Page 6000 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 2010
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last half-hour or so, received an email from the Children and Young People Commissioner who said a number of things, but this is the bit that I will quote:
… I am reasonably sure that if I were to undertake a Commission initiated consideration (following a direction from the Minister …) … I would have close to the same powers as would someone appointed under the Inquiries Act.
That is a really ringing endorsement of the person that they want to do this inquiry, without a doubt an extraordinarily qualified person to do this inquiry, and he has said to me on two occasions today, “I am not convinced that I have the powers that I need to undertake this inquiry.”
Mr Corbell: That is not what he said, actually.
MRS DUNNE: He said, “I am reasonably sure that I would have close to the same powers.” I said that if he undertook this inquiry I would want him to have all the powers he needed and he said to me, “Mrs Dunne, so would I.”
But the Labor Party and the Greens have conspired here today to ensure that this inquiry may not have the powers necessary. And if we have to come back here in the new year and fix up the powers so that the commissioner who is undertaking this inquiry can undertake this inquiry properly, it will be down to Meredith Hunter and Joy Burch for their collusion over this matter.
This is a serious matter. There is no-one in this place today who has gainsaid any of the accusations made today by the staff, through me and through Mr Coe. Mr Hargreaves in his usual way said, “It is a bit of a witch-hunt.” It is his favourite word. If this were a witch-hunt, the Canberra Liberals would have gone to the media with it. We have enough information to make any tabloid journalist salivate at the prospect, and we did not do it. We did not make it a media circus. We brought it here because it is so serious.
We believe—and I will say it again—that we have a moral obligation to do everything we can to ensure that we address the culture at Bimberi. And the minister says, “We need to address the culture at Bimberi.” There was going to be a new organisation, a new facility, a new structure where there was going to be a new broom, where we were going to be human rights compliant. And less than two years down the track, we are here debating this because there is a problem with the culture, a culture where management call islander staff gorillas. That is not acceptable.
But much worse than that, we have a culture where staff are assaulted because they are left by themselves, a culture where staff assault inmates and not enough is done about it. This is the culture, a culture where we have empty facilities that have not been used, except for one or two media stunts by this minister who, from the very outset, has been protecting her backside. That is what the staff are telling us. And we saw it with her bricks and blocks and her little garden foray. The only time she goes there, for the most part, is when there is the media in tow so that she can tell a good story.
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