AUSTRALIA
The Australian
JOHN FERGUSON THE AUSTRALIAN NOVEMBER 14, 2013
THE national royal commission into child sex abuse can learn a great deal from the Victorian inquiry.
It should treat yesterday’s findings and the method of investigation as a first step towards getting to the bottom of the abuse epidemic.
The Victorian inquiry has suffered from being handed terms of reference that were too restrictive. The parliamentary committee should never have been precluded from properly examining the government sector, where – it could be argued – a large percentage of the offending has occurred and still occurs.
This was a mistake made by the then Baillieu state government that needs to be rectified in a more meaningful sense by the national inquiry. The royal commission’s terms of reference appear to deal with this mistake.
This is not to diminish any of the good work of the committee members in Victoria but the long-term future of public policy needs more work and vision.
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