Page 25 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 9 February 2016
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government and they had just advertised my job without the legislative framework to do so being agreed by the Assembly, I would be pretty annoyed. It is ironic that this is meant to be about human rights but the government is behaving in such an arrogant manner, to basically drive changes and advertise positions which do not even have legislative approval.
There are concerns that have been litigated about the Public Trustee and the public guardian role. Members will be aware that the Public Trustee’s office manages finance for people who cannot manage their own, appointed by the courts. It is still dealing with the aftermath of fraud, uncovered in 2014, of two former staff and two contractors accused of stealing $1.65 million from clients. We have a situation where that organisation is going to increase its growth, increase in power and authority. The one organisation that is subject to internal fraud seems to be the biggest winner out of all of this. That has raised some eyebrows, it is reasonable to say, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The role of guardian is a different one—as the manager of last resort when people cannot make their own decisions. They make medical, housing and other life decisions for people and represent people with a disability at tribunal hearings on guardianship applications. A former head of the guardians unit, Heather McGregor, has described it as a “travesty”, with potential for exploitation and abuse of Canberra’s most vulnerable people. These are real, live concerns that have been raised by people who are at the front line, who have experience in these matters. The guardians unit says that the merger shows a profound misunderstanding of the role of guardians and that the two offices should be “aggressively separated”.
A range of submissions were received by the government, and the bulk opposed what the government was intending to do. There were 43 submissions as well as representations made during stakeholder forums by the commissioners, agency staff, legal and community organisations and the general community. About two-thirds of the written submissions were concerned about these changes.
Some of these concerns included the tensions within the commission in relation to the allocation of resources; the complicated decision-making processes; difficulties for clients and legal representatives accessing complaints services because of inconsistent processes; and so on.
We find ourselves in a position where the government said, “Look, we are going to make some changes,” but then ignored a whole range of concerns that have been raised until the midnight hour, when we saw some amendments coming forward that we have not had a chance to discuss. There are significant issues being raised publicly and privately by people. And then the government has taken the extraordinary step of already starting the recruitment process before it has been put through the Assembly.
This is all in the mix on such an important area that has such important responsibilities. There are those of us who have worked with the Victims of Crime Commissioner, the Health Services Commissioner and the other bodies. The first two are two that I have worked closely with because of my shadow portfolios, but I know that the other organisations involved have an equally important function, often quite contrary to and disparate from the other elements of the human rights framework.
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