Page 3712 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 28 October 2015
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the first one but the benefit of any inquiry is to make recommendations with the benefit of hindsight which of course always gives us better perspectives on these things.
The third purpose of the inquiry, in my view, would be that, for many of the victims, there would be a benefit in telling their story and how they have been impacted, sharing that in a very public forum and being widely heard. This goes to some of the restorative justice ideas I was reflecting on earlier, that there is a space where there is undoubtedly a cathartic outcome of telling one’s story and sharing it with a broader audience as part of that process of healing and as part of making sure that this is on the record and is informing public debate.
A fourth point is that there is no doubt that for some people the purpose of an inquiry is an element of finding someone to blame. Given the dislocation, disruption and hurt that have occurred for many people involved in this process, for some people that is no doubt important.
Finally, I think there would be the issue of compensation. While an inquiry does not necessarily lead to compensation itself, inquiries often do lay a path to compensation by apportioning responsibility to one or more parties and assessing whether there was negligence and the like as part of their findings.
Reflecting on the costs of an inquiry, inquiries of this nature can of course be very expensive. There seems to be little doubt about that. While on a much bigger scale, the child sex abuse inquiry is estimated to cost around $435 million, and the current inquiry into the unions is estimated to cost around $61million. That gives us a sense of the scale. Once all the infrastructure is put in place for an inquiry such as this and with the involvement of many legal people in the process, no doubt the expense adds up very quickly. Whilst any inquiry into Mr Fluffy will clearly not be on the scale of the child abuse inquiry, it could easily run into the tens of millions of dollars and possibly more.
The cost should not necessarily be an obstacle to undertaking an inquiry but it must be considered. The important thing is that if it were to proceed, and we were to commit to an inquiry of this expense, then we would want to be sure that we are doing it properly and that it has the scope to operate in a way that actually delivered answers for those people who have been affected.
As such, I do not believe there is any purpose in continuing without having the commonwealth fully on board. Indeed, I believe that the commonwealth should not only participate but should also fund this inquiry.
I have had some discussions with Mr Barr in the past 24 hours as part of the preparation of his amendment, and I flag at this point that I will be supporting Mr Barr’s amendment for this very central reason: I do not think the ACT should do this alone. It is essential, given the role of the commonwealth and their significant role in the history of the Mr Fluffy issue, that they are a full party to this inquiry.
As we all know, the Mr Fluffy legacy stretches back into the late 60s, well before the time of self-government. Decisions were made by the commonwealth about how to
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