Page 5989 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 2010
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experience, to put what they know on the table, want to know that they are protected. The Human Rights Act gives that protection. I believe the commissioner is the right person to do it and, along with the human rights commissioner, will provide us a comprehensive inquiry.
MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.56): This is a very fraught issue, and I want to address the amendments put forward by Ms Hunter. In doing so, I need to put a little bit of context around them. On Monday I discussed with Ms Hunter the possibility of this motion. Yesterday I received Ms Hunter’s thoughts on amendments that she might circulate. I read the amendments and I said, “Look, I’m quite happy with those. I’d be quite happy to incorporate those into my motion and essentially have a jointly sponsored motion.” But Ms Hunter said no; she would prefer to move these amendments herself. It was interesting that, as of 11 o’clock yesterday, Ms Hunter was still in favour of a board of inquiry in accordance with the Inquiries Act 1991.
But then this morning, Ms Hunter came to me and said, “Look, I’m not quite sure whether we should raise the bar that high. Perhaps we just need to establish an independent inquiry.” So we went through the mental processes of what would be the mechanism for establishing an independent inquiry. The options for an inquiry are an inquiry in this place; a complaint under the Public Interest Disclosure Act, and we all realise what a disaster that would be; an inquiry under the Inquiries Act; and the other alternative, which has been brought forward by Ms Hunter today—or Ms Burch, I am not sure which because both seem to have claimed that the idea is their own—is an inquiry by the Children and Young People Commissioner.
We actually worked through the mechanisms of saying that if we ask the minister to establish an independent inquiry at arm’s length that gives people protections, what are the mechanisms, and there are not any. The mechanisms exist in the Inquiries Act, and that is why the opposition went to the Inquiries Act, because that provides the legislative framework for people to operate. It provides protections and the like.
Just for a little bit of history, back in 2003, after the Canberra bushfires, the Liberal Party at the time under Mr Stefaniak moved for an inquiry under the Inquiries Act. The ACT government said, “No, we have already appointed the McLeod inquiry and that’s fine. We’ll do it that way.” We actually found that the witnesses before the McLeod inquiry did not have protections, because there was no legislative framework. Mr Stefaniak went through the process of introducing a bill that specifically gave protections to witnesses at the bushfire inquiry. Before that, there were no protections, so that the people who made assertions did not have the same privileges they would have had in a court.
The problem, of course, is that Ms Hunter has come up with her third option, which is to go down the path of asking the Commissioner for Children and Young People to do this. Ms Hunter came to me and said, “I have spoken to the commissioner and he thinks that he has the power to do this.” I challenged Ms Hunter and her staff to point me to the directions where the powers existed, and I have subsequently had a discussion with the Children and Young People Commissioner about the existence of those powers.
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