Page 3711 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 28 October 2015
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I believe the ACT government’s response has offered financial justice for those affected, noting of course that no monetary figure can take away the grief and dislocation that many people are left feeling as a result of the legacy of Mr Fluffy that blights our city. I know that the ACT government’s response has also included many features that have helped support families, including a team of personal support officers, the provision of information through community council meetings and engagement through the community reference group.
I recently wrote to the Chief Minister canvassing options around a restorative justice approach that could be taken to this issue, seeking to find ways to assist people to work through this process, get the answers that they were seeking and, I guess, try and assist the healing process. I think there is a range of ideas that may still be open to us. As I touched on, there is a range of supports already in place but I think, given there is still anger and hurt for some people in the community over this issue, there is still work to be done.
I mention that in this context because clearly an inquiry is one of the mechanisms in that process. That is why I particularly reference this. I think there is a range of levels at which this work needs to be done—at the individual level right through to, I guess, the big-picture level that an inquiry like this would seek to address.
Regarding the timing of an inquiry, I think that there are issues around the capacity of the task force. I disagree with Mr Hanson that the two things can be easily separated. We know the task force are working very hard to respond to the needs of home owners, and there is no doubt that any sort of inquiry would impact on their work load and possibly make it difficult for them to deliver what they need to do in the immediate to short terms. I would imagine that an inquiry would detract from the work that they are busily doing.
We will of course reach a point where the task force’s role will become simpler; the architecture will be in place; the scheme will be rolling; there will still be work to be done. But clearly the frontend of this is the more challenging period of it and it opens up the fact that it will be the right time to start to move to an inquiry. There is probably some subtlety around the exact timing of that.
In the context of what the purpose of the inquiry would be—and I have to think about that—I think there are a number of key points. The first is to ensure that we learn from any mistakes that were made. Mr Hanson touched on this in his remarks and it is quite right that we should cast back about what was done, what decisions were taken and what we can put in place to ensure that we do not see a repeat in the future.
Of course, this all started in roughly 1968. I would like to think a lot of things are done differently already to how they were done in 1968—some 47 years down the track. I am sure that a lot of things are done differently but of course there is an ongoing, more modern history of it as well. Certainly there are important discussions to be had there.
Following from that I guess the second purpose of an inquiry is to put in place changes to ensure that similar mistakes are not made again. It is kind of attached to
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