Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My adjournment speech tonight concerns the Commonwealth State/Territory Disability Agreement, which provides the national framework for the delivery, funding and development of disability services. I was particularly pleased to learn that the funding for and operation of this agreement is to be subject to a Senate Community Affairs References Committee inquiry. This is not before time.

Just from reading the Australian National Audit Office report No. 14 2005-06 on the administration of this agreement, the need for an inquiry becomes evident. For instance, paragraph 18 of the report summary notes that currently the national disability administrators are not even close to developing effective reporting measures of the agreement’s activities and outcomes. Paragraph 19 comments that the deficiencies in performance information inhibit improvements in efficiency and effectiveness. Paragraph 38 claims that there is uncertainty as to whether financial statement auditors have tested agreement expenditure. Paragraph 39 notes that the agreement does not include financial incentives or sanctions. Paragraph 42 then states that there should be better assurance mechanisms in place to improve quality assurance processes nationally.

Indeed, a reading of this report can only lead to one conclusion and that is this: there are no adequate measures to determine whether or not the disability agreement is meeting its objectives, nor are there sufficient accountability and transparency mechanisms to determine whether or not the quality of life for disabled persons is satisfactory, let alone getting better. I must admit that I was not surprised by the report’s claim about how agencies in receipt of funding are vague in how they actually account for their expenditure.

For some years now, I have been trying to follow up allegations of financial impropriety made against a major recipient of disability funding in Victoria under this Commonwealth-state agreement. Those allegations concern St John of God Services and its parent body in New South Wales, the Hospitaller Order of St John of God. I say that I am trying to follow up allegations because I have been obstructed by ministerial obfuscation.

These allegations appeared in the press and were also made to the Senate inquiry into institutional care. They raise serious questions of probity and suggest a rip-off of men with intellectual disability in the way their pensions were being siphoned off and how those moneys were being used. For instance, in the Weekend Australian on 8 December 2001, investigative journalist Richard Yallop reported that residents were being charged $344 a month to live in houses that were 80 per cent Commonwealth funded. With five or six residents in each house, the order was therefore receiving between $1,800 and $2,100 a month in rent for each house—steep rentals indeed for outer suburban homes at that time.

Also, when Yarra View Farm, a residential institution for disabled men run by the Brothers of St John, was sold in 1994 for $2.7 million, parents and relatives were upset at how these moneys were used. They had no issue with the way those moneys were used to buy a nursery in Victoria because it provided employment for 50 disabled residents, but they did take issue with the remainder of those moneys going to the Hospitaller Order of St John of God in Sydney. It was felt this money should have stayed in Victoria for the benefit of the order’s disabled clients.

The manager of the order’s new nursery then left in 1997 because he struggled to make it break even. He was charged an annual rent of $60,000 by the order’s parent company in Sydney, even though it owned the nursery freehold. He also had to pay more than $100,000 a year into the Victorian order’s employment placement agency. With the nursery receiving a $9,000 Commonwealth grant for each employee, the then manager felt the money should remain in the nursery.

Yallop wrote of how the 2001 financial reports showed that the order’s Victorian operation was receiving over $9 million a year under the Commonwealth-state disability agreement. Those financial reports also show that the Victorian order had a surplus of $1.5 million, of which $1 million was transferred to its parent company in Sydney to be placed in an investment account—invested for whose benefit, we do not know. I raised some of these matters with the Australian National Audit Office in March 2004. I received a comprehensive response and was assured my concerns would be duly noted. Hopefully, some of the criticisms in audit report No. 14 had those matters I raised in mind.

Furthermore, in addition to questionable financial behaviours, particularly appalling physical and sexual crimes committed by the order’s religious members on its residents were also reported on by Mr Yallop in his article. Aptly titled ‘House of horror’, it says:

Years after allegations that some Brothers of St John buggered some young males entrusted to their care, no one has been charged, taxpayers’ money is still flowing in and the hush up continues.

In a follow-up story in the Australian on 13 June 2002, Mr Yallop reported how a class action had then resulted in this Catholic order having to pay out a record $3.6 million to 24 disabled victims of abuse. This payout was not the first; others had already been compensated. It is not clear how many, because all the compensation agreements had confidentiality clauses.

The order’s history of abuse is quite startling. Yallop states that, between 1957 and 1974, sexual assaults were allegedly perpetrated by five brothers at the order’s Victorian homes in Cheltenham and Yarra View. Leaping ahead to the early 1990s, Yallop goes on to state that a lay manager actually alerted the Victorian Department of Community Services that he had concerns about a brother’s behaviour. The brother denied the abuse and the manager was reprimanded. It sounds a familiar story. One year later, the newly appointed Executive Officer of St John of God Services Victoria spoke up. No action was taken and she left soon after. The following year, the manager of the order’s nursery, where many of the residents worked, raised his concerns about the inappropriate treatment of the disabled men. He was also reprimanded. Then, back in 1997, a layman running the order’s Victorian services became the first to report the abuse allegations to the police.

Nonetheless, taxpayers’ money continued to flow into the St John of God Services, a religious charity with tax-exempt status—and it continues to this day. Currently, the order boasts that it supports over 500 people with disabilities across three metropolitan regions of Melbourne. Hopefully, they are all safe from marauding members of this religious order. Of course, I do not attribute marauding instincts to all members of the order, because that would be entirely wrong. I am quite sure that many members of the order are honourable people. But how can this order continue to be a main service provider for the disabled if it might still provide a safe harbour for some predators? Have they all been checked and cleared? That is my question.

If the aged need better protection—and we heard that discussed today at question time—you can be sure the disabled do too. When Broken Rites Victoria, an organisation that assists victims of abuse by the religious, expressed this view to the then relevant Victorian minister, the response of that minister’s adviser was apparently, ‘It is all just too hard.’

Since 2002, I have raised these issues of alleged financial impropriety and alleged sexual assault of the disabled three times by way of questions on notice to the respective ministers. However, their answers have been nothing short of poor, contemptuous, dismissive and uncaring. The test of any government is the way it provides for the most vulnerable in society. This government often fails that test—and fails it dismally.

I look forward to the report of the Senate inquiry into the Commonwealth State/Territory Disability Agreement. I trust that it will lead to the introduction of much needed accountability and transparency regulations and processes. These are absolutely vital to minimise any serious contraventions of the intent of this agreement. I also trust that, just as the federal government has unveiled new measures to protect the aged residents of nursing homes from sexual and physical assaults—and I want to compliment Minister Santoro on those—so too will similar reforms be forthcoming for our vulnerable disabled citizens.