It's a bill designed to fix a system in crisis, but South Australia's proposed new child protection legislation has plenty of critics.
Senior lawyers, Aboriginal advocates and the Australian Medical Association are among them.
The Child and Young People (Safety) Bill is designed to implement some of the findings of the Nyland Royal Commission.
Tony Rossi, President of the Law Society of South Australia, says it has missed the mark.
"Not only does the bill fail to implement many of the most important reforms recommended, it introduces changes to the current system that increase the rights of the department, and at the expense of families."
Michael Rice, a paediatrician and former president of the South Australian Medical Association, says there is not enough focus on prevention before harm is done to a child.
"There remains no apparent government interest in primary prevention," he says.
"Help is initiated only after an incident, or if you want to call it an accident."
"Any thinking person knows prevention is better than cure. So why aren’t we talking cure?"
South Australia's Attorney-General John Rau has hit back at the wide-ranging concerns, saying the bill has been subject to extensive consultation.
"Since November of last year, when the draft bill was put out, we have received a number of submissions, we have considered a number of those submissions," he says.
"In an area as contested as this area is, many of those submissions fiercely advocate positions which are diametrically opposed to other positions.
"We have made changes to the bill, we are listening to what is going on around the place, but quite frankly some of the criticisms that have been made are completely false."
'Draconian' approach to keeping Aboriginal children safe
Melissa Clarke, a director at the SA Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement, is calling for the draft to be scrapped.
"It needs to be scrapped, and re-written," she says.
"It really is a draconian piece of legislation, and on behalf of the many Aboriginal people I have spoken to, we’re actually very outraged, and we know that this bill is going to do nothing but further disadvantage and displace our Aboriginal children," she says.
She says the cultural needs of Indigenous children are not adequately accounted for, and that the Bill, unlike the current legislation has no provisions to support Aboriginal-run community programs to help reduce cases of abuse – and it allows children to "opt out" of identifying as Aboriginal.
"When you have specific clauses that says a child, an Aboriginal child, can make an informed choice not to identify as being Aboriginal, reeks of forced assimilation."
About 40 per cent of the children in care in South Australia are Aboriginal.
Attorney-General John Rau says the Bill contains “many” improvements for the protection of Aboriginal children compared to the current legislation.
"The first one is, the early intervention provisions in this legislation, which enable the chief executive to convene family conferences very early on in the piece, and for those family conferences to enable all the extended family, whether they be extended family in an Aboriginal context or a non-Aboriginal context, to be involved, those measures are very, very positive, and have the potential to prevent a number of Aboriginal children who might otherwise fall into the child protection system from ever getting there."
'Outrage' as preventative female genital mutilation provisions dropped
The draft bill also does not include specific preventative measures against female genital mutilation (FGM), including the ability to put at-risk children on an airport watch list, or remove passports.
FGM is still a crime under the state’s Criminal Law Consolidation Act, but further provisions under the Children’s Protection Act (1993) enabled a court to make specific protection orders if a child was found to be at risk.
Greens MLC Tammy Franks says she is “outraged” over the omissions and says she will be moving amendments “to ensure, like all other state and territories, South Australia affords protections to girls and young women against female genital mutilation.”
State Liberal MP Rachel Sanderson also wants to see the specific measures reinstated.
“It, sort of, reverses the proof – so the parents have to prove the child is safe, in order to get the passport back, rather than the reverse,” she says.
SA Attorney-General John Rau says this part of the legislation is being reviewed.
“I am looking at the legislation to see whether we can make, what, in my opinion is abundantly clear, even clearer,” he says.
“Anybody who performs an act of that type is liable to prosecution and imprisonment for up to seven years. That is a criminal offence right now.
He says under the proposed Bill, a court would still have the power to take preventative action such as place at-risk children on airport watch lists, or seize passports.
“As far as I’m concerned, the legislation already says the court can make any order they think fit, in order to protect the child.”
“But again, there are some people who are reading this legislation who are looking for particular words, and they assume because the particular words that they’re familiar with are not there, that the thing they’re worried about is no longer being dealt with.
“That is just not right. But, I am looking at this particular question now, because if it’s not clear to some people in respect to that particular criminal offence, it may not be clear to other people in respect of other criminal offences.”
“If we need to make it even clearer, so that it is unmistakable that a criminal act on a child is harm – if that needs to be explained in detail – we will.”
