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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 5 Hansard (7 May) . . Page.. 1254 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

would have been appropriate. That might have been enough if it were only a case of three deaths, but much more than that was involved in the background that required a broad inquiry before and in addition to those coroner's reports.

In fact, those reports have not come down yet, and we could not have waited for that length of time to take some action in this area. The coroner's reports will be more specific to those deaths, but this report is hardly about them at all. Yes, they are mentioned, but it is about so much more. It is important that the report be done and now be considered.

The response of the Labor Party is generally none. Mr Stanhope has outlined the procedures we have for the future, which Mr Humphries thinks are too long. But like everything this government does, what we are doing here is considered and thorough. That is a very important point. Mr Stanhope has one somewhat related report coming down very shortly and a very knowledgeable person in the area of service provision looking at how the ACT government ought now to respond to the recommendations of Gallop, which need to be examined. You cannot simply pick them up and say, "We're going to do this." The way ahead has to be worked out in greater detail. Labor has shown that it is very serious about attending to these problems.

Ms Dundas came immediately to our focus. Her first words were: a response in terms of the people in the disability area-most of them nameless, I think she said. That is something that has not particularly been expressed through all this debate. One or two of the parents have been out there in front of the cameras, and that is excellent. But we have overlooked the basic reason for this and the people who are at the heart of it. The system certainly failed them.

Ms Tucker raised a point that I was going to raise: I do not know if the report even mentioned the name of the former health minister. There is no concept of ministerial responsibility in the report, as Ms Tucker suggested. That is interesting. One of the reasons I became even more adamant about the need for such a report was that there was inadequate public acknowledgment of the problem. I believed, on the evidence I saw-I will not use the word cover-up; I do not think that was the case-that there was a clear reluctance to admit publicly that there were problems. That is one of the reasons I became more and more concerned.

Mr Moore and I had an argument one day about whether there should be a media release on one of the deaths. That is always an awkward thing to do. If you have read the report, you will have noticed that my submission was based on this question: when there is an untoward incident in a group home, how is that knowledge made available? I believe it was not made available.

A whole range of incidents, including the three deaths, only became public knowledge through word of mouth amongst parents and workers in that community. I do not think that is good enough. In the end I have come to think that a report ought to be made to the Assembly's Health Committee, a copy of that report also going to the commissioner for health complaints.

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