STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator LIDDLE (South Australia—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (13:30): Today I hosted the Parliamentary Friends against Sexual Abuse and Exploitation event, alongside fellow co-chair Senator Ghosh, with NAPCAN. The National Association for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect is dedicated entirely to preventing child abuse and neglect before it starts.

NAPCAN's work is exactly the protective, proactive, prevention-first thinking that the child protection system so urgently needs. Today's event brought together experts to examine the Child Death Review Board's 2025 report In plain sight, which examined how predatory behaviour can go undetected for years—even when the warning signs exist and are obvious. It is a devastating account of how current systems fail to connect the dots until catastrophic harm has occurred.

And the devastating impacts are lifelong for the victims-survivors, who should have been safe. Those experts talked of the numerous working-with-children checks—they have slightly different names, depending on the states and territories; in effect, they're backward-looking eligibility checks, too often mistaken for a guarantee of ongoing safety—and a system that prioritises criminal-justice responses over genuine safety threat detection, leaving families with nowhere to go once police determine that there isn't enough evidence to charge.

We must also not overlook the interpretation of the Aboriginal child placement principle. It should always—always—put the safety of children first, regardless of their identity. Families have trusted a system that has failed to protect them as it should have.

Every worker, every child and every parent deserves a protective ecosystem, when the warning signs are hidden in plain sight. It's on us to create it and sustain it.