Commission of Inquiry: David Killick says Tasmania’s culture of secrecy which allowed child sexual abuse to fester needs to change

Tasmania culture of secrecy which allowed child sexual abuse to fester in plain sight needs to change, says David Killick. READ HIS ANALYSIS

Commission of Inquiry being tabled in parliament, Premier Jeremy Rockliff. Picture: Chris Kidd

The Commission of Inquiry has been an unusual moment in Tasmania’s political history: an unfettered inquisition, prosecuted diligently, by fair but fearless means.

We don’t go much for that sort of thing in these parts.

This is the first Commission of Inquiry in a generation – since the Gilewicz Inquiry in 1999. Our political class prefers to live a life unexamined. It was a hard fight by many brave souls that got us to this point.

It is not that Tasmania is short of the sorts of issues that vex democracies elsewhere in this nation. It’s just that we have the strongest aversion to confronting them.

This is the state with the worst record on transparency, on the release of government information, on political donations, on protecting whistleblowers, of going after corruption.

These are not flaws of our version of democracy. They have long been – and remain – its defining features.

Commission of Inquiry being tabled in parliament, Premier Jeremy Rockliff. Picture: Chris Kidd

Even the final report of this most critical inquiry notes that it was hampered from making more serious findings of misconduct against individuals because of the intervention of their lawyers and the limitations in the Commissions of Inquiry Act.

The Commission said it was out of step with other states. Now there’s a surprise.

The noble promises of a succession of leaders have amounted to little.

These glaring flaws in our political culture go to the heart of what his Commission of Inquiry was tackling head-on.

It is the culture of secrecy and reflexive self-protection infects the highest ranks of our public service and in the cadre of advisers that allowed these horrors to fester in plain sight.

It is a culture that infects every institution: our police service, our courts, our mechanisms of environmental protection and animal welfare, our racing industry.

It debases the nobler conventions of our parliament through an instinctive aversion to answering the most basic of questions or paying the most cursory heed to a request for what little we are allowed to know what isn’t deemed private, before the courts, commercial-in-confidence, subject to cabinet secrecy, or internal working documents.

It is a culture still baked into our fragmented, poorly designed, weak by design, underfunded oversight bodies.

Katrina Munting, a victim survivor of child sexual abuse, reacts to the Commission of Inquiry report being tabled in parliament. Picture: Chris Kidd

It is evident in the culture of the departmental loyalists who fought rearguard actions to water down and redact from the moment the chapters of the report were sent out for fact-checking until the moment changes were no longer possible.

The Commission’s final report demands change, but changing laws and regulations and procedures is one thing. Changing attitudes and culture is harder.

This is a stark and stunning failure of those in charge at the senior levels of our public service to act in the interests of the people of Tasmania instead of the government of the day.

The true test of this government’s commitment to deliver on this report will be measured in how swiftly and decisively those responsible are held to account: those who failed to observe the basic requirements of their well-paid and secure jobs, whose courage and imagination and initiative was found so cravenly wanting, those who looked the other way, those who failed to act, who worked to defend institutions and reputations and not protect children.

There must be accountability at last.

We may have little cause to be hopeful based on this government’s record of nearly a decade in power, but hope we must. We still have such a long way to go.