests of the child for additional periods of 12 months, with no limitation on the number of extensions. That is the issue that was identified a decade ago, that there was really no stability. There was no permanency to the decisions; they were languishing there for years in courts and those court orders just went on and on. There was an attempt to try and address that, to give that permanency for the child. What the bill also does is repeal the cumulative 24-month limit on FROs, removing the requirement to move toward permanent care if reunification has not occurred within that timeframe and is unlikely to occur.

It also abolishes the need for compelling evidence that reunification is likely in order to be able to extend an FRO, and it removes adoption from the hierarchy of case-planning objectives – that is, adoption is to no longer be an option for children in child protection. I looked at that and thought that was a bit curious. We know that there are fabulous foster carers, and I have certainly spoken to foster carers in my time as shadow minister who were doing such great work with those children in a loving, stable environment, and they were wanting to adopt and give children that love, care, stability and permanency, but they were not able to for one reason or another, as deemed by government. I do think that is a fairly rigid aspect. I do appreciate the harms that have been done in the past by adoptions, but I could not imagine being in that position, so I am very sympathetic to both sides. It is very difficult, and I do not think there is any easy answer, but I do know that there are many very good people out there who want to provide support to vulnerable children. I had a conversation not long ago with a healthcare provider who I had no idea had taken care of a profoundly disabled child as a young baby, and that young man – well, he is not a young man anymore; he is in his 30s – has been with that family for all that time. It was just a wonderful story to hear about the care being undertaken. I digress a little bit, because I do want to put on record that I think it seems to be a little inflexible, given some of the issues and the risks to a child that we are trying to prevent here and the goodwill of so many people.

Another key reform of this bill includes the best interests test update, which basically updates the child’s best interests test which magistrates use when creating care orders, to emphasise continuity and stability in care, including physical, cultural, relational and enduring stability. Permanency objectives replace ‘permanency’ with ‘stability’ in case-planning objectives, as I have mentioned. Adoption removal – I have just spoken about that. It removes adoption from the permanency hierarchy of case goals, implementing the recommendation from the 2021 inquiry into historical forced adoptions. Extension thresholds – the court must consider prior extensions, parental engagement and barriers to timely reunification. This bill mandates an independent review five years after full commencement, and transitional issues apply to amendments to ongoing proceedings, allowing immediate effect of new rules.

When this bill does come into effect it will give greater discretion to the courts in child protection cases – the discretion that was deliberately curtailed, if you like, in 2014. When the former coalition government introduced reforms, it was to limit the Children’s Court’s powers to stop children languishing in care and to ensure timely, permanent decisions. I referred to that before; sometimes they were languishing in care for many years and there was no permanency to those orders. That reform was designed to give that child stability and permanency. This bill reverses that safeguard, and it hands back the discretion to allow those unlimited extensions. Whilst we all understand that nobody wants to remove a child from their family unnecessarily – and they really do not; I think we all agree that the last thing we want to do is have children in state care – if that child is at risk of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, and that is often, sadly, the reason why children are removed, then I hope this bill does actually get this right. I know it is not easy, and I know that it is complicated. No two cases are the same; it is very complicated. But what this bill will do, by giving courts the ability to grant unlimited extensions on FROs, is risk prioritising parental rights over the child’s needs and their rights. Whilst I am a true believer in parental rights and parents having a say over their children, if it is a very dangerous, abusive environment where the child is not thriving, where the child is at risk or where the child is exposed to physical and psychological harm or exposed to things like parental drug use and abuse, I do have concerns around those needs and the risks for a child in that situation. It does risk, then, that child being kept in that cycle, if you like, through the child protection system and being in limbo and not having that permanency.

As I said, I have outlined some of the issues around why we are debating this bill, the history around it and what we were doing by putting reforms in place to try and give stability and permanency to children so that those decisions were made through the courts and they were not languishing from one order to the next. In saying that, I do understand that it is very difficult to manage these children, but what we do know about, as I previously highlighted, are the extraordinary numbers of child investigations. I think that is telling. I think that points to, as Cummins pointed out, why effective, coordinated and early interventions need to be in place. It is too late, given there are over 120,000-odd investigations taking place, with 11,000 children in the child protection system. These numbers have exploded, and these children are at risk. So there are concerns around how the government will monitor this, given those changes to the system, and how these numbers, hopefully, will come down and those children will be safe.

Whilst I do have concerns about the government’s approach over the last decade, there are a lot of things that need to be done. We heard in the last debate that finally we will get the data and that will be reported on a regular basis. We need that data. We need to actually see how the system is tracking, and we need to understand whether these reforms will actually work. That data and having greater transparency and accountability are incredibly important, because I do not think we have had that to date. It has only been through the commissioner for children and young people speaking out and really talking about the extraordinary failures within the system and comments from others that have arisen that we have been exposed to the shocking statistics. Again I say that this is a complex area – it is not easy; I do appreciate that – but it is incredibly important that we do have the children’s needs as the centrepiece in these very delicate and sensitive and often very troubling and awful situations that these children, through no fault of their own, are placed. With those words, I will not take too much time. I will have some questions in committee around the bill and what it is hoping to achieve, but I did want to make those few remarks and note that the coalition will not be opposing this bill.

 Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (16:55): I rise to speak on the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025, following our debate on the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025. At the heart of this bill is a simple but deeply important objective: ensuring that children in our child protection system have safety, stability and certainty in their lives. I am sure everyone in this place agrees that this goal is non-negotiable. Every child deserves to be properly housed, cared for and protected from violence, abuse, neglect, harm and exploitation.

This bill comes after a number of significant amendments were made in 2014 to the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 to protection and permanent care orders. Unfortunately, these amendments had some unanticipated and concerning outcomes for children in out-of-home care. This bill is a good bill. It is a bill that seeks to rectify those consequences in line with recommendations from a number of reviews: the Commission for Children and Young People’s ‘…Safe and Wanted…’ report of 2017, the 2022 permanency longitudinal study and the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s Yoorrook for Justice report. The bill makes a number of changes which the Greens have been calling for since the changes were implemented in 2014.

The Commission for Children and Young People’s ‘…Safe and Wanted…’ report of 2017 found that the very permanency reforms designed to protect children had instead created new barriers to family reunification. Parents under court orders to complete programs, treatments or assessments within rigid timeframes were not able to as the services simply were not available. The system was failing them, and reunification rates dropped. These rigid timelines also did not take into account individual circumstances and barriers, such as living with a disability or a mental health challenge, homelessness, family violence, incarceration, intergenerational trauma or poverty.

In 2022 the permanency longitudinal study found these 2014 permanency reforms did not make family reunification happen any faster. Instead some unintended consequences emerged. There were delays in cultural case planning, particularly for Aboriginal children, and more delays and legal disputes under care-by-secretary orders. Stakeholders have also raised concerns about whether the process felt fair for families trying to reunify. In some cases court processes may have actually prolonged uncertainty for children rather than reducing it.

Lastly, the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s Yoorrook for Justice report, in recommendation 25, states:

The Victorian Government must amend the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 (Vic) to allow the Children’s Court of Victoria to extend the timeframe of a Family Reunification Order where it is in the child’s best interest to do so.

One in every 11 Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children in Victoria is living in out-of-home care, the highest rate of any state across Australia. I just have to say this again because it is quite massive: one in every 11 Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander children in Victoria is living in out-of-home care. In other words, Aboriginal children are over 10 times more likely to be removed than their non-Aboriginal counterparts. This is such an unacceptable reality that needs to be changed, and this is why the Greens are supporting this bill today and why we have put forward amendments to enable greater family reunification, which must always be the priority.

Children should not be living away from home. They should not be living away from country. They should not be living away from culture, from language and from their communities. This is such a profound loss to our society. Then if we flip the script for just a moment, if these were white Anglo children, I do not think we would accept this as normal or status quo. With Aboriginal children and families being so disproportionately over-represented in Victoria’s child protection system, we need Aboriginal-led solutions. I would like to extend my thanks to the Victorian Aboriginal Child and Community Agency, Djirra, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service and the Federation of Community Legal Centres in Victoria for taking the time to share their position on the bill with me and my office. The Greens are deeply committed to continuing to work with First Nations stakeholders to ensure that First Nations voices are centred in any legislation that comes through this place.

For Aboriginal communities these rigid timeframes have been particularly harmful and have compounded harm. We have seen permanent care orders fail Aboriginal children, completely severing ties to family, community and culture and reproducing the same injustices that Yoorrook was established to uncover but also make recommendations to fix once and for all. Children succeed when families are supported with culturally safe, intensive and targeted interventions, rather than being removed permanently from their networks. While we welcome the bill’s removal of strict 12-month time limits for family reunification, which better centres the best interests of the child, we still urge this Labor government to commit to all 100 final recommendations outlined by the Yoorrook justice report. We need to close the gap, and implementing these important recommendations is an important step towards this.

The bill also removes adoption from the case-planning hierarchy. Adoption is seldom discussed as a pathway in child protection case planning. Legally severing ties to a child’s birth, family and identity is lifelong and irreversible. For Aboriginal families, keeping adoption in the case-planning hierarchy risks repeating the historical scars of the stolen generations and undermines self-determination. This amendment is a step in the right direction.

The bill also puts forward an amendment to add ‘stability’ to the ‘best interests of the child’ principles. The Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Permanent Care and Other Matters) Act 2014 changed ‘stability’ to ‘permanency’ in the hopes of addressing long-term rather than immediate solutions. This time around, moving back to a model that prioritises stability, the definition has been extended to include legal stability, physical stability, cultural stability and relational stability.

I would also like to say thank you to the foster parents and children with lived experience in out-of-home care who reached out to my office with their concerns about the bill. Addressing child protection matters is complex and nuanced, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. The Foster Care Association of Victoria shared how foster carers have concerns about the practical implementation of the bill. Foster carers are concerned that longer placements without clear timelines can increase emotional and financial stress, disrupt children’s sense of belonging and heighten placement instability, particularly when carers are not provided with the resources, therapeutic support or respite needed to sustain them.

The Greens would like to see this bill go further, and by saying go further, following good-faith consultations with our stakeholders, we have some amendments that are intended to strengthen the outcomes of the bill in line with its objectives to ensure the wellbeing of all children is paramount. I ask that these amendments be now circulated. The Greens’ first amendment is to allow the Children’s Court to extend family reunification orders as it sees fit within the best interests of the child. This brings the legislation fully aligned with the Yoorrook Justice Commission’s Yoorrook for Justice report, recommendation 25. If we do not fully implement recommendation 25, we risk greater instability for children in care and no improvement in family reunification. Supporting families to remain together safely must always be the priority.

Our second amendment is to instate the power of the court to make conditions on care-by-secretary orders, as the court previously had the power to do on custody-to-secretary orders. When the state assumes parental responsibility under a care-by-secretary order, the court should retain the ability to set enforceable conditions. Without that power, safeguards rely too heavily on departmental discretion.

Our third amendment removes the rule that limits parents to four visits a year when their child is under a permanent care order. Children have the right to stay in contact with their parents, siblings and extended family as long as it is safe. The law should not impose an arbitrary cap on that contact.

Our fourth amendment is to remove the review altogether. We have heard from stakeholders how difficult it has been to get to this point, to have meaningful, positive outcomes for children in care and their families. There is a risk that a review will repeal these positive steps forward and result in more children being removed from their families. Multiple reviews have been done over the years, and the message has been clear. The changes in this bill are long overdue and need to remain in place.

Our last and final amendment is to repeal section 276A of the principal act. We believe the repeal of section 276A would restore the courts’ capacity to make decisions guided solely by section 10 best interest principles, ensuring that outcomes prioritise stability, family connection, cultural identity and relational continuity, particularly for Aboriginal children.

With this bill there is a real chance to improve family reunification to reduce harm and instability that children experience through the Children’s Court and permanent care orders. The Greens say we cannot wait for more children to be failed by the system. We have an opportunity right now to reverse the damaging errors made in the 2014 permanency reforms, and I urge members to take this opportunity seriously. I commend this bill to the house.

 Sonja TERPSTRA (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:07): I rise to make a contribution on the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025. I am just going to quickly go through and summarise, in a nutshell, what this bill will do, but I will then get into a bit more detail as I go through some of the reforms. The bill will focus on increasing flexibility in timelines on family reunification orders by allowing the court to issue an initial order for up to 24 months in out-of-home care in most cases, followed by extensions of up to 12 months at a time, where it is in the child’s best interest to do so. What we have heard from a number of speakers here is that one of the key focuses of the bill is to improve flexibility and enhance reunification orders where it is in the child’s best interest to do so. It also removes adoption from the hierarchy of case plan objectives that can be pursued for a child or a young person, and it amends the term ‘permanency’ to ‘stability’ throughout the act, because a key point in this bill is to provide stability for the child.

Key objectives in the bill are to provide greater flexibility in timelines on family reunification orders to ensure parents and families have more time to make the changes required to achieve reunification; as I said earlier, replace terminology throughout the bill – ‘permanency’ to ‘stability’; and remove adoption from the stability hierarchy. They are all worthy amendments in this bill.

A key point of this bill is also that the 2025–26 state budget invests $167.4 million over two years to continue early interventions to keep over 5900 families together and safe. This builds on the investment in the 2024–25 state budget, which provided $198 million over two years for critical earlier intervention, diversion and family preservation and reunification services, because, again, the focus is on keeping families together and providing stability and helping those families make the changes that they need to make.

The family services platform is made up of three funded streams segmented by level of need, intensity and anticipated cost of support as well as the primary system goal of connecting families, which is delivered to families with emerging needs and provides brief interventions where needed, delivered in groups if necessary, individually or combined. It also includes supported playgroups and early help family services, so again demonstrating that early intervention approach to try and keep families together. It also strengthens families by delivering to families with cumulative escalating needs. There is a monitoring of those needs, and responses are tailored to those needs as they emerge. It includes integrated family services, which provide in-home group and individual coaching where required. It is also about restoring families where they have significant or enduring needs. It offers comprehensive interdisciplinary in-home child and family support that is more targeted and intensive. It includes services for the family for family preservation and reunification, putting families first and rapid engagement and diversion cohorts. The early intervention and diversion services that make up the family services platform have demonstrated improved outcomes for families and children, which also include improved parenting, self-efficacy, family functioning and reductions in children entering care. You can see those are demonstrated outcomes as a result of this approach.

The Victorian government considers that timely delivery of services is critical to supporting families to reunify with their children and to supporting children and families involved in child protection more generally. That is why on 2 December 2025 the government introduced the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025, which will support cross-government collaboration to support improvements to the system; that is the bill we debated earlier.

The most recent Victorian child protection data in the 2026 report on government services shows that of the children who exited out-of-home care to a permanency outcome in 2023–24, sadly, 12.5 per cent returned to care within a 12-month period. This is the second-highest percentage across Australia, suggesting potential to improve that long-term stability of permanency outcomes in Victoria. This is why we are acting on that. The return-to-care rate is calculated 12 months after a child or young person exits out-of-home care, and therefore the 2026 report reflects exits that occurred in 2023–24.

The bill also responds to recommendation 16 of the Stronger Together report, which is that Victorian legislation should be amended to allow extensions of family reunifications beyond 24 months when it is in the child’s bests interest and when progress towards reunification has been delayed by exceptional circumstances. The increased time for initial family reunification orders and ability to extend orders will provide more time for child protection to work with families and affected family members when pursuing reunification. This will also help connect affected family members to appropriate recovery services and conduct risk assessments under the ‘seek, analyse, formulate, enact, review’ and multi-agency risk assessment and management frameworks when family and domestic violence has been identified as a proactive concern. The bill does not require there to be exceptional circumstances to extend a family reunification order beyond 24 months. This ensures that extensions can be granted wherever it is in the child’s best interests to do so, so again it is a child-centred approach that puts the needs and the best interests of the child at the centre of all decision-making.

In terms of the Yoorrook for Justice report by the Yoorrook Justice Commission, this bill addresses recommendation 25 of the report, and this is in line with the commitment that the minister gave when she gave her evidence to the Yoorrook Justice Commission in May 2023. Recommendation 25 of that report recommends that the government should enable the Children’s Court to extend the timeframes of family reunification orders where it is in the best interests of the child to do so. The bill therefore does fully implement recommendation 25 because it is providing the court with the ability to extend the timelines on family reunification orders, as I said, when it is in the child’s best interests to do so. I just want to go into a little bit more detail about how these reunification orders will improve and offer more flexibility and stability. As I mentioned before, there will be orders that can cover for up to 24 months in out-of-home care initially, or in specific circumstances where a child has already spent more than or close to 24 months in temporary care, in which case it will be treated as if it was an extension to the family reunification order, and then up to a 12-month extension without limit on the number of extensions where it is in the child’s best interests to do so.

Further, in determining whether an extension of the family reunification order is in the best interests, the court will be required to have regard to the following factors: any previous family reunification orders and the duration of each order; the extent to which a parent of the child has engaged with services and supports necessary for the safe reunification with the child, so the parent has to demonstrate their engagement and interaction with services to support the family staying together; and of course any circumstances that have impeded the progress of a parent’s safe reunification with the child, including circumstances preventing timely access to services and supports necessary for reunification. Sometimes there might be matters that might be outside the person’s control, but all of those things will require the court to take those matters into consideration. This will provide families with more time and more flexibility to receive the support they require to safely reunify, while continuing to ensure that the child’s need for stability is a key consideration in decision-making. Additional considerations will also ensure the court considers and weighs these matters when determining the family reunification period and whether that should be extended or not. As with all child protection decisions, this will centre on the best interests of the child, which will prevent case drift resulting from extensions where reunification is unlikely and allow flexibility to account for factors outside the parent’s control, as I just talked about.

Just touching on some of these issues again, in terms of the factors that the court must weigh against and in favour in extending, the principle is set out in the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005. For example, where parents have not been able to access services that would support reunification, this may support an application for an extension. So if, through no fault of their own, they have not been able to access services, the court can take that into account and weigh that appropriately. A significant duration or number of previous extensions will generally weigh against further extensions. I talked earlier about that case drift principle. Again, it is a positive factor that the court must consider and weigh appropriately as well. Where parents have been offered services but have not engaged in these services without reasonable justification nor shown sustained change, this would generally weigh against an extension. Ultimately, it will be for the court to determine and weigh all of these factors as appropriate, in the best interests of the child and based on the unique circumstances of each case – looking at the child’s circumstances and the parent’s circumstances. The bill also simplifies case-planning decision-making so that the core consideration in setting up case-planning objectives must be in the best interests of the child and the stability hierarchy rather than timeframes of orders. A new monitoring framework has been implemented by the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing to provide system level oversight of stability and reunification orders, supporting early identification of issues ahead of the statutory review, which I believe will happen in about five years time.

Another aspect of this bill is to remove adoption from the permanency hierarchy. The presence of adoption in the case-planning stability hierarchy is inconsistent with Victorian policy that adoption should not be pursued for children in the child protection system. By removing adoption from the stability hierarchy the bill recognises the historical impact of forced adoption and the stolen generations. Removing adoption from the hierarchy is consistent with recommendation 56 of the 2021 parliamentary inquiry into responses to historical forced adoptions in Victoria. Removing adoption from the stability hierarchy in the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 does not impact adoptions in a non–child protection context, which continue under the Adoption Act 1984 with the consent of parents. Removing adoption from the stability hierarchy will align Victorian legislation with longstanding practice, which is that adoption is not proactively pursued or recommended by child protection in Victoria. The government has committed to reconsidering connections between the Adoption Act 1984 and the Children, Youth and Families Act of 2005 to reinforce government policy that adoption is always inappropriate for children involved in child protection, and this may include amendments to section 173 of the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005, which is currently relied on by the Secretary of the Department of Justice and Community Safety to administer the adoption system in Victoria.

I just might quickly touch on one other aspect, which I have touched on briefly. I think I have got a minute and 20 seconds on the clock, so I will do this before the clock beats me. Another important feature, as I mentioned earlier, is the replacement of the term ‘permanency’ with ‘stability’. Again, permanency has been interpreted as prioritising legal permanency over broader considerations such as cultural, relational and physical permanency for each child. Stakeholders have highlighted that permanency prioritises legal permanence over a broader understanding of permanence, is inconsistent with non-Western understandings of permanence and generates confusion regarding the distinction between a permanent care order and the concept of permanency. Permanency was seen to deprioritise having a safe and secure environment for a child and having a network of stable relationships and remaining connected to country, culture and family. The term ‘stability’ will be substituted in the act to make clear that decision-makers must consider stability as a holistic concept that includes multiple dimensions. These elements are to be applied concurrently and read together when making decisions in relation to a child. You can see there is a lot in this bill; there is a lot of really detailed work that has gone into this bill. I commend this bill to the house.

 Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:22): I am pleased to rise to make a contribution on the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025, noting it has been a day when I have been listening quite intently to debate on the previous bill in the same vein and with the same minister and listening to a very good contribution by Georgie Crozier, our shadow minister in this house responsible for children. There are words that we have heard all day – very important words, without a doubt. They are ‘child centred’, ‘stability’, ‘care’ and ‘reunification’. There are many of those words that are very, very important, and they have an implication across the board. At the end of the day this is about the most vulnerable children in our state, who for many and varied reasons are not safe to be at home and need to be removed to a safer place.

The whole focus of this legislation, and I am sure all across the chamber agree, is that placing a child in their next home must put them in a safer space than their previous one, and until that previous one – potentially where the parent, the primary caregiver, lives – is at a point where they can be reunified and it is safe to go home, home is not the right place for them. There can be many intervals, many interventions and much recovery, but it has to be demonstrated that when they return to the parent it is safer than when that child left. I know that is a very obvious statement, but from my experience over the last 10 years many of the people that have entered my office and contacted me are grandparents that have been providing kinship care – looking after infants, small children and not-so-small children – while unfortunately the parent has been unable to care for them. Potentially sometimes they have been in an abusive relationship and abusing the children and sometimes they have been severely addicted to drugs and alcohol, and all the good wishes in the world and statements of ‘I’m finished. I’m over it. I’m done. I’ve been in rehab and I’m out’ should not convince the government to send that child back to that parent. I have had grandparents beside themselves with concern, very much concerned about the child’s life. So it is really important that the minister and Parliament get the balance right, and there are varying degrees on what the right thing to do is. I know Ms Crozier has made a great investigation into previous reports, in terms of the Cummins report in 2012 and indeed other reports like that of the former commissioner for children and young people Liana Buchanan. There are startling findings – highly concerning – but also directional pivots and compelling arguments for what to do.

In some ways the Liberals and Nationals have decided to take a not-opposed position. We understand the bill’s intent. The bill’s intent is safer reunification and we all agree on that, but there are some buts around this bill as well. There are still many buts in terms of what is happening out there on the ground not only with kinship care but very much with foster care and the sense that many foster carers are also at their wits’ end. I want to just delve into that in a little bit more detail. This bill changes and extends family reunification orders from 12 months to 24 and then permits an ongoing, unlimited 12-month extension. It repeals the previous cumulative 24-month cap and removes the compelling evidence test. It places permanency with stability. Again, these are words; they have legal meaning. We want care that nurtures safety for those children in the system, and we ultimately want to get them out of the system. The bill winds back some of those orders from 2014, when Ms Wooldridge was in and doing her finest work at the time and with the knowledge that was available as well.

Some of the concern we have had is certainly about the drift. We have heard many members talk about the risk of renewed drift, and that requires competency in the department. It requires transparency and it requires accountability, as well as making ready not only the people who are taking on the children but the reunification plans. To my mind we have shifted a little bit from child centred to parent centred. There have been examples – as I have said, really shocking examples – in my electorate where we have had a grandparent who has looked after twins. I am not going to name names or anything of that nature. But the compelling evidence that I heard time and time again was that somehow, at some stages, the department seems to take the view that the drug-affected parent has more rights than those little infants and the grandparents do not seem to have much right at all. Sometimes it takes huge intestinal fortitude for those grandparents to continue to work, continue to support, and they are nearly at their wits’ end. They get into the court, and then the court basically, in this one particular case, said to the department, ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this to the grandparents? Why are you reunifying, and why aren’t you overseeing that reunification properly and carefully?’ Why are we siding with drug-affected parents? We all want those people to have good lives. It is crying shame and criminal that they are in that position, but ultimately the government, the minister, has a responsibility to those children and has a responsibility to work with carers. I think that is going to be the theme of some of the rest of my contribution.

We have a fantastic charity that the minister will know. I know the minister has met with the charity and the charity founder before: A Better Life for Foster Kids. They do an amazing job. They do care packs that they send out to the department as well. They do Christmas presents – thousands of them are wrapped. Now, you might say, ‘This is a bit twee, Melina.’ Well, it is actually about supporting those people that support our most vulnerable children. Some of the content and comments that A Better Life for Foster Kids have sent to me and discussed with me in relation to this bill are such:

Children’s interests must remain paramount.

Unlimited extension risks returning to ‘instability’ and ‘drift’. I am quoting Heather:

Children cannot be expected to wait indefinitely for adults to become ‘well enough’ in a system where access to treatment, housing and support is currently measured in months or years …

Reunification needs services, not just time.

In terms of housing, family violence responses, alcohol and drug treatment as I have said, mental health, therapeutic parenting programs for the parents, culturally safe case management and practical mentoring are some of the critical issues. Some things are needed for carers – carers are central. They report financial strain, administrative burden, poor communication and limited therapeutic support for children. They end up with flat heads and poor pockets, belting their heads against a brick wall to try and get services and therapeutic support for children. They are, without doubt, the stability and backbone of this area. Indeed if you look at some of the numbers in the last report, the 2023–24 report – I cannot seem to find a later one, so I will happily be corrected if there is a later one out there – there was a net loss of 270 foster carers from the system in that year. We had more than 400 leave. There was an increase of 160 but a net loss of 267. That is a clear indicator to me, and it should be to government, that something is not working in this system. A bill that seeks to do good is fine, but actually getting down to the nub of why these people – good people – are leaving the system should also be central to government intervention and consideration and legislation and funding and commitment. They talk about financial stress, unrealistic expectations placed on them and poor communication from child protection, and that is something I have just raised. Again and again these kids come into the system, whether they are a month old, four years old or whatever, often in a highly traumatised state. So it is very important that those wraparound services – we hear that quite often, but they are hugely important – are available to these kids at a time before they reach their 18th birthday and have left the system.

In terms of some of the things that the bill should do, or a future bill should do, it should certainly mandate communication standards, it should increase transparency and it should ensure that carers do have a voice. Indeed they are seeking to have a voice tomorrow on the steps of Parliament. Foster carers and kinship carers are meeting on the steps of Parliament at 10 o’clock, 10:30, and I think many people have had an invite to come out and talk to them, so it might be a very good opportunity – I am sure the minister got an invite too – to be able to participate and really listen to what they are saying in this space. I think I have covered many of their issues, but again, without carer support, stability is highly unlikely. Without stability, kids suffer. We need carer support, we need stability and we need kids to flourish and not suffer.

One of the other things that I would just like to touch on in my brief time left is in relation to Aboriginal children in the out-of-home care sector. Indeed it is certainly true the 2025 Productivity Commission update on Closing the Gap showed a worsening rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in Victoria in the out-of-home care sector. The target is there. It is a challenging space in that the Closing the Gap targets have been around now for nearly 20 years. Any improvements that we are seeing are incremental, but unfortunately in Victoria there has been a walking-back. Again, we have heard from various members in here about the Yoorrook Justice Commission and their recommendation that this bill is looking to achieve. The focus has to be on improving the welfare outcomes and lives of those children in out-of-home care.

Liana Buchanan, the former commissioner, made some comments in relation to a Coroners Court of Victoria report into systemic child protection failures, relating to some deaths back in 2015 to 2017, that was released in January last year. She found certain things: there was inconsistent and inadequate assessment of risk, there was poor cultural planning and there were repeated placement moves. This is one of those things that I have heard through my office and being contacted by Heather Baird. The movement of young children through the system has an incredibly adverse effect, and these failures certainly disproportionately affect Aboriginal children, who are likely to be moved, likely to face unstable care and likely to be exposed to risks when the system does not provide cultural safety and well-supported placements. She raises issues around the findings in some of the reports, which show poor risk assessment and a repeated pattern of child protection having been found in multiple inquiries to be overly optimistic about decisions. There are some beautiful examples that occur in kinship care when children are nurtured. We need to foster and facilitate how that can happen in a more opportune way but really still cast a very careful eye over protecting children in the system.

 David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (17:37): I rise to make a contribution to the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025. The bill acquits recommendation 25 of the Yoorrook for Justice report that the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 be amended to allow the Children’s Court of Victoria to extend the timeframe of a family reunification order where it is in the child’s best interest to do so. Under the current legislation, parents are only given 12 or at most 24 months to have their children returned to their care. After this period they can be permanently removed. These family reunification orders were introduced in 2016 under the permanency reforms of the previous government. Prior to that time they did not exist. The Yoorrook hearings heard that having the strict timeframe of two years was not enough time for Aboriginal parents to fulfil the requirements imposed by the courts to get their kids back. The timeframe disproportionately impacts Aboriginal families, compounded by the inevitable delay in being able to access the necessary services and supports. The last thing we want is for more Aboriginal children to be taken from their families. We have heard many times in this place that these children are over 20 times more likely to be removed from their mothers than other children. This critical reform will go some way to addressing the significant over-representation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care. The bill also removes adoption from the hierarchy of case-planning stability objectives and replaces the term ‘permanency’ with ‘stability’ throughout the act.

Legalise Cannabis Victoria will be supporting this bill. There are some amendments that the Greens will be moving to more fully acquit the Yoorrook recommendations, and we will also be supporting those. As I said, this bill rolls back some of the provisions enacted in 2014 through the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Permanent Care and Other Matters) Act 2014. The amendments no doubt were made in good faith to address some of the failings of the child protection system, and indeed the provisions around addressing the cultural support needs of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care were welcomed. However, there were at the time concerns about the bill’s lack of consultation and how it would affect Aboriginal families. Stakeholders, including the Law Institute of Victoria, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, Djirra and others, predicted that the permanency reforms and the introduction of family reunification orders with fixed time limits would adversely impact Aboriginal families in particular and see more children permanently removed, a continuation of the failed colonial interventions. Stakeholders also pointed to the lack of commensurate funding for those foundational supports that would give Aboriginal families at least a fighting chance of meeting the rigid reunification conditions. A 2020 report by Victoria Legal Aid into the impacts of the permanency amendments found that:

… the intention of the amendments – timely, safe, permanent homes for children who need state intervention and prompt support for families at risk – are not being achieved.

The status quo has not been working for quite a while.

I have raised in the house the issue of pre-birth child protection orders where the department can remove a newborn baby – they just turn up at the maternity ward and the mother has had no idea that her unborn child was under a protection order. She has not even been given the opportunity, much less the support, to address whatever issue is the subject of that order, so the child is removed. Currently, every day a child is out of parental care counts against the parent. These periods are counted cumulatively and retrospectively. If a parent has had a child out of their care for more than 24 months, the Children’s Court has no power to make an order for reunification. They could still return the child to parental care, but where a staged reunification is more appropriate, they are unable to do that. The Children’s Court is denied the ability to consider, for instance, whether the lack of services – housing, alcohol and other drugs or family violence supports – has prevented a parent from meeting that 24-month deadline.

This is what that might look like in practice. Let us say that a mother had her child removed on 1 January 2023. The clock starts ticking. Twelve months later, in 2024, the child is made the subject of a family reunification order by the Children’s Court, which will expire on 30 January 2025. The child is still out of family care when the matter comes before the Children’s Court for the final contest in January 2025, so the child has been out of parental care for just over two years by then. The mother has been on the waiting list for housing for over 12 months, which was the biggest impediment to getting her child back, but by 2025 she is doing extremely well. She is engaging with a variety of services. She has been meeting the conditions for overnight stays – namely, that she continue her ongoing engagement with services – so she is ready to begin the gradual transition of having her child back in her care. But the department decide that the child is doing well in the care of the non-Aboriginal carers, and by now that 24-month timeframe for reunification has expired, so they seek a care-by-secretary order, which removes all parental and custody rights and confers them on the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (DFFH) to the exclusion of all other people and agencies. The Children’s Court has no ability to extend the family reunification order and really has no choice but to grant that order.

Care-by-secretary orders are disastrous in operation for Aboriginal children as they usually mean a significant drop in contact arrangements. The DFFH will only permit contact four to 12 times per year under these orders, and that is simply not enough. The decision can only be challenged by a parent in VCAT, but there is no legal aid funding for such applications, and of course there is an extremely long wait period for VCAT review. We will be supporting the amendment to reinstate the power of the Children’s Court to make conditions on care-by-secretary orders. Another amendment will remove the requirement for the Children’s Court to consider the extent to which a parent of the child has engaged with services and supports necessary for the safe reunification with the child and other conditions. This will mean that any extension of the timeframe is based on the best interests of the child alone and not on some arbitrary timeline, bearing in mind once again the barriers to accessing services and housing particularly faced by Aboriginal parents. The bill returns authority to the Children’s Court to make decisions based on the best interests of the child, and we commend the government for implementing the recommendation. That directive to make decisions based on the best interests of the child is key.

We have had several meetings with the minister’s office. I do want to thank the minister, her office and Liam for the very thorough briefings and responses to our questions. We are satisfied with the process and consultation undertaken in developing this bill. Permanent removal must be a last resort and way, way down the hierarchy of options, and we need to get serious about resourcing services that support families to thrive.

I want to finish with a quote from Antoinette Braybrook, the CEO of Djirra, which is an Aboriginal-controlled organisation that provides culturally safe services, including legal advice and representation, to support Aboriginal women who experience family violence:

Arbitrary reunification deadlines are cruel and punitive. Ignoring the reality of Aboriginal women surviving violence, homelessness and systemic racism is itself a form of systemic violence. Healing cannot happen on a government stopwatch.

We hope this bill results in a decrease in children being removed from their families and more practical and timely support for parents to allow them to resume permanent care of their child as soon as possible. The removal of a child should always, always be the last resort. Families need support, not punishment. I commend the bill to the house.

Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) incorporated the following:

I am happy to speak in support of the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025.

The reforms in this Bill will enable the child protection system to better support children and families to be together, whenever it is safe to do so.

It aims to promote the best interests of the child by maximising opportunities for reunification.

This Bill sits alongside the Supporting Stable and Strong Families Bill, which we have just considered.

As we’ve discussed, that Bill is focused on supporting children, young people and parents on Family Reunification or Family Preservation Orders.

It does so by enhancing early intervention, improving support services for at-risk children and their families, and supporting family reunification.

The Bill before us today complements those reforms.

It acquits Recommendation 25 of the Yoorrook for Justice report.

That report states that:

• Yoorrook considers that an appropriate balance can be achieved by reinstating the power of the Children’s Court to override reunification time limits where necessary. This should support appropriate consideration of children’s rights, including their best interests, without undermining the policy aims of the reforms.

This Bill is consistent with the balance recommended by Yoorrook, as it enables the Court to extend the time provided to pursue family reunification for as long as it remains in the child’s best interests.

The Bill introduces three main reforms:

• It extends the time available to parents to reunify with their children who are subject to a Family Reunification Order.

• It removes adoption as an option in case plans for a child or young person,

• It amends the term ‘permanency’ to ‘stability’ and provides greater detail on the meaning of the term ‘stability’.

Extending reunification timelines

This Bill allows the Children’s Court, in most cases, to issue an Order for up to 24 months in out-of-home care.

This may be followed by extensions of up to 12 months at a time when it is in the best interest of the child.

Presently, the Court only has the power to order out-of-home care for up to 24 months, after which it must consider permanent or long-term care.

The data shows that many families require more than 12 months of support and, in most cases, the extension of that period is granted. Most families are reunified within 24 months, and some require additional time and support to be able to achieve reunification.

We heard that returning to court frequently during the reunification process can jeopardise progress.

Providing for 24-month orders from the outset will align the legislation with current practice and reduce the number of court events for children and families.

In our consultation we also heard that the current rigid timelines did not provide sufficient flexibility to take account of complex family dynamics or factors outside of parents’ control.

This Bill will provide families with more time and flexibility to receive the support they require to safely reunify, while continuing to ensure that a child’s need for stability is a key consideration in decision making.

As with all child protection decisions, the Court’s decision will centre on the best interests of the child.

This prevent case drift resulting from extensions where reunification is unlikely, and allow flexibility to account of factors outside of the parents’ control.

Factors the Court will consider must include:

• Whether parents have been able to access services that would support reunification

• The duration of care and number of previous extensions

• If parents have not engaged in services without a reasonable justification, or not shown sustained change.

The requirement to show compelling evidence that the parent will be able to safely resume care of the child within the period of the Order will be removed.

This focuses the Court’s consideration on the child’s best interests.

Ultimately it will be for the Court to determine what is appropriate and in the best interests for each child, based on the unique circumstances of each case.

This will provide families with more time and flexibility to receive the support required to reunify, while continuing to ensure that a child’s need for stability is a key consideration in decision making.

The Bill also simplifies case planning decision making, so that the core considerations in setting a case planning objective are the best interests of the child and the stability hierarchy, rather than the timeframes of orders.

Removing adoption

Adoption will no longer be an option in child protection cases. This brings the legislation into line with existing government policy.

The voluntary nature of adoption is not compatible with the purpose and nature of intervention in a child protection context.

Removing it as an adoption also recognises the historic impact of forced adoption and the Stolen Generation.

If a parent does not wish to pursue reunification, permanent or long-term care can still be considered from the outset.

Changing ‘permanency’ to ‘stability’

The term ‘permanency’ will be amended to ‘stability’ throughout the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005.

‘Permanency’ has been interpreted to prioritise legal permanency and ‘permanent care orders’ over broader considerations, such as cultural, relational and physical permanency.

As a result, permanency was seen to deprioritise having a safe and secure environment, having a network of stable relationships, and remaining connected to Country, culture and family.

The term ‘stability’ better reflects the multiple elements that contribute to safe, stable and secure lives for children.

Five year review

An independent statutory review will be undertaken following five years of operation of the Bill.

Consultation and feedback

This Bill is a result of extensive consultation, including feedback from the Commissioner for Children and Young People, Community Service Organisations, carer peak bodies and Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of the people who have helped to shape and guide these reforms.

The people who do the hard yards of working to protect our children are doing the most important work we can imagine.

To the carers who support vulnerable children and young people, thank you for everything that you do.

Conclusion

This Bill is an important step in responding to the evidence and feedback on the operation of child protection in Victoria.

It will give the Children’s Court the flexibility to provide families with more time to make the changes needed for their children to return home, when it’s safe and in the child’s best interests.

Every child deserves a safe and stable home – and every family deserves the chance to come back together when it’s safe. These reforms make that possible, giving children the stability and connection they need to thrive.

I commend this Bill to the Council.

John BERGER (Southern Metropolitan) incorporated the following:

President, I rise to make a contribution on the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025.

In doing so I would like to first thank my friends the Deputy Premier Ben Carroll as the Minister for Education, and the Minister for Children, Minister Lizzie Blandthorn.

President, the Children, Youth and Families amendment moves to make changes to the principal act from 2005 to better support children and families and helping to keep them together whenever it is safe to do so.

The Amendment Bill incorporates significant reforms that are designed to promote the best interests of the child.

It will move to maximise opportunities for safe, timely, and sustainable reunification of children and families.

It is a very moving and important personal moment in a family, and it is important that it is done with the respect and timeliness necessary.

The main purpose of the Bill is to amend the Children, Youth and Families Act 2005 to revise the permanency settings including by removing adoption from the hierarchy of case planning objectives.

Providing the Children’s Court with greater discretion and flexibility in relation to the duration of family reunification orders.

And changing legislative terminology to refer to and require consideration of stability in the best interests principles.

President, our system is designed to put the safety and wellbeing of the child first and foremost.

And the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Permanent Care and Other Matters) Act 2014 (the Permanency Amendments) was brought in to ensure that children in out-of-home care can have certainty in their care arrangements at the earliest stage.

Out-of-home care can take several forms, including foster care, kinship care, permanent care, and residential care.

These children and young people might stay in these care arrangements for just a few days, or they can be in out-of-home care for several years.

President, in 2022, it was recorded that approximately 10,300 children and young people were living in out-of-home care at any one time, with 2,000 of those in the age range of newborn to five years old.

Stability as a principle remains critical in our legislative and systemic processes, because instability in care arrangements can have highly detrimental effects on a child’s wellbeing.

Children and young people coming into out of home care often come with preexisting circumstances, including significant behavioral, emotional, medical and physical needs, or history of abuse, neglect and disadvantages.

And providing these children and young people with stable, long-term care arrangements is paramount to ensuring the best possible outcomes for their future.

But as key to outcomes in child wellbeing as stability is, the goal of reunification remains equally so.

And these Permanency Amendments have led to concerns of disadvantaging families seeking reunification.

Especially Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, where these children are overrepresented in the Victoria out-of-home care system at a rate 20.6 times higher than that of non-Aboriginal children in the 2023–‍24 period.

In simpler, and yet staggering terms, that totals 90.5 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children being placed in out-of-home care out of every 1000 in Victoria.

And so these amendments need to be reviewed for their effectiveness, and we have taken into consideration several reviews conducted.

Including the 2017 Safe and Wanted report released by the Commission for Children and Young People, which found that there are barriers such as availability of services to reunification and that reunification rates had declined since the Permanency Amendments.

The 2022 Permanency Longitudinal Study, which highlighted unanticipated results and recommended further monitoring to ensure improved long-term outcomes for children.

The 2021 Legal and Social Issues Committee’s Inquiry into responses to historical forced adoption in Victoria, who recommended that adoption be removed from the permanency hierarchy and use of adoption on child protection grounds be restricted as far as possible.

And the 2023 Yoorrook for Justice report, which recommended that reunification timeframes be extended where it is in the child’s best interests to do so on the basis that current statutory timeframes had and are negatively impacting Aboriginal and other families.

These reports further addressed the concern of adoption as a case planning goal within the Permanency Amendments.

In that with how adoption permanently severs a child’s legal relationship with their parents, and often their family and cultural communities, it should never be considered a goal within case planning.

Both in Victoria and Australia-wide, there have been long-lasting ramifications from adoption processes.

Most notably, through the historical injustices experienced by the Stolen Generations and the Forgotten Australians.

Safe and Wanted found that the presence of adoption in the permanency hierarchy was a cause for community concern.

And the 2021 Legal and Social Issues Committee’s Inquiry into responses to historical forced adoption in Victoria recommended that adoption be removed from the permanency hierarchy and use of adoption on child protection grounds be restricted as far as possible.

The Allan Labor Government is responding to reviews and recommendations through these reports by bringing in amendments to legislation that would achieve three key principles.

To provide the Children’s Court with discretion and flexibility when making Family Reunification Orders, to provide families with additional time to work towards reunification, where this is in the child’s best interests.

To remove adoption from the hierarchy of permanency objectives.

And to substitute the term ‘permanency’ with ‘stability’ to strengthen the understanding of stability by the inclusion of key elements to consider in determining the best interests of the child.

Furthermore, this bill seeks to remove the strict time limits that families seeking reunification are subject to.

While current legislation stipulates that Family Reunification Orders can only apply for a maximum period of 24 months, with an initial period of up to 12 months and a single extension of up to 12 months available.

These amendments will prioritise the child’s best interests, which in many cases is ultimately with the goal of reunification.

By allowing the Court to issue an initial Family Reunification Order for up to 24 months since the child entered out-of-home care in most cases or up to 12 months where the child has already spent more than 12 months in temporary care under interim orders.

As well as granting the Court the power to issue extensions for these orders, when it is in the child’s best interests, for additional periods of up to 12 months, with no limitation on the number of extensions.

With required consideration to any previous extension of the Family Reunification Order and the duration of each extension.

The extent to which a parent of the child has engaged with services and supports necessary for the safe reunification with the child

And any circumstances that have impeded the progress of a parent’s safe reunification with the child including circumstances preventing timely access to services and supports necessary for reunification.

The latter is a critical consideration in these legislative changes, as there are numerous factors which can impact a parent’s ability to achieve reunification with their children.

And prior strict time limits have disproportionately affected families from marginalised communities, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.

These changes balance our Government’s commitment to promoting reunification in families while ensuring that parents and caregivers can benefit from meaningful supports without a strict time limit.

Ensuring that no compromisation on the safety and wellbeing of the child occurs as a consequence, nor the loss of opportunity to achieve these outcomes.

With oversight from the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing through the implementation of a new systemic monitoring framework on efforts towards family reunification.

With focus on planning, decision-making and reunification timeframes through these new legislative amendments.

The removal of adoption from the stability hierarchy is a direct response to recommendations from various reports, stakeholders and communities.

Critically, the Parliamentary Committee Inquiry into responses to historical forced adoptions in Victoria 2021 report.

In 2024, the Premier made a historical formal apology to Victorians who experienced historical abuse and neglect as children in institutional care.

With an estimated over 90,000 children placed in care in Victoria prior to 1990, too many of which experienced physical, psychological, emotional and child sexual abuse.

These legislative changes simply bring our laws into line with long-standing Victorian policy that adoption is not considered a viable or pursued solution in child protection.

And in line with these changes, the Allan Labor Government intends to engage in further work to reinforce this in both the Adoption Act and the Children, Youth and Families Act.

Furthermore, consideration has been given into the use of “permanency” as terminology through the Act.

And how this has influenced decision-making into care arrangements through lessened focus on those external or consequential factors which support stability and security for children.

Over procedural final care arrangements in child protection, relating to Family Reunification Order timeframes and other requirements within the current legislation.

To demonstrate a more holistic approach that considers these factors, this bill will make changes to the ‘best interests principles’ value.

Requiring associated decision-making bodies to now consider.

The legal arrangements needed to ensure a child’s parent or direct caregiver has a lasting and legally secure relationship with the child, which is also known as ‘legal stability’.

Physical stability, to reflect the desirability of stable living arrangements, which support a child’s connection to their community.

Cultural stability, to reflect the desirability of the child maintaining an ongoing connection to, and understanding and learning of, culture, family, tradition, language, religion, beliefs, values and stories.

And relational stability, to reflect the desirability of the child’s positive, loving, trusting and nurturing relationships and emotional connection with significant others, such as parents, siblings, friends, family and carers.

Under former standards of practice, it is unfortunately the case that one form of stability could be prioritised to the detriment of others.

And through these amendments, all will now have to be considered to ensure that children receive the highest levels of stability, support, and outcomes.

These amendments are important because child protection, care arrangements, and family reunification are all matters of human rights.

It provides children with stability and certainty, so that the processes and procedures involved in establishing care arrangements do not cause further harm to a child’s wellbeing.

It approaches the concept of stability in a holistic manner, taking into account the legal, physical, cultural and relational needs of the child.

And ultimately, it puts family reunification at the highest of priorities, making it so that families undergoing hardship and barriers to procedural requirements in the present do not lose the opportunity for reunification in the future.

Which particularly impacts families from marginalised backgrounds, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.

The Allan Labor Government is committed to supporting these communities.

With the Department of Family, Fairness and Housing funding an initiative delivered by the Victorian Aboriginal Child and Community Agency to promote family reunification in Victorian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities.

The Aboriginal Family Preservation and Reunification Response, providing families with intensive, in-home support tapering off, a culturally safe and holistic practice approach, funding for support including material aid, and health, counselling, and drug and alcohol support.

The Department has been working with Victorian Aboriginal Controlled Community Organisations since 2020 to deliver the Family Preservation and Reunification Response.

To keep children safely at home, to prevent children and young people entering care services, and to support children and young people currently in care to safely reunify with their family.

In 2021, the then-Andrews Labor Government committed $2 million dollars into early intervention programs to support families staying together such as community service organisation OzChild.

Which was part of a $1.2 billion package for the children and families system in the 2021–22 budget, and $1 billion in last year’s Budget to provide increased support for at-risk children, their families and carers.

The 2020/21 Victorian State Budget invested $64.7 million in making the Home Stretch program universal, extending support for children and young people in out-of-home care from up to eighteen years of age to twenty-one.

Providing an accommodation allowance for young people to remain with their foster carer or kinship carer after they turn eighteen, or to facilitate a transition to supported independent living arrangements.

And this landmark initiative commenced in January 2021.

This was alongside a $10.3 million dollar investment into the Better Futures Program, providing children and young people in out-of-home care with tailored support between 16 – 21 years old, including education and employment advice, and life-skills coaching.

This support is crucial for young people transitioning to independent living, as it was reported in the Commission for Children and Young People 2019 Keep Caring Systemic inquiry, that 30% of care experienced young people ended up homeless in the first 3 years of leaving out-of-home care.

The lack of stability children and young people are facing in out-of-home care has resulted in many struggling to stay engaged at school or accessing higher education.

Raising Expectations is a government funded program that supports children and young people aged 15 years old and over. First established in 2015, the program has supported many care experienced children and young people across Victoria and has supported them to achieve their educational goals.

It’s clear that there is support for children and young people, however it’s important for them to have stability in a family and home setting. By making these changes to the amendment, we can support children and young people being able to thrive, not just survive.

And that is why I am proud to be supporting this Bill today, and I thank the Deputy Premier for bringing these amendments to Parliament.

As well as many key organisations and stakeholders who contributed their insights to allow our Government to make these critical changes.

Including the Commission for Children and Young People, the Yoorrook Justice Commission, and all the government departments, committees, and research groups who conducted inquiries and published these reports.

The safety and well-being of all Victorian children and young people is paramount, and these amendments will help us to make sure that children and young people in out of home care do not fall through the cracks.

And that they have a strong foundation for their future, like many of their peers.

I commend this Bill to the house.

 Lizzie BLANDTHORN (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Children, Minister for Disability) (17:47): Today we are enacting two significant pieces of child protection legislative reform. Earlier today we passed the supporting stable and strong families scheme, an internationally leading whole-of-government framework to improve outcomes for children, young people and their families, and now we are enacting recommendation 25 of the Yoorrook for Justice report through this Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Stability) Bill 2025.

This reform is long overdue. I have held consistent concerns for these provisions since their inception in early 2015. I have been on the record on these issues since early 2015. Fundamentally, I believe that every child, as long as it is safe, should be with their parents and every child has the right to know their identity. When the incoming Labor government came to power, I made the following comments in the other place on an amendment bill to these provisions:

The 2014 amendments did not strike the right balance between the desirability for continuity and permanency in the life of the child and the extent to which the child and/or his or her parents can enjoy the protections they have under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

We need to be very careful about what we do in the name of child protection. It is very important to reconsider the hierarchy of the permanency objectives and where we place adoption in that hierarchy of objectives.

In the years that have followed we have seen the impact of these provisions on families. At the Yoorrook Justice Commission we heard of the disproportionate impact the permanency provisions have had on Victoria’s First Peoples. As part of my evidence to the commission, I outlined that the provisions have been a blunt instrument. Yoorrook for Justice stated on page 225 of their report that in relation to permanency amendments balance must be restored. They also stated on page 226:

Yoorrook considers that an appropriate balance can be achieved by reinstating the power of the Children’s Court to override reunification time limits where necessary. This should support appropriate consideration of children’s rights, including their best interests, without undermining the policy aims of the reforms.

Today, in line with their recommendation, we restore that balance for children and families. The bill will allow for flexibility in timelines on family reunification orders by allowing the court to issue an initial order for up to 24 months in out-of-home care in most cases, followed by extensions of up to 12 months at a time when it is in the child’s best interests. The bill is consistent with the balance recommended by Yoorrook as it enables the court to extend the time provided to pursue family reunification for as long as it remains in the child’s best interests. In determining whether an extension is in the child’s best interests, the court will have regard to any previous extension of the family reunification order and the duration of each extension, the extent to which a parent of the child has engaged with services and supports necessary for the safe reunification with the child and any circumstances that have impeded the progress of the parent’s safe reunification with the child, including circumstances preventing timely access to services and supports necessary for reunification. This reflects the court’s important independent oversight role in child protection matters and limits the risk of case drift by requiring periodic judicial consideration and decision-making in each case.

Through the bill we have just debated earlier today, children, young people and their parents on family reunification or family preservation orders will be an initial focus of the supporting stable and strong families scheme. This supports my evidence at the Yoorrook Justice Commission, through questioning of counsel assisting, raising the importance of recognising that as well as more time, many families require more assistance to meet the requirements of reunification. At the time I stated in my evidence:

… the two go hand in hand. And as some people may not be able to get access to services until further on, so it’s also about when people can access services, as well as the time taken to get the support that they need to be able to be reunified.

I am proud to stand in this place and say that through this package of reforms I am acquitting my evidence to the commission in this regard. By replacing the term ‘permanency’ with ‘stability’, we are addressing concerns raised by stakeholders by now referring to the concept of stability, which includes consideration of legal permanency. This approach will prioritise continuity of the child’s care, including stable and enduring arrangements for care and parental responsibility, whilst also providing flexibility for consideration of physical, cultural and relational stability.

I take this opportunity to thank stakeholders for their feedback on these reforms since the start of the consultation on these policy settings in 2023 and continuing through to the bill’s introduction into Parliament. A few people in this place have referred to the comments – and indeed Mr Ettershank and Ms Gray-Barberio referenced the comments earlier – from Djirra. I just want to quote from their press release. I note Mr Ettershank also just quoted Antoinette Braybrook, the CEO of Djirra, who said:

The over-representation of Aboriginal children in out-of-home care is not a failure of the system. It is the system operating exactly as it was designed to operate. The child protection system continues to expand while Aboriginal women are left grieving the permanent loss of their children, a separation driven by government and backed by legislation.

The Stability Bill must be passed to stop embedding permanent separation into law and to ensure Aboriginal children are not denied the right to grow up safe and thriving with their mothers.

As I did in the previous bill, I also want to particularly acknowledge Anne McLeish of Kinship Carers Victoria. I note that Ms Bath spoke of the importance of kinship carers in our system, and indeed it is unique that in Victoria so many children are cared for by the kinship system. But I would quote from their release, which says:

For a decade now, Kinship Carers Victoria (KCV) has lamented the fact that the scope of work of the courts in preservation of families and supporting reunification was narrowed in 2016. At that time KCV questioned the purpose of the Government in doing so. In the 1980s Victorian led the world in the way that it enabled the courts to ask a wide range of questions about the circumstances leading to a child being removed from parents, including what bureaucracies had done, or not done, to prevent this. KCV wanted this scope of work restored to the courts; it appears that it has been done!

They also said:

The focus on stability rather than permanency in the amendments is as it should be. It forces the discourse to be about stability across all forms of out-of-home care, instead of equating stability with a permanent placement. This will liberate our thinking and usher in an era of more responsive solutions about how we support all families in protection situations.

And they said:

We commend these amendments to the wider community and urge all parliamentarians to vote for them. This is an opportunity for parliamentarians to act as one in protecting Victoria’s children.

I thank all of those stakeholders who have taken the time to contribute to this work. As I said earlier, the list is exhaustive and there are too many to call all of them out, but I appreciate the time they have taken to contribute to the process.

In relation to adoption, the bill removes adoption from the hierarchy of case plan objectives that can be pursued for a child or young person in the child protection system. This is important. Child protection is a coercive environment, and adoption should not be a feature of any coercive environment. This acquits recommendation 56 of this Parliament’s inquiry into responses to historical forced adoption in Victoria also, recognising the significance and impact of forced adoption and the stolen generation.

Lastly, I want to again thank Mrs Werner and her team, as well as other members across this Parliament and the crossbench, for the way in which they have, as with the Children, Youth and Families Amendment (Supporting Stable and Strong Families) Bill 2025, worked with us in the development and consideration of this bill. I want to thank the chamber; these types of improvements to the child protection and family services system can only be made when there is a bipartisan approach, as it ensures we have lasting improvements to the system as a whole. I thank those opposite and around us for working with us constructively to that end, and I commend the bill to the house.

Motion agreed to.

Read second time.

Committed.

Clause 1 (17:57)

Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO: Minister, how will the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing implement the new monitoring framework to provide the system level oversight of efforts towards family reunification?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: At an individual level there is oversight in a number of different ways, including from case management at an individual level to court oversight – again at an individual level but also in a more systemic way.

Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO: I move:

1.   Clause 1, lines 5 to 6, omit “and the extension of that order”.

I have already spoken at length during my speech on this amendment. This amendment is putting forward consequential amendments to clause 1 and insertions at clause 10 and clause 14 to remove statutory time limits for the family reunification orders to enable the court to determine any period it considers in the best interests of the child. This amendment is also about giving the courts flexibility to extend orders based on the child’s needs and family circumstances rather than arbitrary deadlines.

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: The government will not be supporting this amendment. The best interests of a child may obviously change over time and must be periodically reviewed by the court. Where there will be time limits on individual orders, the court will have the flexibility to make orders enabling family reunification to be pursued for as long as that remains in the best interests of the child.

Georgie CROZIER: The Liberals and Nationals will not be supporting the Greens amendment.

David ETTERSHANK: I think I addressed this question in my speech before. We believe this is a really important amendment and we commend the amendment to the house. We will be supporting it.

Amendment negatived.

Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO: I move:

2.   Clause 1, after line 6 insert –

“(ab) to enable permanent care orders to provide for contact with a child’s parent more than 4 times a year if it is in the best interests of the child; and

(ac) to enable the variation of care by Secretary orders and the conditions of those orders; and”.

Once again, this was spoken to at length during my contribution. This amendment makes changes to clause 1 to enable the variation of care-by-secretary orders and the conditions of those orders, giving the court, carers and families flexibility to respond to changes in the child’s circumstances.

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: The government will not be supporting this amendment. Care-by-secretary orders transfer parental responsibility for a child to the Secretary of the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing. These orders do not include conditions, reflecting that the secretary of DFFH is responsible for the long-term care and case planning of the child in accordance with the legal requirements in the act. This is a longstanding position in Victoria that applied to equivalent orders prior to the 2014 permanency reforms. Permitting the court to impose conditions on these orders would impair child protection’s ability to respond quickly and effectively to the changing needs and circumstances of children and young people. It would also necessitate additional court events where conditions need to be changed or removed, adding significantly to the workload of the Children’s Court and the potential trauma experienced by children and families involved in these processes. This would be a significant and untested change affecting thousands of at-risk children, parents and carers. It would be inappropriate to implement a change of this magnitude without careful consideration and would require significant stakeholder consultation, including with the Children’s Court, peak bodies representing carers, and people with lived experience.

The act has always included a distinction between orders which grant the secretary partial parental responsibility, on which the court can impose conditions, and orders which grant the secretary sole parental responsibility, on which the court cannot impose conditions. Prior to the permanency amendments, guardianship-to-secretary orders similarly acted to transfer parental responsibility to the secretary and could not include conditions. Allowing the court to impose conditions on care-by-secretary orders would represent a significant shift in this longstanding legal framework, creating a new limitation on the secretary’s exercise of their parental responsibility. The proposal to allow the Children’s Court to place conditions on care-by-secretary orders has not been subject to consultation. Agreeing to this amendment would result in untested impacts on at-risk children and carers without consultation with the peak bodies representing carers and people with lived experience. The subject matter of such conditions typically forms part of case planning, and case-planning decisions by secretary are reviewable through internal review, under section 331, by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. Under section 333, this means that a child or parent can seek a review of the secretary’s decisions without the need for court-imposed conditions.

Georgie CROZIER: As the government is not supporting these amendments, the Liberals and Nationals will also not be supporting the Greens amendment.

David ETTERSHANK: Legalise Cannabis will be supporting this amendment.

Amendment negatived; clause agreed to; clauses 2 and 3 agreed to.

Clause 4 (18:03)

Georgie CROZIER: Minister, clause 4 is looking at updating the child’s best interest test which magistrates use when creating care orders to emphasise continuity and stability in care, including physical, cultural, relational and enduring stability, and you did mention this in your summing-up. Could you just confirm that the goal of achieving stable parental responsibility is strictly conditional on it being in the best interests of the child? I think you sort of reaffirmed that in your summing-up, but would you mind reaffirming that to the committee?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: Yes, absolutely. The best interest of the child is the paramount consideration.

Georgie CROZIER: Thank you for the clarification. So if maintaining or restoring parental responsibility conflicts with the child’s paramount need for safe, stable and ongoing care, does the government agree that maintaining that parental responsibility is not desirable?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: That would be a decision for the courts. It remains open to the courts to make that decision.

Georgie CROZIER: For the Children’s Court’s guidance, if they are applying this new holistic definition of ‘stability’ under this clause, can you confirm that the bill does not treat parental responsibility as an inherent or absolute right of the parent but rather as a responsibility that only comes second to, and must completely give way to, the paramount protection and best interests of the vulnerable child?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: The paramount consideration, the best interests, is absolutely that of the child above all else.

Georgie CROZIER: What specific elements and parameters will be used to measure cultural stability and relational stability for children in care? Will those elements be clearly defined or left to interpretation of the courts?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: The test would be applied by the courts, and it would be for the courts to determine what was in the best interests of the child. I cannot deal in hypothetical situations. It would be different on each and every occasion, because each and every child and their circumstances and their family circumstances are different. The explanatory memorandum spoke to this, but ultimately the best interests of the child is the paramount consideration. I will leave it at that.

Georgie CROZIER: The explanatory memorandum does say:

physical stability reflects the desirability of stable living arrangements, which support a child’s connection to their community;

cultural stability reflects the desirability of the child maintaining an ongoing connection to, and understanding and learning of, culture, family, tradition, language, religion, beliefs, values and stories;

relational stability reflects the desirability of the child’s positive, loving, trusting and nurturing relationships and emotional connection with significant others, such as parents, siblings, friends, family and carers.

I think we all understand the intent of ensuring that those elements are met in the best interests of the child, but when the court is determining that, is there anything that you think or the government feels should be taken into consideration? If all of those elements are there and the parents are saying that is what they are providing and they are connected to community and all of these other elements that are spelt out in clause 4, what if there is clear abuse within that setting? Do these elements override the degree of abuse? It is hard to interpret, and I know you have said it is hard basing it on a hypothetical, but what I am trying to determine is: is there a threshold here of the best interests of the child, taking into consideration all of those aspects?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: As you have identified, the plain English version of the clause notes in the explanatory memorandum speaks to this. Section 10 of the act speaks to the court having to weigh up these decisions, but ultimately no case is going to be the same, and there is not a – to use your expression from earlier in the day – a tick-the-box answer for any individual child. They are going to have to weigh up those decisions, but ultimately what comes first is the best interests of the child, and in accordance with section 10, the court making a decision about how they weigh up the various factors in doing so.

Clause agreed to; clauses 5 to 7 agreed to.

Clause 8 (18:09)

Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO: I invite members to vote against this clause. This amendment was spoken to once again at length in my speech. This amendment is to repeal section 276A of the act. Section 276A previously required the court to have regard to secretary advice. It is our view that the court should have more discretion to act in the best interests of the child and that the current level of secretary oversight causes disproportionate adverse impact on Aboriginal families.

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: The government does not support this amendment. The factors in section 276A are designed to support the court to make decisions in the best interests of the child based on the circumstances of each case, as I was also referring to earlier. Section 276A does not impact or alter the best interests principles, which are the paramount consideration in all decision-making for children under the act, as we have just discussed. This includes advice provided by the secretary relevant to risk assessment and timely decision-making. Section 276A requires the court to consider advice from the Secretary of DFFH on certain matters when making protection orders, including the child’s case plan, care arrangements for the child’s siblings, the age of the child and the period of time that the child has spent in out-of-home care during the child’s lifetime. Where the court is determining whether to make a protection order that confers parental responsibility on the Secretary of DFFH, the court must have regard to advice from the secretary regarding the likelihood of the parent permanently resuming care of the child, the outcome of prior attempts at reunification, the desirability of early decision-making for the child in cases where the child’s parent has previously had another child permanently removed, and the benefits to the child of making a care-by-secretary order to facilitate alternative arrangements for the permanent care of the child if the child has been in out-of-home care for 24 months and there is no realistic prospect of the child’s safe return to parental care within the coming 12 months, and these matters remain relevant to the court’s decision-making. Section 276A does not specify how this advice is to be taken into account by the court, require that certain decisions be made as a result of that advice or prevent the court from considering other factors to be more important. As in all decision-making under the act, the best interests of the child remain paramount.

Clause agreed to; clause 9 agreed to.

Clause 10 (18:13)

Georgie CROZIER: Minister Carroll stated in Parliament on 29 October that this bill will provide the Children’s Court with ‘greater discretion and flexibility in relation to the duration of family reunification orders’. Will this flexibility lead to children being left in a cycle of uncertainty where the court is able to continually extend orders? I know you just spoke about that 24-month period, and I was going to ask this on clause 6. With unlimited 12-month extensions, what safeguards will be in the bill to prevent that ongoing cycle?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: There is an important reason as to why we wanted these two bills to be debated today together. They are complementary in the sense that the earlier bill we have all just voted for – and I appreciate the chamber’s support for that – sets up a new framework for vulnerable children and families to ensure that they get the service supports that they need from across the whole of government. That was an important complement to this bill, because in restoring the balance and making sure that we gave the courts back the discretion rather than it being simply a blunt instrument, we are saying that we want to support family reunification because it is a fundamental right of any child so long as it is safe to do so and it is in their best interests for them to be raised by their biological family and that where families are complex or there is trauma or there are issues that need to be addressed, we have a service system that is better designed to support those families to do that, to access the supports that they need, and for the court then to have the opportunity to take into consideration that a family has been able to use those service system supports to address whatever their particular circumstances might have been.

We used earlier today the housing issue. It might be drug and alcohol treatment. It might be something else that a family needs to have access to, consistent access to, and be able to demonstrate that they have taken advantage of to then be able to prove to the court that their family reunification is possible and for them to consider that in the best interests of children. So these bills are complementary. On one hand, in the stability bill we are ensuring that we restore that balance, but we are also, through the bill that we passed earlier today, ensuring that we have a framework of service delivery and an accountability to the Parliament for how ministers across their portfolios make sure that children and families get the services and the supports they need.

Georgie CROZIER: I know the intent and I completely understand what the government is trying to do here, but we know that there are not enough rehabilitation services for drugs and alcohol right across the state, and especially in regional areas that have got limited access. I am just concerned if there is a failure. You have said that ministers have a responsibility in these various areas to provide a plan, but if there is no drug or alcohol rehabilitation available, will those failures by government, if you like, be used as an excuse for the extension of keeping a child’s care decisions in limbo? Again you will say – well, I am sure you will say – the court will make that decision, but if there is no access to services, can you guarantee that the child’s care is not put in jeopardy or that they are being placed in limbo because of that lack of service in other areas of government?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: As we have already discussed, the best interests of the child remain the paramount consideration, so if an extension is not in the best interests of a child, an extension would not be granted. But the other consideration, or the point to emphasise, is that the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing will identify and work case by case, ensuring that we do not have case drift, by strong internal monitoring that both provides the secretary and responsible delegates with system-level oversight of the efforts towards stability and support case practice and also enables the identification of the number of cases in a local area where reunification has not been achieved in a timely fashion so that child protection staff can undertake a case review to identify and take action to address barriers to reunification.

The framework is a dynamic tool that enables operational staff and policy teams to extract and analyse data in real time, and the monitoring framework is for internal departmental use only, but the department may use the insights and data to periodically brief external stakeholders on the impacts. The risk of case drift is also addressed by the maximum duration of family reunification orders, which ensures that each child’s best interests are periodically reassessed by the court. And the department continues to support national data collections, including the ones that, again, we have spoken about a number of times today – the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) and so forth. The statutory review in the bill will also provide an important opportunity to comprehensively consider the impact of the reforms after five years of operation, including any impacts in relation to potential case drift. So at an operational level, at a case-by-case level, at a systemic level and of course at a judicial level there remains that oversight, and always what is in the best interests of the child, at each and every juncture, is the paramount consideration.

Georgie CROZIER: I know what you are trying to achieve. I am just worried about that case drift. I am trying to get to: what is the threshold? Given the bill allows unlimited 12-month extensions, is there a timeframe? Are you saying that potentially, given the court’s discretion, this could go on for many years, like we have seen in the past? That is why I am saying a child might be in limbo for years because the parents or parent cannot access the services or there is some other reason. Is there a threshold on this of how long a child can be in that case drift scenario?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: The intention of this bill is stability, not case drift, so we do not intend for any children to be stuck in a case drift scenario. But I understand what you are seeking. The criteria are designed to ensure that the court determines whether a family reunification order extension is in the child’s best interest by considering factors that either weigh against or in favour of an extension. These factors will be considered alongside the best interest principles set out in the act, and they include the desirability of continuity and stability in the child’s care, including stable and enduring arrangements for care and parental responsibility and, as you read out earlier yourself, the child having physical stability, cultural stability and relational stability. In practice what that means is the additional criteria may be considered in the following way. For example, to take your point about whether or not parents had access to services, this may weigh in favour of or against granting an extension. Significant duration or a number of previous extensions will generally weigh against further extensions. Where parents have been offered services but have not engaged with these services, without a reasonable justification, nor shown sustained change, this would generally weigh against an extension. Ultimately, though, it will be for the court to determine what is in the best interests of each child based on their unique circumstances. Without hypothesising about each and every child’s individual circumstances, it is difficult to provide you with more than that.

Georgie CROZIER: I appreciate that, and I am just trying to tease out some of these issues around the bill because clause 4, as we have gone through before, is talking about the decision-makers having to consider certain aspects, I state again, of how physical stability, cultural stability and relational stability reflect the desirability of the child’s situation. So it is all very well intended, but if in reality those desirability elements can be met but there is not the actual physical ability for government services to be able to deliver something, is there a threshold, a maximum time, that the government sees? Even though we meet those aspects under the desirability criteria, is that really good enough for a child who might be at risk if those extensions are continuing?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: As I have said, the bill maintains a framework of fixed order and extension length, which will require the Children’s Court to consider the best interests of the child at regular intervals of no more than 12 months. Ultimately, it will remain a matter for the court, but it is envisaged that the court is the check-in which ensures that we do not have case drift. Whilst we know that the majority of reunifications will actually happen in a shorter period of time, it does remain a blunt instrument as it stands, and what we are seeking to do is restore that balance by not completely removing the test of the court but making sure that there is that check-in which ensures that there is that oversight from the court as to what is in the best interests of the child.

Georgie CROZIER: Beyond the Yoorrook for Justice report, can you explain the specific grounds or investigations and data analysis which informed the decision to remove the time limit on family reunification orders? And has the government considered research on the long-term effects on children of going through the trauma of having continuous orders being applied?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: The bill has been informed by academic research; previous reviews examining the permanency settings, including the Commission for Children and Young People’s previous reviews – I know we have quoted them a number of times today; as well as the Yoorrook for Justice report, as you identified; child protection data published by the AIHW; internal departmental data; and the input of experts within the sector. This data shows that most families do achieve the reunification in a timely manner, indeed in less than 24 months. However, it also did highlight that a small number of families require longer to achieve safe and successful reunification. Sector experts provided evidence that current rigid timelines on family reunification orders do not provide sufficient flexibility to take account of complex family dynamics or factors outside of parents’ control, such as access to services. This is supported by the findings of the permanency amendments longitudinal study, which found that the permanency amendments had resulted in unforeseen results in court, including delays in resolving protection applications and extensions to family reunification orders without compelling evidence of likely permanent reunification. Risk of re-entry to care is higher for families where reunification is attempted too quickly, which is the other side of this, with higher rates of re-entry where permanency decisions are made prematurely. Expediting permanency decisions may not consider the negative effects of quickly placing children in permanent care arrangements where there may be unintended results of returning to unsafe homes.

Georgie CROZIER: Minister, is all that data and the reports that you have just referenced publicly available? Is that all on the public record?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: Certainly the AIHW data is on the record. We have used internal departmental data, obviously, to inform our decision-making as well.

Georgie CROZIER: Can the house have a copy of that data that informed your decision-making?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: Any of the data that is public that I have spoken to – as I have said, some of it is internal departmental data that is not publicly available and cannot necessarily be made publicly available, but academic research, such as the panel’s report, is available through my Yoorrook evidence, for example.

Georgie CROZIER: When you read it all out – I am just trying to understand, because it was very quick. University data obviously is public. Could you just clarify what is public and what is interdepartmental data?

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: I did not speak to specific internal departmental data, to your question, but we have certainly been informed by internal departmental data. In relation to the academic research – for example, the permanency amendments longitudinal study report, which is part of my evidence at the Yoorrook Justice Commission – that is publicly available.

Sitting suspended 6:29 pm until 7:31 pm.

Clause agreed to; clauses 11 to 14 agreed to.

Clause 15 (19:32)

Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO: I invite members to vote against this clause. The purpose of this amendment is about avoiding the introduction of further uncertainty and instability for children, families and carers by reopening the legislative framework within a short and fixed timeframe. This amendment also reflects stakeholder advice.

Lizzie BLANDTHORN: The government will not be supporting this amendment. We support there being a review of the bill. We have specifically put it at five years. We think this is appropriate as it is in line with standard practice across other significant bills and considering the significance of the reforms, which will impact children and families, the operations of the Children’s Court and the child protection system. To Ms Crozier’s point earlier, we want to make sure that the reforms are operating as intended, so it is appropriate that they be reviewed.

David ETTERSHANK: Legalise Cannabis will be supporting this amendment. We think it has great merit.

Clause agreed to; clauses 16 and 17 agreed to.

Reported to house without amendment.

 Lizzie BLANDTHORN (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Children, Minister for Disability) (19:35): I move:

That the report be now adopted.

Motion agreed to.

Report adopted.

 Lizzie BLANDTHORN (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Children, Minister for Disability) (19:35): I move:

That the bill be now read a third time.

Motion agreed to.

Read third time.

The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Pursuant to standing order 14.28, the bill will be returned to the Assembly without amendment.