Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin - Leader of the Greens) - Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to thank the Leader of the Opposition for bringing this motion on today and I can confirm that we will be strongly supporting the independent review of the issues raised by the commissioners of inquiry in volume 1, section 5.1, titled Challenges We Faced, challenges the commissioners faced in the evidence they were able to gather and the conclusions they were able to draw under the Commissions of Inquiry Act and the confines of the State Service Code of Conduct.
It takes us to the heart of the question we asked in parliament this morning about a particular senior agency head who the commission of inquiry made very strong comments about the failings of that head of agency to act on allegations of child sex abuse, his failure to act on allegations of human rights violations of children at Ashley Youth Detention Centre, and a range of other matters that the commission of inquiry thought were very serious, including his lack of alleged truthfulness in providing advice or information to ministers and the contradictory evidence that the commissioners note he gave them in his testimony to the commission.
These are all extremely serious comments made by the commissioners in their report, and just from an external point of view, let alone the victims/survivors who have talked about it, it would obviously be the case when you are reading the commissioners' comments about this senior State Service agency head that there would have been an investigation done by the Government. We therefore struggle to understand the Premier's response this morning when he indicated by his non-response that there in fact has not been an investigation undertaken at any time into Mr Pervan. I gave him another opportunity in our matter of public importance debate to clarify whether I had made a mistake in understanding him. The Premier did not correct the assumption that I have drawn, which is that from his non-response, the Government has in fact not undertaken any examination of the evidence provided in the commission of inquiry's report, and that was obvious from Mr Pervan's testimony as a witness providing evidence to the inquiry.
We know that that is one very senior State Service agency head, past secretary of the Department of Communities and long-time secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. That is a very substantial level of responsibility and it is obviously a problem if we have a commission of inquiry that has done the deep work into looking into the cultural problems and the specific acts or failures to act of state servants in responding appropriately to complaints of allegations of child sexual abuse. This commission of inquiry has gone through all of the agencies and found very deep and long flaws in our systems of notification and complaints and a system which has effectively given power over years to abusers to enable them to stay in institutions, or where they have been found out because complaints have come to the surface from brave victims/survivors or other whistleblowers, they have been shifted sideways. People were shifted from the Launceston General Hospital, state servants shifted into Ashley Youth Detention Centre and people shifted into and between education institutions.
The decision to move people was made ultimately by agency heads, by more senior people in the public service. They made the decision to shift abusers from the Launceston General Hospital to Ashley Youth Detention Centre and people made a decision not to continue with investigations into staff who were working directly with children even after allegations of child sexual abuse were made. When you understand that that system operated effectively to give cover to abusers for decades, you ask the obvious question, what about the people at the top who signed things off? What did they know and what did they cover up? What did they tell ministers and what did they not tell ministers?
What we have in the commission of inquiry's report is a very clear statement that they had difficulties making adverse findings against senior public servants because there were, in their words, arguments that any adverse comment about an individual's behaviour could constitute misconduct because it was a breach of the very broad State Service Code of Conduct. They also said that that very broad interpretation of the State Service Code of Conduct meant that it was difficult for them, and in some cases impossible, for them to make some of the findings they might otherwise have made.
That is an important statement to stop and consider - findings they might otherwise have made. An adverse finding is a finding of guilt, it is a finding of a failing to act in the public interest, and it is something that would warrant investigation and natural justice and at minimum a person being removed from their role while that investigation is undertaken. Yet from the Premier's failure to answer the question this morning, I can only draw the conclusion that one such past head of agency, Mr Michael Pervan, never had an examination about the allegations in the commission of inquiry report.
We understand, and the Premier did not disavow it, that that man was put on a six-month contract, finished earlier this year at the Department of Natural Resources and Environment, and has now gone interstate to work elsewhere, so where is the justice for victims/survivors who want to understand the impact, or not, of a particular state servant's behaviour enabling abuse that occurred and continued for them? Where is the justice?
That is why we very much support the review the Labor Party is proposing today, because unless we understand all the issues the commission of inquiry has raised in its Volume 1 5.1 section about the challenges they faced we will not get to the bottom of what really happened and we will not be able to prevent it happening again. Were there ever to be an investigation into a person, if there are still obvious problems with the broad State Service Code of Conduct which has possibly shielded people who failed to act in the interests of children against their abusers, then we have concerns and the Tasmanian community would expect us to have those concerns and to do something about it.
The commissioners said that they faced difficulties because they sometimes received evidence or information that implicated people after their public hearings or very close to finalising their report, which meant that they did not have the time or ability to follow the required statutory processes. They were also concerned that pursuing an adverse finding would have been time-consuming, expensive, extended the length of their inquiry and diverted them away from other important activities such as designing recommendations for the future that could be implemented as quickly as possible. They said they had to make difficult decisions about how they wrote the report and framed their findings. It involved:
Balancing the public interest in holding individuals and systems to account with the public interest in prioritising effort and funding, tangible changes to protect children.
They specifically mentioned Ashley Youth Detention Centre -
Given our grave concerns about Ashley Youth Detention Centre, we felt we could not afford to delay our findings and recommendations. As a result, we could not pursue some issues in detail.
Their two comments were that the breadth of the State Service Code of Conduct made it impossible for them to make some findings that they would otherwise have made, and that they could not pursue some issues in detail.
We are extremely concerned at the minister's responses in relation to Ashley Youth Detention Centre. We are concerned that he appears to be wilfully misrepresenting the views of the commission of inquiry about the time frame for closing Ashley.
The commission of inquiry allocated their recommendations to short-, medium- or long-term time frames for implementation. Shortterm was by July 2024. Mediumterm was by July 2026. Long-term was by July 2029. They recognised, despite the urgency to close Ashley, it was not, in their view, realistic or possible to close the whole centre and have a therapeutic facility built by July next year. They did not, as the minister is suggesting, identify mid2026 as a time frame that they believe is reasonable. That is not what they said. They gave it the second time frame of the medium term. That does not mean that the minister takes no direct action to protect the children who are suffering harms through restrictive practices every day at Ashley at the moment.
The Commissioner for Children and Young People's evidence is that that is still the case. It is not true that that is what the commission has directed the Government to do. They said:
While we acknowledge the Government's restated commitment to closing Ashley Youth Detention Centre, we are gravely concerned by any suggestion of further delay. We were disappointed that there are some indications the Tasmanian Government is reconsidering its previous announcement to close the centre by 2024.
It could not be clearer. The commission of inquiry realised the gravity of what is happening to children every day at Ashley and deliberately wound up their report and decided to not go ahead with investigating possible adverse findings against some members of the State Service because they felt it was too important not to complete the report so the Government can get on with its task of doing, among other things, closing Ashley as a matter of urgency. Unless we have this review, we will not be able to understand the real issues that the commission of inquiry was battling with and the constraints which were thwarting their ability to do the examination that they were tasked to do in the detail that was required. We are really concerned that there may be, in the commission's own words:
People who are operating in the State Service who have not had a thorough enough investigation of their responsibility in the manner in which they responded to allegations of child sex abuse.
We support the call for the Premier to provide the House with the list containing the number of state servants and state senior executive officers who were provided with legal advice, paid for by the Government, broken down by band level and by senior executive level, by department, by 6 p.m. today.
We know the Government must have that information. It is in the public interest that it is released. It is important for people to understand where that $1.6 million was spent. We support the right of every person to have natural justice.
Section 194K of the Evidence Act 2001 prescribes the way that information could be published. It prohibits publication of some information after sexual offence charges had been laid. The commission welcomed the reforms that we introduced in April 2020 that were advocated for by victims of violence, but they also noted that section 194K sometimes operated in perverse, unusual ways in the inquiry so that they could publish evidence about abuses perpetrated by James Griffin to victims/survivors, but not publish the evidence of potential witnesses in proceedings against James Griffin because of proceedings that had commenced before his death.
These are matters where there must be reform. They make recommendations for reform. There needs to be an independent review of the issues because there is material behind the words of the commission of inquiry in section 5.1 'Challenges we Faced' that suggest greater problems that they diplomatically, or perhaps for legal reasons, did not feel compelled to put into print.
It is the job of parliament to understand the concerns raised by the commission of inquiry and use the privilege we have to understand if there are things they are recommending ought to be changed and how they should be changed so that people will be held accountable, so when people fail to act in the public interest, adverse findings can be made against them, and that misconduct proceedings can commence.
We thank the Labor Party for bringing it on and hope the Government will support the motion as it is.
