2025-07-30
The Greens say that Labor must stop hiding behind excuses and urgently commit to releasing documents following explosive reports regarding complaints made to the Department of Education.
Reports in the Age today reveal that the Department of Education received a complaint in 2022 about serious supervision failures at a centre where accused paedophile Joshua Brown allegedly sexually abused children.
These complaints are exactly the kind of documents that the Greens requested via a parliamentary order last month which the government failed to meet the deadline on releasing.
The Attorney-General tabled a letter yesterday with a copy-paste excuse saying that there was insufficient time to meet the request and the Premier told Parliament there were “too many documents.”
The Greens say that when it comes to the safety of children, these documents are too important to be ignored and have proposed that Labor release the documents in tranches, which is how similar documents were revealed in New South Wales.
This process will allows the time required to carefully redact sensitive information, protect children’s privacy, and ensure transparency is delivered in a realistic, staged way.
The Victorian Greens spokesperson for Early Childhood, Anasina Gray-Barberio said that not releasing these documents is impossible to defend, and that if this is what's uncovered from one complaint, one whistleblower, it makes you wonder what else in those documents that the Labor Government doesn’t want us to see.
Quotes attributable the the Victorian Greens spokesperson for Early Childhood, Anasina Gray-Barberio:
“This is exactly why we’re pushing for these documents to be released - to expose the red flags that were ignored while children were being harmed. Labor’s refusal to release them is starting to look like a cover-up.”
“If Labor cares about children’s safety and fixing this system they need to commit to working with us on a way we can release these documents in a safe and realistic way.”
“In New South Wales, similar documents were released in tranches. There’s no reason we can’t do the same here.”
“The longer Labor stalls, the more people are asking, what’s in those documents that they don’t want us to see?”