AUSTRALIA
The Courier Mail
Terry Sweetman
From:The Courier-Mail
November 16, 2012
CHRIS Masters, of The Moonlight State fame, wrote that when Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen was trying to scuttle the Fitzgerald inquiry he warned colleagues that if you lifted an old piece of tin you were likely to find a dead cat or an angry snake.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard is doubtlessly aware plenty of stinking cats and venomous snakes will be exposed when her Royal Commission lifts the rusty iron of institutional responses to child abuse.
The difference is Gillard will not be overly surprised by what the inquiry turns up.
After a litany of complaints, exposes, court cases and plain old humbug stretching back decades, the only surprise for any sentient human might be the breadth of institutional inaction and the depth of the cover-ups. Rarely can Australia, or any of its states, have embarked on an inquiry where so many of the answers have been so evident for so long.
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