Page 1814 - Week 05 - Thursday, 16 May 2019
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The consensus, according to the report, was that, “an independent mediator was needed to deal with these disputes”. It then recommended the creation of the office of Children and Young People Commissioner, a figure who was to have the power to convene an independent tribunal.
The office was eventually created, but it was not given the strongly recommended tribunal powers. One of the global concerns behind the Vardon report’s recommendation was the need for greater transparency and accountability in decision-making. Twelve years later this standpoint was repeated by Mr Glanfield in the report arising from his inquiry. In fact, improved quality of and transparency in decision-making and practices is one of the four key outcomes presented in this document.
The Glanfield inquiry also notes the territory’s lack of suitable review of decisions and encourages that this matter be looked into in relation to what happens in this space in other jurisdictions. It has taken three years to get there, but I am relieved that the discussion paper on this topic was released by the minister earlier this month. I strongly encourage people to take advantage of the submission process by making comments.
In response to the Glanfield inquiry and other reports that appeared around the same time, the ACT government acknowledged that increased transparency and the building of trust are particularly necessary in child protection cases, that the territory’s care and protection system must adopt a culture of transparency and that proper accountability enhances community confidence in public administration, especially in complex areas such as statutory child protection services. In short, we have a long history in this territory of nearly everyone agreeing that our child protection system would function better with greater transparency and accountability.
This brings us to the specific case mentioned in this motion. I want to be careful what I say in relation to this case. It is complicated and prone to being oversimplified. I doubt that anyone in this chamber has a full grasp of the details, but the general outline involves five children having been removed from their mother and eventually being placed on 18-year orders by the court. Then, 5½ years later, and after the mother’s contact with her children had been severely limited, this decision was vacated through a series of legal appeals. This is a very serious matter. As one legal professional recently noted, losing one’s children and having only eight hours of contact with them per year is not dissimilar in some ways to serving a prison sentence.
We all know that in some cases people need to serve prison sentences. Likewise, we all know that in some cases children must be separated from their parents when they are at risk of serious harm. But if a person were imprisoned for 5½ years and then released on appeal, the obvious question would be: what went wrong? That is the question that is on the minds of a number of Canberrans in relation to this case. This has been especially troubling to the territory’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, in light of the fact that these children are Indigenous Australians. But this matter appears to have been resolved, so why refer it to a committee? Let me begin by clarifying what are not the reasons for this proposed referral.
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