George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The opposition supports the Royal Commissions Amendment Bill 2010, which proposes two substantive amendments to the Royal Commissions Act 1902. The first amendment provides that, where a royal commission is constituted by more than one commissioner, its chair may authorise one or more members to hold a hearing. The present act requires evidence to be taken before all the commissioners or a quorum of them.

The second amendment proposes measures particular to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse which will permit persons directly or indirectly affected by child sexual abuse to provide information in a private session. Participation in a private session, which is not a commission hearing, would be voluntary. Such material will not be received on oath or affirmation and is not considered to be the giving of evidence to the commission. Any use of this material in a commission report must not identify individuals unless it is subsequently given in evidence to a commission hearing. However, documents and other material disclosed at a private session may be communicated to relevant officeholders, in particular the commissioner of a police force.

Mr Deputy President, the coalition supported the establishment of a royal commission into institutional child abuse; indeed, as I recall, Mr Abbott called for the establishment of such a royal commission even before it was announced, so this is an entirely bipartisan matter. The amendments relating to multimember royal commissions—and, as you know, there are several royal commissioners to whom commissions have been issued—will allow for the efficient distribution of work among commissioners in appropriate circumstances in what is, I am sorry to say, expected to be a very, very voluminous evidence-gathering task, given the evidently widespread prevalence of institutional abuse of children.

Might I also say that there is nothing particularly unusual in allowing evidence before a royal commission to be taken by one member of the royal commission when there is more than one person appointed to the commission. I remember from my own experience in Queensland in the 1980s the famous Fitzgerald inquiry operated on the basis that Mr Fitzgerald QC took most of the evidence but he appointed a deputy commissioner, Patsy Wolfe—now Her Honour Judge Wolfe, chairman of the Queensland District Court—as an associate commissioner and much of the evidence at the Fitzgerald inquiry was given not before Mr Fitzgerald but before Ms Wolfe. So there is nothing unusual in this. It is an appropriate measure. It is not limited or specific to the royal commission into institutional child sexual abuse, but it will apply in general hereafter to all Commonwealth royal commissions.

The measures peculiar to the current royal commission permit the taking of evidence from vulnerable or traumatised witnesses in a setting similar to that applicable for protected witnesses in criminal trials of sexual offenders. Because the evidence is not given on oath or affirmation and bearing in mind that the commission's purpose is to inquire, not to prosecute or to determine guilt or innocence, it is appropriate that restrictions are placed on the use of such information.

The coalition has seen the government's amendments, which are circulated in the chamber, which relate to the documentary and archival treatment of material produced or arising from a private session, including relevant amendments to the Freedom of Information Act. These amendments seek to ensure as far as possible that private sessions are treated with appropriate sensitivity. Mr Deputy President, I am sure you will remember from your days as a police officer—and I remember from my days as a barrister once having to adduce evidence from a child complainant in a sexual abuse case—what a very difficult and sensitive task that is.

The coalition, as I have said, supports the establishment of the royal commission and the measures contained in the bill which will facilitate its efficient operation. It therefore has the coalition's wholehearted support.

Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Sustainability and Urban Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, I would move the Royal Commissions Amendment Bill 2013.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.