Page 1016 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 30 March 2011
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inquiry has been corrupted. It is the evidence of others. It is the evidence of former staff.
We have not heard any of that evidence discredited. We have not even heard the minister bother to say whether she is going to investigate those allegations. So let us go to those. Trish McEwan said that former colleagues:
… had been encouraged or at least guided in the way they should respond to the review by their supervisors.
This is other colleagues saying that they have been guided in the way that they should go when they appear before the inquiry. We have the minute that outs it. Maybe that is the only bit of writing that actually highlights this practice. Maybe that is the mistake that the officer made—to actually put it in writing. But we hear from Trish McEwan that in their workplaces they had been encouraged, or at least sort of guided, in the way that they should respond to their review by their supervisors.
She goes on to say, “It concerns me that I naively had believed that a human rights review would be independent from any influence from government.” Maybe in the end it was naive with this government. Maybe it was, but it was a reasonable thing perhaps for an individual to think that maybe the review would not be interfered with by the government, quite improperly, as we are seeing more and more evidence of.
Trish went on—this was on ABC yesterday—to say, “I would like him”—this is Jon Stanhope—“to ensure that if that is going to have any attempt of continuing, that every single person who is involved in Bimberi—their bureaucrats, their managers—have to ensure that anyone who has had contact with the centre or the youth justice system in the ACT should be able to speak freely and frankly and without concern for reprisals. I don’t know any more. I’m a bit doubtful about the whole process.”
Well might she be doubtful about the whole process when we see allegations of staff being moved on after making allegations, when we see evidence of staff being guided, we see documentary evidence that says they are developing a strategy. How could you have confidence? What is the minister going to do to investigate those claims? They are claims of a corruption of the process. She talks about one minute and she tries to explain it away. We have other allegations on radio yesterday saying that the process had been corrupted. What is the minister doing about that? Of course, nothing. She does not want to get to the bottom of it. She does not want to get to the bottom of it.
Then we had Dave Cavill saying, “I do not have confidence in the current situation. Staff will not come forward under fear of dismissal.” He goes on, and this is the key, another allegation, “There is no concern about staff being told what to say to the Commission; the truth is we were discouraged by our managers not to attend review meetings.”
They were discouraged from attending review meetings. So we have got the documentary evidence, which is now backed up by the witnesses. It is backed up by the witnesses. You cannot just explain it away. You cannot just explain it away.
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