No confidence in Petrusma as story keeps changing

• Child Protection Minister cannot get her story straight over answers to Parliament and Estimates
• Petrusma’s litany of failures now results in misleading Parliament
• Minister should resign over her deliberate misleading over Children’s Commissioner
Beleaguered Child Protection Minister Jacquie Petrusma should either resign or be sacked by the Premier after her latest bungles resulted in a No Confidence Motion in State Parliament today.
Shadow Minister for Children Josh Willie said Mrs Petrusma has been behind a litany of mistakes while she has been responsible for Tasmania’s most vulnerable children over the past three years but now she had been caught out deliberately misleading the Parliament over her office’s dealings with the Commissioner for Children.
“Allegations that Mrs Petrusma’s office has tried to obstruct the Commissioner for Children in carrying out his role have already been referred to the Integrity Commission,” Mr Willie said.
“But over the past two days in the House of Assembly the Minister has clearly been deliberately and wilfully misleading over a statement released by the Commissioner for Children last week during Budget Estimates.
“She has mislead the House in making an untrue claim that the Commissioner Mr Morrissey ‘accidentally’ released to the media a statement she read into the record at Estimates hearings. That is simply not true.
“She has mislead the House and been unable to satisfactorily answer questions about what role she and her office played in drafts of that statement.
“She has been caught out in a tangled web of her own weaving by refusing to provide full and truthful answers to questions.
“This Minister has presided over a litany of mistakes in the Children’s portfolio and she cannot possibly be allowed to continue.”
Josh Willie MLC Shadow Minister for Children