57. Chloe Valentine Inquest

Hi. I am Greg and I want to grumble about the Chloe Valentine Inquest.

Like many people, I watched the news in horror as the Coroner revealed the appalling failings of our child protection system. And I was moved to tears watching a grandmother dealing with the tragedy. I can not begin to imagine her pain and the fury she must feel having begged the authorities for custody of her grandchild.

But then came the Coroner’s recommendations, and frankly, I am sorry – but extrapolating from a case study is not really a good basis for social policy. Yes, in this case the actions of the Department are indefensible and there is little doubt that this child should have been removed from her parents, but it is not that long ago that we apologised for a generation stolen from their parents for what at the time seemed like good reasons.

There are costs to removing children from their parents as there are risks to leaving them, and we know that a change in policy to favour removal over risk management will lead to another generation of Aboriginal kids taken from their parents. The word Aboriginal did not appear in the Coroner’s report – and maybe that should be pause for thought when we move from reaction to policy.

And talking of dodgy policy, on what basis did the Coroner decide that Income Management would have helped the situation when most credible public policy analysis shows there is no basis for believing that restricting the expenditure of people on income support has any impact on behavioural choices or child welfare?

Income management was a paternalistic racist policy borne out of anecdotes, political expediency and at best a desperation to do something, anything. But it is not good policy and the Coroner’s report provided no evidence or argument about the success of Income Management – just an assumption and some moralistic judgement of what he thought was right.

Blokes at pubs make pronouncements on policy based on their own experience and anecdotes – but real public policy is more complicated than that. I’m no expert on child protection, but I know it is a fallacy of liberal philosophy that society is nothing but a collection of “individuals making their way” (to quote the late but not great invader of the Falklands, Margaret Thatcher).

Is it such a dream that we might start a serious public policy debate from an analysis of history, power and social structures?

And if we were doing that, would we start with lawyers in a quasi-judicial processes, or with someone who was an expert in child protection?

Of course as we grieve for an innocent child, this critique of the inquiry which is calling Families SA to account won’t make me popular. But for the record, SACOSS called for an independent inquiry into South Australia’s child protection system in January 2013. The government responded saying it was under control and a review wasn’t needed.

I am Greg and I am grumbling.


This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 14 April  2015

54. Everything

Hi. I am Greg and it has been 4 weeks since my last Grumble.

Please excuse the Catholic confessional introduction especially as it’s the Protestants now apologising because some of its Knox Grammarians took the motto of “doing the manly thing” the wrong way and were ignored or allowed to go on abusing children – probably for the same reasons that the music industry did not take Gary Glitter at his word when he asked if his pre-pubescent audience wanted to touch him there. We look forward to a nuanced government response which presumably will see the expansion of the state government Screening Unit to cover musicians and Presbyterians.

Meanwhile, there has been outrage from the anti-some-capital punishment campaigners over two Australians facing execution for drug smuggling in Indonesia. Now apart from the collusion of Australia’s police force in this debacle, I simply wonder why these two lives should mean so much more than the thousands each year whose judicial murder by our major trading partners and friends goes unremarked?

And on the subject of nationalism and dodgy analysis, we had the government’s Intergenerational Report trying to make us into the unlucky country which apparently will no longer be able to afford the health and welfare services of a decent society. And on that subject we’ve also had the McClure report into the future of welfare which either seemed to have forgotten about independent young people or contained a fairly radical proposal to cut off income support payments for any young person under 22 who is not residing in the family home (presumably surrounded by a white picket fence).

I’m still not sure about what is planned, but talking of government reports, there was also the state government review of South Australian taxes which led to a one-day media frenzy about one proposal while the rest of the thoughtful Discussion Paper got forgotten.

But of course it is a good time to forget things with Mad March’s Festival for the arty, Fringe for the hopefuls, cars that go brmmmm for the masses, and Womad for the self-righteous internationalists who can pretend to be African, Cuban, or Romanian for a day (or at least an hour).

And there, under introduced trees and over-abundant flying foxes we had a not very funny comedian ignoring structural power and vested interest and patronisingly telling us that we just need to talk to people differently about climate change.

But that was ok because if you live where I live, you might not have got to the famed parklands anyway because the government decided to repair the rail lines over the long weekend – because let’s face it our public transport system is only really for getting people to and from city offices on workdays? I mean, it is not like anyone would ride to Womad or anywhere else and want to catch a train home.

Much better to drive, particularly as the head of our Motor Accident Commission wants to make it safer for us by removing all trees within sight of any road because apparently these arboreal terrorists are leaping out in front of cars and adding to the road toll.

What was that about climate change?

I am Greg, I am grumbling.

This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 10 March 2015

48. Royal Commissions and Consultation

Hi. I am Greg and I want to grumble about the South Australian Royal Commission into child protection. Given the recent appalling revelations of a Families SA officer abusing children in their care, and the apparent failure of the Department or system to respond and protect kids, who could grumble about an independent inquiry to find out what went wrong and to stop it happening again?

Well, my grumble is more about the way the Royal Commission was set up.

When the government announced the inquiry, it called for public submissions on the draft Terms of Reference – because as we know, the government does not “announce and defend” anymore.

Well, various groups and concerned individuals put in submissions suggesting changes, including broadening the inquiry to look at ways to keep kids out of state care in the first place, and also to look at what happened to all the previous inquiries into the child protection system – lest we re-invent the wheel or repeat past failures.

But 3 days after public submissions closed, the final Terms of Reference were announced – with almost no changes. There was a tinkering with some legalese, and the insertion of 6 words requiring a consideration of resources and the financial achievability of any recommendations.

It is not clear if this last change was a small recognition of the various submissions calling for a cost-benefit analysis in light of the huge cost and unknown benefit of police screening of workers and volunteers, or whether the change in wording was simply a common sense request not to recommend 24/7 guard details and video surveillance.

Either way, there was no widening of the terms of reference to consider the broader context of child protection, nor any acknowledgment that we have been here before.

Ultimately, if the government wants a narrow inquiry that addresses specific issues quickly, that’s legitimate – but don’t go through the farce of public consultation if you already know what you want.

“Consult and ignore” is no better than “announce and defend”.

The state government has a Stronger Together partnership with the community sector, they have the Better Together principles allegedly underpinning all government community engagement, and there is now even a Charter of Citizen Participation proposed in the new planning system reforms.

But frankly, these all amount to nothing if the community input is simply ignored, or if there is no explanation of why the government chose to proceed the way it did.

It is simply public servants ticking boxes that they have consulted, and I am too old and grumpy to be bothered with that game.

If you want an example of how such consultation should be treated, check out SACOSS’ last submission in relation to the ACNC.

I am Greg and I am grumbling.

This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 2 September 2014

45. Families SA & Child Protection

Hi. I am Greg and I want to Grumble about the demise of Families SA chief, David Waterford who spectacularly resigned on the weekend deepening the state government crisis over child protection.

Now I don’t know any more than is in the public domain, and Mr Waterford is certainly no friend of community services. My experience of him goes back to the gutting of financial counselling services in 2010, where he appeared hostile and obstructive at best.

More importantly though, it is not like he was a brilliant leader and the child protection system in SA was the best thing ever – clearly it’s not, and he has presided over this flawed system.

But running an appalling system is not why he resigned.

He resigned because he gave incorrect advice to the Minister, and they in turn made misleading statements to the media – not the parliament mind you, to the media. This is obviously fatal because we have such a superficial political dialogue that it is impossible to simply say, as any reasonable person elsewhere would, “look, we gave some advice last week, but on further checking we found out something else”.

But what sort of message does this send? Presumably it is ok to oversee a failing system – even one as vitally important as child protection – but if you embarrass the Minister that is a crime requiring falling on one’s sword.

And more broadly, when I see the unflattering image of David Waterford on the front page of today’s Tiser with screaming headlines about the “shambles” of the communication around the latest child protection disaster, I wonder about the impact on a public service already so cautious and risk averse that at times it appears incapable of decision – let alone innovation.

I fear this type of public flogging may drive public servants to focus even more on covering their own-backs, implementing even more layers of centralisation and control – notwithstanding that part of the problem of the system is this centralisation, the ensuing mountains of paperwork which senior public servants have to wade through in long hours at night, and the lack of authority and agency at other levels of the system.

Ultimately, we probably do more damage by having a public service with a culture of risk and decision avoidance, than we do from having the odd controversy or wrong fact communicated.

Maybe I am naïve, or a hopelessly unreconstructed modernist, but I think outcomes are more important than communications!

I am Greg and I am grumbling.

This Grumble can be heard online or by podcast.
First Broadcast: 29 July 2014