Labor Leader Bryan Green said the handling of the child protection crisis has set a dangerous precedent for ministerial responsibility.
“The Premier has today endorsed the way a genuine crisis in child protection was kept from the Human Services Minister Jacquie Petrusma,” Mr Green said.
“The Premier is basically saying that crucial information can come into a ministerial office and not be passed on to the Minister.
“This sets a dangerous precedent where staff may choose to deliberately withhold information from the Minister and no one will be held accountable for it.
“In this case, clearly no one has properly been held to account for both the crisis itself and the shocking breakdown in communication.
“At the very least the Minister should apologise to those caught up in the crisis, but it’s my belief the Premier should make her resign.
“Someone needs to take responsibility for the failure of the community’s most vulnerable people.”
Shadow Human Services Minister Rebecca White said the Opposition had finally received a Right To Information response from Ms Petrusma’s office.
“127 documents were identified in relation to our request but not one word was publically released,” Ms White said.
“The reason cited for the exemption was because it was “Internal Briefing information of a Minister.”
“The RTI did however confirm that the Minister’s office was told twice of the crisis on the North West Coast, the week before the Minister says she was made aware of it – on the 12th and then again on the 13th of August.
“There’s no explanation for why the Minister was kept in the dark until the issue was made public through the media.”
Bryan Green MP Labor Leader Rebecca White MP Shadow Human Services Minister
