Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, I thank Mrs Beswick, for bringing this to the House. I cannot imagine the conversations you have been having with your special friends who have brought you to bring this forward today. There has obviously been lots of pain and grief in the conversations for you to bring it here today. Thank you for taking that extra step and making this public as you should. It is exactly the right thing to do.
Those of us who are in this Chamber, who spoke around the time that this incredibly sad incident happened, will not forget the shock we all felt. I believe everyone in Tasmania will remember the day that accident happened but the people who lived there and continue to live in that community cannot escape the feelings. They are like a ripple in a community. They have unexpected effects on different people. People respond different ways in grief. Some people really shut down and and withdraw, other people want to keep talking all the time about it. It is a whole range of things, and it is like a wave as well. Things change. Sometimes people shut down, other times people open up.
Throughout that, what is important is honest communication and real human contact. People crave information, they crave answers, they crave knowledge, and they crave being kept up to date with the exact circumstances of actions that are being taken or not taken. They really want to know what is happening, whether there is a delay, who is speaking to whom. The minutia of that information is so important to families who have lost children like those beautiful children.
On behalf of the Greens, I want to speak the names of those beautiful children and watch what the Hillcrest Primary School staff said about those beautiful children at the time and they remember them for their unique contributions: Addison, the quiet achiever; Zane, the cheeky gamer; Zye, the courageous one.; Peter, the helpful one; Jalailah, the nurturing one; and Chace, the sporty one. And they noted, as the parents and families and the rest of the community will know so well, that those children are frozen in time for the people who love them and they will never reach their full potential and live out the lives that they could have had. And that is an enduring pain for people who knew those beautiful children and for their families to think about what they would be like today if they were here.
The responsibility of the government and the responsibility for us as a parliament is to support and follow the community and to keep raising their issues about how they want the response to that tragedy to be dealt with as a priority, to be continued and followed up and not let fall off into the endless list of tasks of government. They want that to be given special priority. There is no doubt that Tasmanians would agree that it should be given special priority. It is not just another list of tasks for the government to do and I am not suggesting that is the way the government has been treating it, not at all. That is a priority for people who have suffered the pain that they do still suffer.
On behalf of the Greens, I agree that, yes, we understand that these tragic events continue on over months and years and decades in the lives of the people who have lived with those children and the families. Those events will be with them for the rest of their lives and it changes a community. That community needs special support and attention to make sure they have got extra resources to build community bonds, to strengthen and support people in the community, to be even more mindful of the need for specialised mental health services and support and to help people have the individual contact with the government agencies that are responsible for act.
My memory at the time, Premier, was that there was a special unit set up or there was a contact person, and it is important that there is an individual person, an individual face. It is not just ringing up on the phone and speaking to a government agency, but you have a person with a name and they know your name and they know your situation. Clearly, things have changed. It is now years past and there are things that can be improved upon. We thoroughly support a review of the processes and procedures. It is fair to say on behalf of the Greens, having worked with Labor and the government at the time and other members, that there was a very strong, genuine attempt to put in place the best processes that could be constructed, but nothing is perfect and nothing is exactly right for the individual community.
The needs of people in Hillcrest need to be specifically looked at and recognised that there are local differences. The message we are hearing from Mrs Beswick is that the systems that were put in place need to be improved. We would support a review and we will work to commit to enhance the transparency and accountability by asking questions of the government and their actions.
As someone who lived in the Huon Valley in the 2018‑19 bushfires and who was there for three months while the township around Geeveston was burning and there were fires burning in the area for months and months, and the evacuation centre, I know very well that the crisis at the time is one sort of response that the community has. Then there is a lag that seemed, in that experience, to be a year, and then after a year then there is a whole different level of need and a whole different support need. What is provided in the first instance in a crisis response is not the response that needs to maintain in place, it needs to change over time as people’s needs change over time. I would be interested to hear how government can better change response over time and what is needed to keep up to date with the different needs of the community in that situation?
In finishing, and on behalf of the Greens, I want to give my love and support to the families of those six children, but also of Declan Brown and Beau Medcraft, who were terribly injured, and to other children who were injured as well. Their families are all struggling to come to terms with the lives that they thought they were going to have, that will never be like that without the children they love. Thank you, Mrs Beswick, for bringing this to the house.
