Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last October I met with one my constituents Chris Stoker. Chris is a lovely bloke who told me a horrible story about his time as a student at Brisbane Boys Grammar School during the tenure of school counsellor Kevin Lynch. Lynch left a trail of devastation at both Brisbane Boys Grammar and St Paul's. This monster sexually abused multiple students at both schools, one of those being Chris. Mr Lynch was later charged with nine offences but committed suicide the next day. At the time of Mr Lynch's employment, then principal Dr Maxwell Howell knowingly allowed modifications to the school counsellor's office to include blacked-out windows, deadlocked entry and exit doors, and a traffic light and intercom system to control entry to the office.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found:

We find that in 1981 BQH told Dr Howell that Mr Lynch had sexually abused his son BQJ. Dr Howell did not investigate the allegations and did not report the matter to the police or the board of trustees. In not doing so, he failed in his obligations to protect the safety and wellbeing of the students.

To make matters worse, Dr Howell also provided a glowing reference for Kevin Lynch despite being well aware of numerous allegations against him. Consequently, this monster then moved his abuse onto new students at St Paul's. My constituent Chris Stoker knows that he will never see justice because Mr Lynch and Dr Howell are both dead. However, what Chris wants is for Mr Howell to be removed from the records as a past Member of the Order of Australia, so I call on the Governor-General to remove any reference of Dr Howell from the honours list. He does not belong there. I seek leave to table a document showing Dr Howell still on the list as receiving— (Time expired)

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Is leave granted?

Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes.