Page 3128 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 16 September 2015
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perhaps other things as well. I understand that this room is very accessible to many people and is used frequently, so the cage must have been seen by many within the school during those 17 days. Various people accessed the storeroom, others accessed the classroom, and they must have seen the cage. Indeed a photo was posted on the classroom wall, showing the cage, occupied, and labelled a “sanctuary.”
So we can reasonably assume the cage was seen by numerous people and we know there was a picture of it on the classroom wall. If nothing else, the presence of the picture would suggest that at least someone saw the potential for adverse publicity, and the possibility of the cage’s presence upsetting the pupils in the classroom and so tried to minimise its impact by calling it something else. So does that mean we now have another someone involved in this?
We are told the cage was used only once. So how fortuitous then that the photographer who took the photo used on the classroom wall was able to take it just at the one single time the cage was being used. Or was it a staged publicity shot? We do not know. Did anyone ask why? None of this was in the published summary report. There was no mention of any photograph; much less that it was posted on the classroom wall. Again, unknown and unnamed people were complicit in this but not listed in any part of the report of the inquiry.
So we are asked to believe that the principal not only decided to build the cage but arranged the invoice and the payment, arranged access to the school for the builder, took the photo of the cage when a child was inside and posted the picture on the classroom wall, all the time never once raising the issue with anyone in the directorate—not once; not to anyone; not to the specialist staff that reasonably would have visited the school at some time during this period when all this was happening. It is quite extraordinary.
We then move to the reporting of the cage’s existence. We know that at least one person brought the existence of the cage to the attention of the education directorate. We have been told that unknown numbers of unknown central office staff did nothing with that information for nine schools days, or effectively two weeks. We do not know why they ignored the information. Was it because they already knew about it? Was it because they did not think it unusual or illegal? Again, more unanswered questions: why were the people who reported the cage ignored for at least nine school days? And what triggered someone to realise after nine days that there was a problem? Was it only after the Human Rights Commission was alerted? If not for the Human Rights Commission or the Commissioner for Children and Young People, would this incident have ever become public knowledge?
Let me reiterate: a quote for a cage is raised on 24 February. We are told the cage was constructed on 10 March. We are told the directorate was first notified of the cage’s existence on 17 March. However, we have been advised by others that the original whistle-blower raised concern about the cage in fact on 13 March. On 17 March the directorate apparently was notified. On 26 March the senior executive of the directorate were notified, I suspect by others outside the directorate and probably the Human Rights Commission, and we are told the minister was contacted by the Commissioner for Children and Young People.
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