David Killick Analysis: From hard lessons justice must come to victim-survivors

On a Parliamentary sitting day just a month from now, perhaps the most important report in a generation will be tabled in the house of Assembly by Premier Jeremy Rockliff.

Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government's responses to child sexual abuse in institutional settings. Movenpick Hotel, Hobart Tasmania.

On a Parliamentary sitting day just a month from now, perhaps the most important report in a generation will be tabled in the house of Assembly by Premier Jeremy Rockliff.

The Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government’s Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings hands its final report to Governor Barbara Baker on the last day of August.

The government must table it within ten sitting days — some time between September 5 to October 17.

What happens next will be the sternest test of the gap between words and actions. It will be a significant test for the Rockliff administration.

Based on the evidence heard by commission, this final report will account in forensic detail the failures of multiple government departments and agencies.

The Departments of Premier and Cabinet; Health; Education, Children and Young People; and Justice will be those who face the toughest reckoning.

Victim-survivors have always been the most important people in this difficult process.

In this report lies their hopes for some form of public redress for what they have been through, and the manifest, multiple and repeated failures of the protective mechanisms of government to save or heed them.

Nothing can ease their pain but justice.

A bare month in advance, the government has not spelled out a firm date or a process for the public release of this report, no arrangements have been made public for those most affected to be briefed in a sheltered and trauma-informed way about its contents, no arrangements are in place for the additional support services they might need or so they can activate their own care networks or plan to travel towards – or shelter from – what is to come.

The Commissioners and their staff have worked with the utmost professionalism, sensitivity and diligence but their job ends on August 31.

Instead, the post-Commission handling of this final report will fall largely to the Department of Justice: the same Department of Justice whose failings will thus be laid bare.

We should hold hope that these hard lessons will lead to better outcomes, even if past experience and the weight of evidence serves as a stark caution against it.

There is still time for a well-managed, well-considered, best-practice management of what will be a wrenching moment in the state’s history no matter what.

The manner in which our government handles the release of this report will speak volumes about the way ahead.

Originally published as David Killick Analysis: From hard lessons justice must come to victim-survivors