View the recording of this speech here.
Record of Proceedings, 30 April 2024
Victims’ Commissioner and Sexual Violence Review Board Bill
While we are supporting this bill, I want to echo the words of the member for Currumbin where we call into question the government’s willingness and ability to listen to victims of crime and to truly act on their concerns. That is why we are seeing the demonstrations here today in Brisbane and the constant stream of victims of crime speaking out against this government and its failure to act. That failure manifested last year in this place where the victims of crime inquiry, which was started by the government, was simply not given enough time to do its job properly. That is relevant to the bill before us. I am going to confine my comments mainly to the establishment of the Victims’ Commissioner which was one of the issues that arose during the victims of crime inquiry last year.
The government has failed through that inquiry to properly listen to victims of crime. It was an inquiry that made recommendations but did not have sufficient time—it had about two months only—in order to properly listen to the needs of victims of crime in Queensland. That was reflected through that inquiry process where multiple witnesses told the Legal Affairs and Safety Committee, which undertook that inquiry, that there was not the proper ability to delve into the issues that they wanted to raise. So there is that failure to listen. There is also the failure to remove the principle of detention as a last resort from the Youth Justice Act which so many victims of crime and their families are calling for across Queensland to put community safety truly first. The government is refusing to listen on that front as well.
You do not need to take my word for it though, Mr Deputy Speaker. In the media today we have seen the family of Vyleen White basically saying that the Premier is insincere when it comes to listening to their concerns as victims of crime only a couple of months ago with the horrific murder that took place in Ipswich. This government has failed over a long time, starting all the way back in 2015 when in one of its very first acts it watered down the Youth Justice Act to put back in place the principle of detention as the last resort and closed the Childrens Court—all measures that victims of crime would have opposed at that time but the government steamed ahead regardless because it was not listening. It is only now when it has become a bad political issue for the government that it seems to be at least thinking about making some changes to those issues.
I want to talk about the Victims’ Commissioner. Recommendation 18 of the Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce report No. 2 recommended the independent statutory office of the Victims’ Commissioner be established. One of the functions that they were to be tasked with was to identify systemic trends and issues relating to policy, legislation, practice or procedure and potential responses to address these issues but also to assist victims in their dealings with government agencies across the criminal justice system, including through oversight of how agencies respond to complaints. I note that the bill does deal with the systemic issues. The bill will establish the Victims’ Commissioner as someone whose job will be to identify and review systemic issues relating to victims and at a high level to consult with government, to advocate to government on those issues and to recommend changes based on their review roles within the system.
During the victims of crime inquiry—the one I spoke about before which only ran for nine weeks and which many victims of crime did not know about—one of the issues that popped up consistently was the fact that in our criminal justice system the main parties involved are the state and the offender. Victims are not parties to those proceedings, yet that set-up, which has gone on for a long time, sometimes leaves victims feeling marginalised and left out of the process, uninformed and retraumatised through the criminal justice process.
One of the issues that was not able to be delved into properly through that victims of crime inquiry process but should have been was about making victims a more central part to the criminal justice system. We would like to have had more time to explore that. Perhaps the Victims’ Commissioner, as in some other jurisdictions, should be tasked with being that advocate not just at a systemic level but in each and every criminal justice proceeding where a victim is involved and where a victim seeks representation or seeks advocacy through that process.
Perhaps the Victims’ Commissioner should be a party to those proceedings and have the ability to advocate directly within those proceedings on behalf of victims of crime. This bill does not do that. That would take some work to establish. It is a novel concept for Queensland. It would take some work, some investigation and some research to outline exactly how that would work in the process. When victims are calling for it—and they were calling for it during that inquiry—one would think that the government would take the time and perhaps give a parliamentary committee the time to delve into those issues in great depth to enable recommendations to be made that would give victims that voice, not just at a systemic level but in their criminal justice proceedings when their son, or daughter, or mother, or father, or grandmother or grandfather has been murdered—to give them that voice legislated in a bill through this parliament. This bill does not do that.
This parliament failed last year when I called for that victims of crime inquiry to be extended. The member for Noosa called for it to be extended as well. It fell on deaf ears. As a result, this bill goes some way to dealing with victims’ rights issues in the criminal justice system but it leaves out a massive component that we could have done a lot better on. I will say it again: that inquiry was a total missed opportunity. We are supporting this bill, but it also represents a missed opportunity to be able to give a voice to victims in the criminal justice system.
The Victims’ Commissioner will have the ability to make recommendations and to investigate systemic issues. I am going to go back to that victims of crime inquiry. There were a number of systemic recommendations that came out of that. I note that a lot of them were following on from other reviews and inquiries that had been conducted over the last few years. Recommendations 4 through to 7, recommendation 11 and recommendation 18 of the victims of crime inquiry last year largely relate to systemic issues within the system. I hope that the Victims’ Commissioner in the scope of this bill will have the ability to take up those issues, to investigate them, to make representations to government and to improve the system for victims as a whole.
As I said, we are not opposing this bill, but I highlight again the failure of this government to really listen to the voice of victims. It started a long time ago but it has been manifested through their actions in the House in putting in place a victims of crime inquiry that really was inadequate for the job, failing to remove the principle of detention as a last resort in the youth justice system, shutting down the Youth Justice Reform Select Committee when it still had important work to do, and again failing to listen to victims of crime. We know that there are many victims of youth crime out there who would like to have seen that inquiry continue and to have seen the good work it was doing be completed. The government stopped listening and blew that inquiry up. We are where we are. We are not opposing the bill.