Thursday, 19 March 2026

 Lizzie BLANDTHORN (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Children, Minister for Disability) (12:07): I rise to update the house on enforcement action by the independent Social Services Regulator. As reported today, in December the regulator closed Greenslopes Supported Residential Service. The regulator used the regulations and powers available to it to act. Do we think the regulator should have been able to do more sooner? Yes. That is why last year the government sought to expand the powers of the Social Services Regulator to ensure greater protection for children and adults with disability. We sought to provide the regulator with the powers to prohibit dodgy workers in supported residential services from ever working with people with disability or children, collect and share intelligence to inform NDIS worker screening checks and establish a dedicated complaints function. These powers would have enabled the regulator to act earlier on concerns in SRSs and other settings where parents, carers or advocates saw something that was not right.

At the time the Leader of the Opposition called this reform ‘overdue’. Despite it being overdue, she was rolled by her Shadow Minister for Disability, Ageing, Carers and Volunteers, who seemingly prefers to leave children and people with disability at the mercy of predators. Sadly, the opposition was joined by the Greens and Legalise Cannabis in opposing measures for greater safeguards for Victorians with disability. Bizarrely, those opposite and others like Julie Phillips, the Health and Community Services Union and the Mental Health Legal Centre, who celebrated fewer protections for children and people with disability, now say there needs to be better oversight of the sector. Well, I can say if it were not for the grubby deal between the opposition, the Greens and Legalise Cannabis, that oversight would be in place today. It is the opposition, Greens and Legalise Cannabis that need to look the families of Greenslopes residents in the eye and explain why they care more about protecting dodgy providers than the safety of vulnerable people, of children and of people with disability, because they have shown time and time again that under their priorities children and people with disability are on their own.