Page 1008 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 30 March 2011
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So a teacher of long standing, a highly respected teacher, said that she was duped. She thought that, when we had a human rights inquiry, the government would not try to influence the outcome. She also wrote:
I would like to believe that the review process will be successful in bringing the truth to light … but I’m not confident that adults and workers will freely contribute to that review.
She talked about the low morale at Bimberi. She talked about the mass exodus of youth workers from the centre, something that this minister has consistently denied. The Canberra Liberals have asked questions about staff turnover and the minister said, “No, there is nothing to see here.” We know that they are constantly recruiting. We know that they never have enough staff, but this minister has constantly denied that there has been a mass exodus of youth workers from the centre. Then this teacher talked about, as a result of that, the centre managing on a skeletal staff very often.
In the letter she raised a number of questions for the Chief Minister to answer and she said she could have written 500 such questions, just from her own experiences. She said:
There were no protocols or procedures known to myself or the education staff as to how to report critical incidents in the Centre.
She approached a supervisor in education and said, in relation to a boy who was injured, “This is a mandatory report; we must mandate this; we have an obligation … to do so,” to which she was told, “It’s not any of our concern.” This is a problem. The system is so corrupted that people cannot speak out, not only on their own behalf but on behalf of the welfare of the people that they are charged with looking after.
In addition to all the comments made by this teacher in the Canberra Times and in her interview on radio 666 yesterday morning, we then had other people coming out of the woodwork spontaneously. Some of them I know, because many former staff and current staff speak to me and my office on a regular basis. Some of them I have never heard from before. One of them wrote an email to Alex Sloane, which Alex read on air:
Listening to—
the teacher, the email says—
today, I fully support her endeavour to bring the goings-on at the Centre to light. One week after I reported the safety issues and bullying—
at Bimberi—
to the Bimberi review team I was dismissed, with no reason given for working at the Centre.
I do not have confidence in the current situation. Staff will not come forward under a fear of dismissal.
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