Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, what a good day it is in this place, to have before us the Commission for Children and Young People Bill of 2025, a bill that fulfils the recommendations of the commission of inquiry, either in full or significantly in part. I want to acknowledge not only the courage of victim/survivors and whistleblowers who came forward and went through the extraordinarily traumatising process of giving evidence to the commission of inquiry, I also want to thank the commission of inquiry again for the thoroughness and the empathy they poured into their extremely important work. I also want to acknowledge that the Tasmanian government has held true in very significant part to its commitment to implementing all 191 recommendations of the commission of inquiry.
There are questions about whether or not the implementation of those recommendations is adequately funded in this interim budget and what will happen to the funding that’s required from May next year, but it is unarguable that significant dedication and resources within government have been dedicated to establishing this commission. As I understand it, the version of the bill that we’re debating today is version 21 which is a very good indication that the government on this was prepared to listen very closely to stakeholder input and input from the interim Commissioner for Children and Young People input from the Office of the Independent Regulator.
The bill that is before us now is a massive reform in the way we respond to the rights and the needs of children and young people in Tasmania. In so doing, we should acknowledge our history on this island of harming children began on colonisation. Ashley Youth Detention Centre for more than 100 years has been harming and traumatising children and young people. It is still open, despite the recommendation of the commission of inquiry that it be closed immediately. Despite the promise of a former premier who gave a solemn commitment that Ashley would be closed by September of 2024, and yet that hellhole remains open, but that is an ongoing debate and it is certainly something, I’m sure, that government will need to answer for next week in budget Estimates. I do note there is funding allocated in this interim budget for the new therapeutic youth justice facility at Pontville, and that is a good thing, but it does seem that the process of closing Ashley and establishing a new youth justice facility has been glacially slow.
The Commission for Children and Young People Bill we debate today fulfils the government’s commitment to implement the recommendations of the commission of inquiry. It creates three new statutory roles: the Commissioner for Children and Young People, the Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People, and the Child Advocate. It allows for the fact that we have an established statutory role in the Office of the Independent Regulator and provides for those roles to come together within four or five years, as I recall.
The task of the commission will be enormous: to advocate for systemic change in the way that we treat children and young people, particularly children and young people in out‑of‑home care or in youth detention. We have before us the annual report of the Office of the Independent Regulator and, I’m sure, a number of honourable members have worked through this first Office of the Independent Regulator comprehensive annual report. Some low points from the annual report: the Office of the Independent Regulator received 567 notifications in 2024‑2025 under the reportable conduct scheme, and that was an average of 12 a week compared to 9 a week in the previous reporting period, which was 1 January 2024 to 30 June 2024.
At the end of the 2024‑25 financial year, 452 reportable conduct notifications remain open. Of the 304 reportable conduct notifications that were closed in the 2024‑25 financial year, 34 were found to be substantiated. That’s one in 10: one in 10. So, if you look at sectors with the most notifications, and I am sure the Minister of Education, Children and Young People is very concerned about this as well, the report says on page 10:
In line with other jurisdictions, education, (which includes public and private schools, early childhood education and tertiary education), continues to account for the largest number of notifications, with 189 in this fiscal period, equating to a third of the total received, (or 33 per cent). Available data suggests less than 1 per cent of students in Tasmanian schools were victims in a reportable conduct notification.
We can say less than 1 per cent, and it sounds like a small number, but it’s certainly not a small number, and by no means trivial or insignificant, in fact, the opposite for any child who has been harmed in an educational setting.
In 2024, there were 80,649 children and young people enrolled in Tasmanian schools (including in Government, Catholic and Independent).
In the 2024‑25 financial year there were 210 children and young people in the education sector that were the alleged victim in a reportable conduct notification to the OIR. Six of these children and young people (3%) were alleged victims in more than one reportable conduct notification.
I will just pause at this moment to acknowledge that the parliament has passed legislation to require organisations to be child safe and to enact this reportable conduct scheme, and it is through this scheme that, to some level, we are seeing the extent of the problem. I want to indicate that we will be supporting this bill as it is. We believe it’s been fully considered and broadly consulted. We won’t be supporting the proposed amendment put forward by the honourable member for Montgomery, because it is potentially quite a backward step in terms of the composition of the very important oversight committee that will be established under this legislation. That committee, in the provisions of part 4 of this act:[tbc]
The Joint Committee would consist of an even number that is not less than six and not more than eight members of Parliament, of whom half are to be members of the Legislative Council and half are to be members of the House of Assembly.
And the provision goes on to say:
The members of the Joint Committee established by this section are to include at least one representative of each political party that has three or more members in the House of Assembly.
Now I understand the member for Montgomery in his amendment seeks to bring the provision for this committee in line with the Integrity Commission Act, but I would argue that that provision in the Integrity Commission Act, in its establishment of the committee, is somewhat flawed in itself.
If we were to pass, for example, the honourable member for Montgomery’s amendment, it would mean if the committee is established as a committee of six, for example, no independent member in the lower house would be able to put their hand forward because an amendment would have been passed that required every party member who was passionate about protecting the wellbeing of children in Tasmania would need to come from the House of Assembly.
You would have half your committee established from party membership in the House of Assembly, that is: there would be one Liberal, one Labor, one Green, under the current make‑up of that House, and therefore six members of the crossbench would be excluded from putting their hand forward. There are members of this place who are members of political parties, and I am one of them, who have been on this journey of understanding the need and pressing for a commission of inquiry into institutional responses to child sexual abuse. They have worked very closely with victim‑survivors and whistleblowers. They have attended commission of inquiry hearings.
I don’t mean to speak for other members of this place, but I know there are other party members in this place who are just as passionate as I am, agreeing about making sure we get this right, and we make that turn away from our history of damaging and brutalising children; but should the honourable member for Montgomery’s amendment pass, arguably members of this place who are passionate about the wellbeing of children could be excluded on the basis of the fact that we’re a member of a political party, and there are already members on the committee from the House who are members of a political party.
I really think, notwithstanding the conventions of this place, we should be agnostic about which House statutorily is required to provide those members who happen to be members of a political party with three or more members in the House of Assembly. I think it would be a backward step for the constitution of this very important committee, and we won’t be supporting it.
Mr President, while I’m on my feet, as a member of the joint committee that has oversight of the implementation of the commission of inquiry recommendations, I will say how meaningful it has been to be a member of that committee, previously chaired by the honourable member for Murchison and now chaired by the honourable member for Nelson. I believe we’ve done a very thorough job.
Sitting suspended from 1 p.m. to 2.30 p.m.
Resumed from above.
[2.55 p.m.]
Ms O’CONNOR (Hobart) – Mr President, before the lunch break I was reflecting on what a thorough job the committee established by parliament to oversight the implementation of the recommendations of the commission of inquiry is doing. It’s been a rigorous process. We’ve questioned ministers, state servants, the implementation monitor, and are ticking through the body of work that we’ve been given to make sure that the Government is held to its word, not just to parliament, but to children and young people in Tasmania and all of us who love the kids in our lives and want the best for all Tasmanian children and young people.
I have no further comments to add at this point in the second reading but, as I said earlier, it’s a very good bill. It certainly deserves the strong support of the parliament.
