Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin - Leader of the Greens) - Mr Speaker, I move -
That the House -
(1) Calls on the Government to provide the House of Assembly with an opportunity to scrutinise the Government's response to the report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government's Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings during the 2023 calendar year by either:
(a) tabling the response on or before 14 November 2023;
(b) providing for an additional 3 sitting days on the week of 4 December 2023; or
(c) such other response publication date, and/or alteration of sitting dates, that would allow for there to be at least 3 sitting days of the House of Assembly during the 2023 calendar year subsequent to the publication of the response.
(2) Orders the Government to inform the House of how they intend to comply with clause 1 of this motion before Question Time on 17 October 2023.
I do not believe that a vote will be required. We reserve our right to have one if necessary.
Mr SPEAKER - And the vote is not required?
Dr WOODRUFF - It may not be required.
Mr SPEAKER - We need to state whether the vote is required or not.
Dr WOODRUFF - A vote is required. I believe that all members in this place share the view of the commission of inquiry that the victims/survivors, their families, the carers and supporters who shared their stories with the inquiry all have an expectation that the commission's report will result in meaningful change. The Greens believe that it is the substance, the speed, the resourcing, the extent of the Government's response to the commission of inquiry's report whereby change will occur. Without that, change either will not come or it will come at such a glacial pace that in the process there will be avoidable cases of child sex abuse in Tasmanian government institutions. We all here today share a deep abiding commitment to make sure that we collectively will do everything we can to make sure that every opportunity to prevent child sex abuse is taken.
It is the response of the Government of this day to oversee the budget and the resourcing of the commission of inquiry's recommendations and to make the legislative changes that are necessary to bring about the cultural change, not just in government institutions, but through all workplaces, organisations, and community settings across the state. It is the responsibility of members of parliament who are not members of Government to scrutinise the effectiveness, the timeliness, the proper resourcing that the Government intends to commit in its response to the commission of inquiry's recommendations.
For change to be successful, it needs to not only be done, but it needs to be seen to be done. In order for us to properly scrutinise the budget and the response to the commission of inquiry from the Government, I am mindful of the fact that we are very close to the end of the parliamentary year. That means that the date the Government has provided for its response, 4 December 2023, will not give members of parliament time to scrutinise the quality, extent and resourcing of what the Government is planning to do. The summer break means there is too much time between the report and our opportunity to scrutinise the Government's response.
There are 191 recommendations. Each recommendation requires a response. Many of the recommendations are required to be completed by July next year. That means they will need to have a budget allocation to make a commitment to the resourcing. They need to have a time line for when legislation will be introduced to parliament. A substantial number of those recommendations involve preparing legislation to make changes to practices across agencies and to make sure that the gaps and the failings in the system are properly shored up.
If parliament's first opportunity to look at the Government's response is in March next year, that would leave only two months before the budget and only three months before the Government was meant to have completed a large number of the commission of inquiry's recommendations.
Because of that we are moving the motion today to recall parliament for another week. It is an extraordinary move but we believe that, given that this is the most important commission of inquiry ever held in Tasmania, one of the most historic things the state has ever addressed, it is warranted.
I thank the Premier and the Leader of the Opposition, in particular, for the many conversations we have had up to this point to get to a position where we are all comfortable with the amendment which I am about to read to the House.
Mr Speaker, I move -
That the motion be amended by omitting everything after 'That the House' and substituting the following -
Calls on the Government to -
(1) Release the Government's response to the Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government's Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings on Friday 1 December 2023; and
(2) Make such arrangements as necessary in consultation with parliament to provide for a commission of inquiry response scrutiny committee on Tuesday 5 December 2023, and Wednesday 6 December 2023; and
(3) Provide for a sitting of parliament on Thursday 7 December 2023.
Mr Speaker, we believe it is warranted, it is necessary, it is proportionate to have a scrutiny committee process that would happen on the Tuesday and Wednesday to the commission of inquiry response from the Government. Members would see that although the Government has previously said that the response would be made public on 4 December, the Premier has indicated his agreement to making it available on Friday 1 December, and that would enable members to read the Government's response over the weekend and the Monday so that we would have time to consider the sorts of questions and scrutiny matters that we want to raise with ministers in two days of a scrutiny committee process.
As to the specific details of the process, I look forward to the Premier speaking to that in a moment. The agreement we have come to is that the details will be prepared in a sessional order over the next couple of weeks. We expect the Government would be tabling the changes to the Sessional Orders that would reflect the details of this motion and the spirit of the conversations we have had so far between the Leader of the Opposition, the Premier and myself. It is an opportunity for members to ask questions about the response to the commission of inquiry's report to the manner and the resourcing and any other matters members think are appropriate. If the members of the Legislative Council agree, it would ideally be a joint House process in some matter, but we leave that to the Premier to negotiate. We understand there are members in the Legislative Council who would want to have a say in these matters as well. They have people they represent and it is fair and fitting that they would have an opportunity to ask questions too.
Given that there are five ministers responsible for taking primary carriage of the commission of inquiry's recommendations and the response to them, we anticipate that they would be the five ministers who have responsibility for Justice, youth detention, out-of-home care, Health, Education and Police. Those are the matters that the commission of inquiry makes recommendations around. Of course, the whole-of-government response is critical and it is something that the commission of inquiry points to repeatedly and it falls to the Premier in some respects to answer for the whole-of-government response.
We would see the House's return on Thursday 7 December to be an opportunity for an Estimates response from members to what they have heard through the Estimates process on the Tuesday and Wednesday, and that would be in a manner and a time to be determined in the revised Sessional Orders for that day.
The other reason this is important is that the agencies responsible for preparing the development of a plan and making an assessment of the appropriateness of resourcing and policies and procedures that need to change the culture are essentially working within the very culture that the commission of inquiry was called to fundamentally shift. I just make that as an obvious point. It is no reflection on individuals, but the reality is that when we are talking about culture there are cultural factors we have to recognise that the people who are working in that culture will be working on the response to changing their culture. That is another reason why the Government's response deserves the eyes of the other members of parliament.
I can speak for myself with absolute genuineness. This is an opportunity, a moment for us where it is not about what has happened, it is about what will happen. We do not know who will be in government after the next election. It could be anyone in this room, and others, any shape. We do not know what that will be, so we are all responsible in that way for crafting the proper, strong and effective response to the commission of inquiry, which is why we are particularly keen to have some sort of public examination of it.
When I say public, our expectation is that the Tuesday and Wednesday of that parliamentary week would be like an Estimates committee process where it would be filmed, televised in real time and members of the public could attend and watch as they do during a budget process.
In volume 8, page 283, the commission talked about the Government's response to the national royal commission into child sexual abuse in institutions. They said:
Even after the national royal commission made many recommendations to create a responsive service system for victims/survivors, the Tasmanian Government has continued to adopt a passive position of responding with piecemeal funding offerings instead of assuming leadership and providing a robust service system.
It is vital that the Tasmanian Government leads the development and funding of a responsive service system. The Government must ensure services reach those who are missing out, such as children in Ashley Youth Detention Centre, victims/survivors with disability, victims/survivors who identify as LGBTQIA+, victims/survivors from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, male victims/survivors, those in isolated communities, and Aboriginal victims/survivors.
It is clear that we need to counter the natural tendency of large systems and organisations to revert to the same place they have been and that is about having a leaden will to move forward with change. That is why the expectation of the commission of inquiry is that many of the recommendations are to be implemented by mid-2024, while others should be implemented by mid-2026. It means that there is a speed and an urgency with this response because mid-2024 is very close, especially when we take out the summer season.
It is the view of the Greens that the people of Tasmania will be best served by us spending these few days locked in here together having productive conversations about how to best make the changes the Government is proposing for the services responsible for the care of children in Tasmania to make sure the harms that have occurred will never happen again in government institutions. More than that, we could be a state which is leading the nation with these responses, because the commission of inquiry's work was truly groundbreaking and leads us into very hopeful places in terms of creating safe institutions. It is certainly the expressed hope and desire of victims/survivors to have a positive, genuine and urgent response to the reforms.
With that goodwill I commend the amended motion.
