Page 3282 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 16 August 2011
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MRS DUNNE (Ginninderra) (4.28): I thank the attorney for an opportunity to speak on this important report. We are here today discussing this because of the work of the Canberra Liberals. It has now become legend that the minister stopped her ears and said, “La, la, la; I don’t want to hear.” If she had had her way, there would have been no inquiry into the Bimberi youth justice system.
Very soon after Bimberi came into operation, we started receiving complaints from the staff about issues. We raised those issues at every opportunity—in estimates, in annual report hearings, in this place, through question time and the like. The minister can try and divert attention in all the ways that she likes, but it is the vigilance of the Canberra Liberals that has brought about this report here today.
The Canberra Liberals are of the view that while this report, with its 224 recommendations, is a damning indictment of the administration of Bimberi, it is not the report that this community needs. I will go to some of the examples about what is wrong and what is lacking from this report. Some of my colleagues and I received a briefing from the Children and Young People Commissioner and the human rights commissioner in relation to this report. Basically they said: “We didn’t have enough resources to do a full inquiry. We did not look back. We essentially only looked forward.” They did not look, for instance, at the way Bimberi was populated in the first place—the procedures in place.
There were a range of issues which, by their own admission, the inquirers did not look at. Despite assurances by the minister in this place that the case of the woodwork teacher who was ceremoniously frogmarched out of Bimberi and told not to come back would be looked at in the inquiry, it was not. My colleagues and I do not have a satisfactory explanation from the inquirers as to what was done about that issue.
The inquirers did not look in any great depth at the issue of tampering with witnesses. We had a range of evidence brought before us in the form of minutes out of DHCS, as it was then known, where senior managers were saying, “If you are approached by the inquiry, come to us, essentially, so that we can prep you so you can give the right answers.” There were instances where teachers, in particular, were told by their managers that they did not need to worry themselves with the inquiry and did not need to participate. There were complaints to us about Bimberi staff who were essentially not given the opportunity during work time to interact with the inquirers when the inquirers were at Bimberi. These were issues of tampering with witnesses that we raised. Interestingly enough, there was a tacit admission by the inquirers that these things happened. They did not really inquire into it, by their own admission. They told us in a briefing: “We did not really inquire into it. These allegations were certainly made, but the people who were involved in this have moved on, so we did not inquire into it.”
What we are seeing is that we had an inquiry that, although the report is quite big and fat and has a lot to say and a lot which is damning of this government, did not really get to the culture of the place. It did not really delve into the culture of the place, and in many ways it skirted over the top.
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