Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In November last year, I was provided with materials outlining disturbing allegations about the treatment of young people in youth detention in Victoria. If Victorians knew what was happening to young people in detention, they would be horrified. The system must be fixed, but, more to the point, we must implement diversion programs to keep young people out of detention. The materials provided to me came from whistleblowers concerned by the treatment of young people in detention at Parkville's Melbourne Youth Justice Centre, specifically solitary confinement being used as a punishment and a management tool. I did not provide this correspondence to the press. However, given that it's now public in the Age newspaper, I'm releasing the letters quoted in the interests of transparency and to support the case for action to protect the welfare of these children.

I put clearly on the record here in this chamber that I have concerns about reprisal against the staff who blew the whistle to me. I know that a number had concerns about retaliation. I call on the Victorian government to guarantee there will not be reprisals against these individuals. They have done the right thing in raising these issues, confident that I would deal with their concerns without breach of confidence.

The whistleblowers were particularly concerned about COVID rules being used inappropriately to punish those in detention and to cover for staff shortages. As a result of initial written materials, followed by conversations with the whistleblowers and after taking legal advice, I wrote to the Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews; the relevant state minister; the Victorian ombudsman, Deborah Glass; and the federal Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus. In the letter, co-signed by the member for Kooyong and the member for Melbourne, whose electorate covers Parkville, I questioned whether the use of isolation was justifiable and proportionate, made the point that solitary confinement of children is prohibited under international human rights law and raised the whistleblowers' concern that children were being detained in isolation for up to 23 hours per day on multiple days per week to make it easier to manage children with limited staff numbers.

After sending the letter, I had several subsequent conversations with the federal Attorney-General about the situation, along with correspondence from the ombudsman and the Victorian Department of Justice. The Victorian ombudsman replied extensively saying, among other things, 'I share many of the concerns you raise in your letter.' The ombudsman noted that in 2019 she had formally investigated what effective implementation of the optional protocol to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, OPCAT, should look like and recommended that a single independent body be designated in Victoria referred to as a national preventative mechanism, or NPM. In her report, at the time, the ombudsman estimated the cost of the establishment of an effective independent inspection function within her office to be a mere $2.5 million out of a total prison budget of $1.8 billion in Victoria, a relatively small amount, therefore, to ensure that children are not subject to this kind of punishment.

The Andrews government is apparently demanding the Commonwealth provide the money, an unjustifiable excuse for inaction. But, if that is all it would take, I appeal to the federal Attorney-General to make the money available and test Victoria's bona fides.

In their original communication with me, the whistleblowers noted that in October last year they were informed of a possible visit by a UN OPCAT delegation. During that week, they allege, the centre was staffed up to ensure that young people in custody would be up and operating on the floor, as they put it—attending classes and operating as normal. This, they said, was another gross and deliberate attempt to hide the goings-on inside Parkville youth detention precinct. In return correspondence, the justice department chose to defend the situation, accusing the whistleblowers of misinformation and citing figures showing a decline in isolations. The whistleblowers, with firsthand experience of the situation, vehemently disagree. The welfare of these children must be protected.