Page 3182 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 18 October 2022
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According to documents released under the Freedom of Information Act, in the lead-up to the roundtable Minister Stephen-Smith encouraged the Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs to provide JACS with some guidance regarding this meeting. I quote from that guidance:
(1) The meeting needs to have modest goals for what will be achieved by government.
(2) We should not be seen to be pushing towards a particular outcome.
This same document also indicates that the government would strongly support “an Our Booris, Our Way type model for a review”. The ACT government’s preference for this model was so strong, in fact, that the terms of reference for the Our Booris, Our Way review were included with the invitations to the roundtable and a presentation on the review was given near the beginning of the roundtable.
In his opening remarks, Attorney-General Rattenbury also stated:
Clearly one of the potential review models is to mirror the Our Booris, Our Way review process.
Briefing notes for the Attorney-General indicate that Our Booris, Our Way took two years to complete and cost approximately $2 million. So presumably the government was prepared for a new review to last that long and cost that much as well. We all know that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community leaders at the roundtable rejected the idea of a review and instead unanimously requested a fully independent board of inquiry. At no point have community leaders backed down from this request. Labor and the Greens, however, have repeatedly rejected it.
The goal, remember, was not to be seen to be pushing towards any particular outcome. But when the outcome did not match the modest goals that the government wanted, the answer was, and continues to be no. Many community members, community leaders and stakeholders such as ACTCOSS sincerely hoped that this budget would include funding for the desired board of inquiry. It does not, of course. Amongst the reasons given by those opposite for ignoring this request from Indigenous Canberrans is that it would take too long and cost too much.
As part of estimates hearings, I therefore asked Minister Stephen-Smith what her estimate was for the duration and cost of a board of inquiry. Remember, the government was prepared to strongly support a two-year, $2 million review. I wanted to know on what basis she and other ministers had chosen to reject the roundtable’s proposal. Her response was:
The cost and duration of a Board of Inquiry would depend on the scope of the Terms of Reference of an Inquiry.
Well, yes, Minister. That is perfect tautology. In other words, the ACT government has rejected a board of inquiry, in part because it could take too long and cost too much, even though it has zero idea how long it might last and how much it might cost. I strongly suspect that the real reason, of course, is that Indigenous leaders did not get the clear message: goals for what this government will achieve need to be modest, and
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