The real opposition, the unions, are again playing politics at the expense of vulnerable Tasmanian children and women.
The Hodgman Liberal Government is committed to fixing Tasmania’s broken child protection system to better protect children at risk, while we are investing $26 million in our nation-leading Family Violence Action Plan.
We are – as the union well knows – regularly advertising vacancies in child protection, which demonstrates that it is not a resourcing issue, as Tom Lynch claims, but a problem with the system.
That’s why we have commenced a comprehensive child protection redesign with a reference group under the independent leadership of Professor Maria Harries.
Only last week, meanwhile, we launched the Safe Homes, Safe Families Implementation Plan (August 2015 - December 2016), which includes funding for additional counselling services for adults and children impacted by family violence.
The Community and Public Sector Union is aware that all of this work is ongoing, but rather than being part of the solution, it prefers to play politics.
The union has much more to say now than it did during 16 years of Labor and Labor-Green governments, which are directly responsible for the child protection system that we have inherited.
Tom Lynch should stop pretending to be the Leader of the Opposition and start working with us on fixing our child protection system to better protect vulnerable children, because that’s what is important here – not his party political loyalties.