Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"the message be considered immediately."

The calling of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability was a significant occasion. It was a very significant occasion for people right across the country who had campaigned for it for many years. It is going to involve an estimated cost of more than half a billion dollars by the time its investigations are completed. We don't actually know the sheer number of people with a disability who have died in care, but it is estimated that between 2014 and 2017 in New South Wales government-run institutions alone there were 43 preventable deaths.

There can be no questioning of the significance of this royal commission. It is something that Senator Steele-John pushed for for quite some time, and we congratulated the government when it was finally called. But for it to be of impact and for the findings of the royal commission to have widespread public support, including the support of people with disabilities, there has to be confidence in the commission process itself. What we are dealing with at the moment is not a case, if I can use legal terminology, of actual bias amongst commissioners; we are dealing with a question of perceived conflict of interest.

In this, perceptions will count for a lot. This royal commission must not only be independent but be seen to be independent. If it is seen to be independent, then the many people in this country with disabilities who've been pushing for this for many years will have confidence in the investigative process and the outcomes. But that is not where it sits at the moment, and that is why this motion needs to be passed. Where it sits at the moment is that a significant proportion of the communities of people with disabilities in this country are saying they do not consider this process to be safe. Not only that, the community are saying that if two of these commissioners stay part of the commission then they will, in fact, boycott the process. That would be a disaster. It would be a disaster if this incredibly significant royal commission were to be impeded because the government was not willing to put in commissioners that were not just independent but also perceived to be independent.

We are dealing here with two commissioners in particular. For all members in this House, I want to repeat the point that I made at the start. We are dealing here not with claims of bias; we are dealing here with claims of perceived conflict of interest. The kinds of claims that I think would see a judge stand down from hearing a case. I say this without impugning the reputations of these two people or suggesting any wrongdoing. In this instance, the right thing for them to do would be to step aside, and if they're not going to do it the government should do it. If the government don't do it, they run the risk of creating a rod for their own back and sabotaging the very process that they themselves have set up, and it will not have legitimacy. What is at stake is whether or not this process is going to be seen as being legitimate by the very people who were calling for it to be established in the first place.

I'm going to go into a bit of detail about the two people in question in particular—again, and I stress, not because I'm making claims against them, but because this is about having the confidence of the community. When you understand the background of the involvement of these two people, you can see why the calls for them to step aside are eminently reasonable. The first is John Ryan. Before he was appointed to the royal commission, he was the director of contemporary residential options in the New South Wales Department of Family and Community Services. In that role, he was partly responsible for more than 300 government operated group disability homes, as well as overseeing the closure and redevelopment of the state's largest residential institutions. The largest of these, the Stockton Centre, has been in the process of closing down since Mr Ryan assumed the role in 2011. Residents are being moved into community settings as part of this process. Between 2014 and 2017 a New South Wales Ombudsman's report found that two women had died of dehydration and a third woman was severely injured after being moved out of the Stockton Centre and into residential care. And it found that inadequate staff training about the complex needs of these patients was a factor contributing to the deaths of these women. The same report concluded that another 41 individuals had died in that three-year period whilst under the care of Mr Ryan's employer, the New South Wales Department of Family and Community Services.

Those matters are very likely to be the subject of inquiry by the commission—or at least the people who have called for the royal commission will be seeking to have those matters investigated by the royal commission. People will be asking for an investigation into one of the commissioner's former employers in one of the single largest areas of investigation undertaken. Mr Ryan was the director of contemporary residential options for the New South Wales Department of Family and Community Services at the time, a role he only resigned from in order to join the royal commission. So it is, in fact, a potential inquiry into the impact of actions that he directly oversaw. That is a direct conflict of interest or at least an appearance of a conflict of interest.

The second commissioner, Ms Barbara Bennett, worked for the Department of Social Services for over a decade and was involved in the rollout of the NDIS, as well as other social programs that regularly interact with people with disabilities. The NDIS is necessarily going to be a huge part of the investigation undertaken by the royal commission, as will the interactions between other government social programs and disabled people. If the royal commission is going to be looking at the interaction between NDIS and people with disabilities then it may well traverse on the very areas that the commissioner was involved in overseeing. That is not just some wild claim; it is just manifestly obvious, on the face of, it that, if you have someone who has been involved in implementing and rolling out the NDIS, the subject matters that that commissioner oversaw are likely to be some of the matters that people will want to bring to the commission's attention and the commission will investigate. But what we can't have is a case of an appearance that the Public Service is investigating a public service, in the case of Ms Bennett, or, in the case of Mr Ryan, a suggestion that investigations of actions potentially under his watch, or at least under his employer's watch, will now be under a cloud or may not progress in the way that people wanted.

I come back to what I said at the start: the calls for these people to step down are now growing. We are here debating this because a majority of the Senate has asked that, if they don't stand aside, the government stand them aside. So we now have a very large section of the parliament, from across the party-political spectrum, representing broad community support saying that these two people ought not sit as the commissioners. And we now have the community itself saying: 'We've got some alternative proposals that would ensure that the government can independently pick some people who would meet the selection criteria. We are not seeking to appoint them, but there are some criteria that could be applied that would ensure independence.' And the government itself is being stubborn and pigheaded. As a result, people with disabilities are now saying they don't feel safe before this royal commission and are going to boycott it. The royal commission will be tarred from the beginning if these two people do not do the right thing and stand aside. If this was a case before the court, in a heartbeat the judge would stand aside—because they would know that you can't have the appearance of a fair trial if it is into matters that you yourself were directly involved in. But that is what we have got here.

My message to this place is that the disability community can't do it by themselves anymore. They pushed and pushed and got a royal commission up, and they want this royal commission to be successful. People are prepared to come and participate in it. But they do not want a royal commission where people don't feel safe before it because the government is picking the very people who should be investigated by the royal commission! If the government could just put aside its pig-headedness and stubbornness for one second, it would realise it would be doing itself a favour—because if it just put in two other people that have the broad support of the community then it would have widespread political support and it would be understood and appreciated for having done the right thing. But if the government is not going to do it then the parliament should make the government do it. I commend this amendment to the House.

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