If the time out is used simply to buy time until the next election, the cost to children in need of care and protection will be high. Democrats MLC Arthur Chesterfield-Evans has tried to interest his Upper House colleagues in finding out why DOCS continues to falter. Rather than a DOCS-bashing exercise, his proposed inquiry was intended to identify the changes and resources needed to make the department work to the benefit of the State's most vulnerable children. Under intense departmental and government lobbying, the MLCs failed narrowly to support establishing the inquiry. Now that the Carr Government's promise to them of reform has been exposed as mendacious political puff, maybe the honourable Upper House members won't be sandbagged so easily next time.
Public ignorance is political bliss.
As a direct result of successful government action to neuter its independent watchdog as well as the Legislative Council, the public no longer knows of, nor has effective influence on, the performance of this department, its minister and its director-general. Even after the Wood royal commission exposed DOCS's shortcomings, we don't know if fewer state wards are incarcerated in juvenile justice institutions, if there are better outcomes for kids in long-term care, or if more are completing their secondary education. We don't know how many children die while in DOCS care, or while waiting for it to act appropriately on a notification. We don't know because the Carr Government won't tell us. Previous reports of the Child Deaths Review Committee suggest that 25 per cent of about 800 child deaths last year in NSW occurred among children known to DOCS, though less than 2 per cent of children are in its care or have been notified to it.