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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 5 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1207 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

The circumstances giving rise to this Inquiry, namely, the deaths of three persons in the care of the Disability Program within twelve months, demand the commitment by Government to implement the necessary process of fundamental change to the ACT disability sector.

I think that this injunction falls on the heads of all of us, that we all need to embrace a spirit of change and acknowledge that these issues will not be adequately dealt with without a very full response that will almost certainly have to include a commitment to spending a great deal more in this area.

As members have been told, the government is to provide its response to these recommendations during the latter part of this year, in about October. I have to express my regret that it will be such a long time before the government's response is available. It will be the better part of a year from the report being ready and the government seeing the report in December of last year-some way before the rest of us, I might point out-and the response being received in October of this year. I appreciate that discussion and consultation will be needed, but I am not sure whether those are the main causes of this delay.

There will have to be a response that is at least partly budget based, in order to pick up things that were said in this report.

The second category of findings and recommendations is the one about individuals. The report, as members know, was very critical of a number of key public servants, particularly Mr Szwarcbord, Dr Gregory, Ms Grayson, Ms McGregor and Ms Beauchamp. Some other people are also mentioned in the report. The comments on the people I have named were quite trenchant and uncompromising. It is rare to see criticism in a report of this kind, or in any kind of report from the territory, which is so direct and so pointed.

The Liberal Party has looked in detail at these recommendations, and at the things that the report says about the evidence given and the circumstances of the conduct of the inquiry. It has considered the appropriateness of the recommendations made by the board of inquiry. The view of the Liberal Party is that it would be inappropriate to take the course of action recommended by the board of inquiry with respect to these public servants.

I am aware that the content of those recommendations, as you pointed out, Mr Speaker, is presently before the ACT Supreme Court, and it is therefore not appropriate to traverse, in detail, the issues that are raised in the report which may or may not be endorsed in the course of the proceedings before the Supreme Court. However, I will make the general comment that it is my assessment, and I might say the assessment of the other ministers who served with me in the former government, that the criticisms concerned are unfair, and that in some ways there is not sufficient-

MR SPEAKER: Order! Mr Humphries, I issued a warning earlier in the proceedings about procedural fairness in the courts, and I think if you discuss the issue of fairness you go too close to those issues that might be considered by the courts.

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