Dr WOODRUFF - Minister, what date was the final version of the Youth Justice blueprint completed by the department that you've just released this morning?
Mr JAENSCH - We circulated a draft of the final version a couple of weeks ago. I will get a date from Ms Burgess maybe.
Dr WOODRUFF - That was an updated draft. What date was the final version completed by the department?
Mr JAENSCH - We received feedback from various stakeholders in relation to the final draft that was circulated. The final blueprint was released this morning. As late as yesterday we were updating the details in there in response to stakeholder feedback.
Dr WOODRUFF - Was it updated? What was the final date it was completed by your department?
Mr JAENSCH - It was released today.
Dr WOODRUFF - That's not the answer.
Ms WHITE - Chair, can you instruct him to answer the question?
CHAIR - I can't instruct the minister to answer. He'll answer how he sees fit.
Mr JAENSCH - We were making changes as late as yesterday based on feedback from stakeholders, so yesterday would have been the date it was finalised.
Dr WOODRUFF - It is incredibly unacceptable to this committee that the Government has been working on this for over a year, or much longer, and it was not provided to the committee for us to scrutinise last Friday when all the commission of inquiry Government's response was provided. It is a key part of the Government's response to youth detention and all of the recommendations in the report from the commission of inquiry, and you lobbed it into the committee this morning with a rushed press conference. We didn't even get given a copy of it ourselves from you, and you expect us to sit here and ask you questions without having read that report. What do you think that says to victims/survivors and your approach to transparency?
Mr JAENSCH - As we have been absolutely clear at every step of this, the youth justice blueprint was prepared to draft stage and released about this time last year. It has been on the website ever since. We have also publicly stated that we were holding it in draft form pending the finalisation of the commission of inquiry's reporting and the Government's response so that we could then update the blueprint and ensure it was consistent with and had the advantage of additional information being brought into it. That's what we've done.
We've circulated that final copy to stakeholders who were directly involved and a list of around 40, I understand, received it. Ms Burgess can correct me if that number is wrong. Those people had been involved in finalising the draft which they had been looking at for the last year, which has been on the website and been used and referred to by the commission of inquiry. What we've done is simply update it by inserting references to the commission of inquiry's recommendations, particularly in relation to minimum age of criminal responsibility, minimum age of detention and the central role of children in forming our policies and decisions going forward.
The information in the final that has been released today is the stuff that's been on the website for a year and that has been added to by the content of the commission of inquiry's report and the Government's response to that. There is no other new content in it and it has been important that as soon as possible, and this is our first opportunity post the finalisation of the Government's response, to add that detail and get that blueprint out as a final document. I make no apologies for that.
Dr WOODRUFF – Yesterday, you gave a very poor performance in out-of-home care -
Mr JAENSCH - And you told fibs about who we'd spoken to and you had to correct yourself.
Ms HADDAD - Chair -
CHAIR - Order.
Dr WOODRUFF - Please let me finish, minister. You gave a terrible performance yesterday in response to questions on out-of-home care. What we hear today is that -
Mr JAENSCH - Which questions are you talking about?
Dr WOODRUFF - Can you let me finish asking my question? I didn't interrupt you, as much as I wanted to.
Last night, your Government put the final touches on the blueprint which you were incapable of providing to the committee and to Tasmanians on Friday with your own Government's response. Your argument is that you needed to get the response and embed it somehow and make changes to the blueprint. Can't you see that to victims/survivors and Tasmanians this looks like you are covering yourself up today from scrutiny on Ashley and your failures as a minister across multiple portfolios, and it is a political choice to do this today to try to avoid the attention on yourself and your multiple failures to act to protect children who are at live and present risk right now?
Mr JAENSCH - No, I reject that outright. There is the blueprint has been finalised at our earliest opportunity. The content in the blueprint has been public for a year. The additional content we've added has arisen from the commission of inquiry's report and the Government's response, which is also on the public record. There is no content in the blueprint which hasn't been public previously. We have just brought it together so we've been able to take draft of that blueprint and be able to proceed with it as a guiding document for us.
Dr WOODRUFF - There was a secret second draft of the updated blueprint. Secret in that it was given - we understand - from TasCOSS's submission to TasCOSS to provide comment on. I understand it would have been in November. They've put a submission that is on their website dated December 2023 and it says:
The draft blueprint, the updated draft blueprint was provided to us as an embargo copy which was not to be circulated to other organisations or individuals and feedback was required within a fortnight of our receipt. This response has therefore been prepared without any consultation with our members or other key stakeholders and under significant time restraints.
Can you see that secrecy and the politicisation of this issue is exactly the sort of concerns the commissioners raised in their report, exactly the sort of awful culture which has led to hiding information and being opaque on issues to do with the protection and safety of children in care? What do you say to the fact you told a key stakeholder not to consult on such a critical reform issue as this blueprint?
Mr JAENSCH - The most recent draft of the blueprint was sent to 44 organisations who'd been involved in the last stages of finalising the draft blueprint and who had provided submissions. They were the last to inform the construction of the draft blueprint. What we wanted to do is to show them we had then taken the document they last saw, which has been on the record it has been public for a year, and added in the relevant references to the section of the commission of inquiry's recommendations and the Governments responses.
Dr WOODRUFF - Do you dispute what TasCOSS says that they were told not to circulate it to other people?
CHAIR - Order.
Mr JAENSCH - It was sent to them for their feedback. They were advised it was not a public document-
Dr WOODRUFF - Why not?
Mr JAENSCH - And that it wasn't.
Dr WOODRUFF - Why not?
CHAIR - Order.
Dr WOODRUFF - Why is a blueprint for a 10-year reform of the sector after the commission of inquiry report not a public document?
Mr JAENSCH - Because the draft blueprint was a public document already and the document we sent them for their awareness, comment and feedback on it was not finalised for publication. It was a working draft document and we asked for their feedback on it.
Dr WOODRUFF - So why hide stuff from people?
CHAIR - Order.
Mr JAENSCH - There is nothing being hidden, Dr Woodruff, you are making that up.
Dr WOODRUFF - There is because it is about the politics about when you produced it -
Mr JAENSCH - No it's not.
Mr WOOD - And you did it today, because you knew this committee would be looking into what you are not doing in Ashley and how you are not implementing the commission of inquiry's recommendations.
Mr JAENSCH - Well ask me questions about those things because -
Dr WOODRUFF - This is about it.
CHAIR - Order, Dr Woodruff, order. If you haven't a question to ask I will make the call to another member.
Mr JAENSCH - If you want to ask questions about what work we are doing, what we are planning and how we are responding to the recommendations from the commission of inquiry, let's talk about those things -
Ms O'BYRNE - It goes to the culture, the absolute culture, you're embedding.
CHAIR - Order.
Mr JAENSCH - Again, you are very focused on asserting our motivations. What I'm very happy to do is to confirm.
Dr WOODRUFF - You told a key stakeholder to not pass it on and consult.
CHAIR - Order, I am giving the -
Dr WOODRUFF - Chair, I just asked the minister a reasonable -
Mr JAENSCH - I need to be able to respond. All the information in the draft blueprint has been on the public record for a year. The commission of inquiry's report has been on the record since they handed it down. The Government's response to the commission of inquiry was handed down on Friday. Today, this week -
Dr WOODRUFF - This is your response.
Mr JAENSCH - The first opportunity -
Dr WOODRUFF - It's your 10-year reform.
Mr JAENSCH - we have had to be able to bring those streams of information together so the youth justice blueprint is up to date and reflects all that other information which is on the public record. To ensure the blueprint, the response and the report are not in conflict with each other, consistent and the blueprint reflects all of where we've got to through this process.
There is nothing being hidden. We've been absolutely transparent. As a courtesy and as a quality assurance, we went back to 44 organisations who were most directly engaged in the last round of consultation and made submissions to show them what we're doing and to seek any further comment from them. We've taken that onboard and made some further small changes as a result of that. We have been absolutely open and -
Dr WOODRUFF - Just gave it to all of them one by one and told them not to talk to each other.
Mr JAENSCH - and we are absolutely committed to working with our social services sector on the delivery of this blueprint, because they have been fundamental to develop -
Dr WOODRUFF - Cut, split and divide, make sure no one talks to each other.
Mr JAENSCH - Well, you can assert what you like.
Dr WOODRUFF - That's what they said.
CHAIR - Order, I'm giving the call to Ms Haddad.
Dr WOODRUFF - Minister, you released the Youth Justice Blueprint today. You only released it just before the committee sat so I have not had time to look at it. From my brief overview it is a very high-level principles document. Most importantly, it does not have any information about the action plan other than page 38 saying it is being developed and it is going to guide the important reform through the next few years, and there will be targeted consultation with stakeholders.
I have heard from the sector already that they are extremely concerned that the action plan has not accompanied the blueprint which makes it a statement essentially of motherhood principles. Important as they are, they mean nothing unless there are actual dates. What are you going to do to involve the sector in consultation? What is your time frame for releasing the action? What is the process between now and when the action plan will be released?
Mr JAENSCH - The blueprint is for a 10-year period. It is necessarily high-level as a guiding document for a broad range of action policy legislation and service delivery across government over 10 years. It was always introduced as a document that would be supported by two-year action plans. The detail being sought regarding specific actions and time frames and funding is a matter that will be included in the action plan not in the blueprint itself.
Dr WOODRUFF - Obviously, it is not in the blueprint, I can see that. There is no detail in there at all.
Mr JAENSCH - Correct. I am glad you've had a chance to look at it because it has been - the content of the blueprint has been -
Dr WOODRUFF - That is a disrespectful comment when you could have provided it to this committee last Friday. That is an absolutely disrespectful -
CHAIR - Order.
Mr JAENSCH - It has been on the website for a year.
Dr WOODRUFF - As a draft.
Mr JAENSCH - Yes, and the content has been updated with the response to the commission of inquiry, which you have also had access to.
Dr WOODRUFF - What changes did you make to it last night, by the way? What was the rush to make changes last night? What actually happened last night? Were they substantive changes? What was actually happening last night that made it so important?
Mr JAENSCH - Some of the particular changes that we made last night, or yesterday -
Dr WOODRUFF - You said last night previously.
Mr JAENSCH - The particular changes were to give prominence to the matters in the commission of inquiry's recommendations and the Government's response regarding the minimum age of criminal responsibility.
Dr WOODRUFF - Why didn't you do that and hand that to us on Friday? What took you so long that you could not have done that while you were preparing your report response? I do not understand.
Mr JAENSCH - I am happy for you to be incredulous at me for a bit longer on that but what I want to do is make sure there is an answer on the record regarding the action plan. The first action plan will be prepared over the next few months so that it can be informed by and inform our budget process -
Dr WOODRUFF - Who will work on that with you?
CHAIR - Order.
Mr JAENSCH - and also the development of the Government's child sexual abuse strategy, which will be operating in parallel. This is a subset of activity which will also be appearing in the whole-of-government response to child sexual abuse as well.
In the process we will have a community consultative committee involving TasCOSS and a range of other contributors, many of whom have been involved with earlier stages of development of the blueprint itself.
Dr WOODRUFF - Can you name those other bodies and individuals, please?
CHAIR - Order.
Dr WOODRUFF - Or could we take it on notice? Table it?
Mr JAENSCH - I haven't got a final list of the contributors who will be the members of the community consultative committee as yet. We have a list of stakeholder organisations, for example, who we distributed the final draft to for their feedback before putting the final touches to it. There were 44 organisations on that list as I understand it. I am happy to make that list available to you.
Dr WOODRUFF - Minister, we were talking about the action plan for the blueprint and I was asking you questions about which community organisations will be on the community consultation group, I think you're calling it. You said a draft of the final action plan will be released in a couple of months.
Yesterday morning, the Premier made it clear that he thought it was important to have a community working group on this issue. You put out a media release saying that you would be convening one. Which organisations will be on that group?
Mr JAENSCH - To my understanding, the membership hasn't been finalised yet but it may be that Ms Burgess has an update on the process on the steps we will go through.
Ms BURGESS - Thank you, minister. We are currently just drafting the terms of reference for that. As part of that process, we will make some recommendations to the minister around both the process for getting people onto the community consultation group, as well as the peak organisations that we may want representation from, noting that it is one of a series of groups that we will have in place to inform the reform aspects of the work going forward.
We're also very keen, as you would appreciate, to consult with children and young people, the Aboriginal community, as well as technical experts in the space in any developments that we do going forward. We will want to make sure that we are consulting youth justice experts as part of the process.
Dr WOODRUFF - Through you, minister, Ms Burgess, I note that there was a coalition of justice and social service organisations that called for engagement on this matter. They included TasCOSS, the Tasmania Aboriginal Centre, the Justice Reform Initiative, the TASOPCAT Network, Australian Lawyers Alliance, community legal centres, Prisoners Legal Service, the Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies and Colony47. All those bodies have been actively working and advocating in the area of youth justice. I would have thought it would be very important for organisations to be involved in a group like that. In the spirit of the commission of inquiry, the community expects there to be deep and meaningful engagement in the form of a consultation group on the blueprint action plan. Is that your intention, minister?
Mr JAENSCH - We want to hear from everyone who has an interest and something to say and something to offer. I would expect that, as well as having a larger mailing list of a community of interest around these matters, there's a specific community consultation group that might assist us with refinement of our plans.
There's an expert group that has been referred to as providing some direct advice in areas of their specialisation. I also expect that we will have subsets of that longer list of interested stakeholders whom we will engage on in specific matters, particularly things like the provision of alternatives to detention.
There are a relatively smaller group of people who have experience and capabilities in these areas that we'll need to speak to about in depth. There will also be engagement with Aboriginal people and organisations and, as Ms Burgess said, critically, the way we engage children and young people themselves directly.
Dr WOODRUFF - Can I just clarify? From some of the language, it sounds as though you're going to have targeted consultations and conversations with stakeholders. I think the point that the justice and social service sector is that they don't want to be split up on this. They want to be engaged and consulted with together and not have things broken up into little bits and pieces. It would not be in the spirit of the commission of inquiry or in accountability unless all those organisations that are doing this work are able to have a voice at the table together on the drafting of the key part of the two-year action plan for the blueprint. Could you please tell me when you will be announcing who those organisations will be? You said you want it to be done within two months.
Mr JAENSCH - No, I did not.
Dr WOODRUFF - Didn't you? Okay.
Mr JAENSCH - No. I expect it will have the action plan. We will need to provide inputs from that into the budget process. Post-budget is when I expect it will have finalisation of the plan so that it can be announced with resources to go with it -
Dr WOODRUFF - That is a long way into a two-year blueprint.
Mr JAENSCH - May I finish?
Dr WOODRUFF - You're talking about eight months, almost another year away from now.
CHAIR - Order, Dr Woodruff, please let the minister finish.
Mr JAENSCH - As you referred to earlier, there are stakeholders with a great interest in ensuring that blueprint turns into an action plan with actions in it that are resourced and funded. The resourcing and funding will come from the budget process and we will need to create a proposal to take into the budget process. That needs to be informed by the blueprint and the first stages of developing the action plan. We want to have engagement with as many people as possible who are interested, who can help us get the action plan right.
It is important that whilst we will have stages of the development of the action plan that we put out as a draft and ask for everyone to comment on, we might also choose to work with people with specialised interests and skills on elements of that plan that directly relate to them, their sector, their community and their locality, around developing elements of the action plan.
I would like to reserve the right to talk to people who have something to offer in the context of also giving everybody a chance to see and have input.
Dr WOODRUFF - It is not an either/or, it is a both together.
Mr JAENSCH - Yes, we must have both, exactly.
Dr WOODRUFF - Yes, and we want to make sure that you put them all together as well as have individualised ones.
