Page 1007 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 30 March 2011
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have seen the admissions of inadequate training of staff, inadequate equipping of staff. We heard yesterday the Chief Minister on radio saying that Bimberi has been reviewed to death. And we now know there are probably six or seven inquiries into Bimberi.
That is why we are here today. We want to bring it all together, give it to someone who has the trust of the community, who has enough gravitas in the community and enough powers to ensure that when we look into what is going wrong at Bimberi, the system, the process of looking into it, cannot be corrupted as it currently is.
I tabled these minutes earlier in my speech because they are so important. Page 3 of these minutes, the documentary evidence that we have received—and members of the media have received this as well—says that the system in relation to Bimberi is corrupted. It says in the minutes:
High probability that officers from our unit—
that is, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit—
will be approached to contribute to the review. Officers are urged if they are approached they consult with—
an officer—
to work out a strategy prior to responding.
We heard the Chief Minister spend 2½ minutes on ABC Radio trying to justify those words “to work out a strategy prior to responding”. He cannot justify those words, because they are clear documentary evidence that the system has been corrupted by the people who are supposed to be being reviewed.
Let us go to the mounting evidence about how corrupted this system has become. We have seen in the past two days people coming out of the woodwork, left, right and centre, to put their reputation on the line, to face harassment because they cannot be silent any longer. We need to ask these questions: if everything is so good, if everything is so open, if everyone is being so encouraged to go to the Bimberi review, why is it that so many people are coming out and telling the community that the system is corrupted, that the evidence has been tampered with and why would teachers out themselves and possibly face recriminations? The answer is: because everything is not fine in DHCS; everything is not fine in the Bimberi review.
I will go to some of the quotes that we heard yesterday. The teacher who wrote an open letter to the Canberra Times yesterday said she wrote the letter because she had become frustrated and concerned about the review process. She wrote:
Former colleagues … in their new work places had been encouraged, or at least sort of guided, in the way that they should respond to their review by their supervisors.
It concerns me that I naively had believed that a human rights review would be independent from any influence from government.
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