Page 186 - Week 01 - Wednesday, 16 February 2011
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help the kids at Bimberi. Here we have an informant who thought that they could go to the commissioner with the assurance that their identity and the information that they gave would be kept, as far as possible, confidential.
Here we have someone who, due to the failure of the commissioner to do his job, felt the need to approach their local member to make a complaint, and here we have an Attorney-General who says it is all right to break confidentiality because not very many people knew.
I understand the need for confidentiality. I have been dealing with the staff at Bimberi over a very long period of time, and I have constantly conserved the confidentiality of the people who have spoken to me—because they are afraid for their jobs, they are afraid for their reputation and they are afraid of the bullying that happens if they talk out of turn. It is a pity that the Attorney-General and the commissioner do not likewise understand the need that these people have for confidentiality.
Since all of this became public, I have been approached by a number of people who are associated with Bimberi that say that they would love to contribute to the inquiry but they have no confidence in the inquiry as it is presently constructed. They have no confidence in the capacity of the inquirers to act impartially or to treat appropriately the information they receive—much less not to identify those people who need to be protected. The views of the staff and their supporters were best summed up to me in an email from the original intermediary, between me and X, when he read Minister Corbell’s press release of early February. He said, “I wonder how Mr Corbell satisfied himself” of all the things that Mr Corbell said he was satisfied with. He said:
I presume this can only be done on the basis of Mr Roy’s assurances!
Extraordinary!
This is precisely the form of accountability that seems to have gotten us into this mess in the first place.
The youth justice system in the ACT is in a mess. Make no mistake about it: the lives of residents and the lives of staff at Bimberi are at stake here. There can be no more serious need for an inquiry. The problem that we have here now is that most of the people associated with the inquiry have no confidence in the inquiry. The inquirer, sadly, has abused the confidence that people have placed in him, and he has been supported in doing that by the Attorney-General, who has not shown any evidence that he has investigated this matter in an appropriate way and acted appropriately according to the legislation which he controls.
The safety of the people—the young people, the residents and the people who care for the young residents—at Bimberi is a very compelling reason why the Canberra Liberals raised this issue in the first place. There is a very compelling reason why the Canberra Liberals, for well over a year, have been asking this minister and the previous minister about what is going on at Bimberi and what they are doing to ensure the safety of people at Bimberi.
We have seen, since the commencement of this inquiry, further incidents. We have seen apparent misuse of duress alarms, we have seen an appalling assault, we have
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