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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Thursday, 12 February 2004) . . Page.. 310 ..

provided to me on that day the department outlined its failure, under section 162 (2) of the Children and Young People Act, to provide the Office of the Community Advocate with copies of reports regarding allegations of abuse of children in the care of the department made under the act.

She also wrote to the Chief Minister on the same day. Also, at 3.59 pm on 11 December 2003 the minister tabled the government’s response to the inquiry of the Standing Committee on Community Services and Social Equity. These matters raised serious questions about whether the minister misled the Assembly on this day. This was more than three months after the initial tabling of the committee report in August 2003, when the committee was “extremely concerned at reports that Family Services had failed to comply with its obligations under the act”.

With this evidence I find it extremely hard to believe the claims of the minister that she only became aware in December of the department’s failings regarding the reporting of child abuse cases to the Community Advocate. Surely that response would have had to have been through the cabinet process a number of times, with a draft submission of the government’s response being shown to the executive and a final clearance of the final response being signed off by cabinet.

The minister went on to say, in her ministerial statement, that she received correspondence from Ms Vardon on Friday, 6 February 2004, when Ms Gwenn Murray raised initial concerns from her inquiries. I might add that the ministerial tabling statement gets confusing here. The minister then says in the statement that the files of concern were checked on Monday, 9 January 2004. If that were the case, one would have to question exactly who in the department knew of major concerns or problems—and when—before Ms Vardon was engaged as Commissioner for Public Administration.

On 12 January 2004 the minister advised us that she received further advice and still did not go public, by way of an interim announcement, with the shattering news. The minister did not go public with this revelation until over a month later, on 15 January 2004—not the day after being advised by the chief executive on 11 December 2003. This minister has consistently maintained that she advised the community as soon as she knew. Obviously, she did not do that.

It was only on 15 January 2004 that the minister went public with the matter and finally admitted that the department failed to communicate to the Community Advocate reports of concern about children in care, as required by legislation. It has also been revealed that responses to allegations of abuse of children in care have not always been complete. The government subsequently released a four-point plan directed towards ensuring that the interests of children in the care of the territory were properly protected.

Since these revelations, my office has been inundated with calls from parents, grandparents and carers who have complained about how their reports of child abuse and/or child protection have or have not been handled. The minister is aware of some of these cases. Many other callers, however, simply will not be identified for fear of intimidation. Some people are being told they must not talk to people like me and others have simply given up trying to be heard by the department. I have advised the minister recently of my concerns about that.

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