3. HEATHER ROY (Deputy Leader—ACT) Link to this
to the Minister of State Services
Is he satisfied with the State Services Commission’s monitoring of the performance of other Government departments?
Hon DAVID PARKERHow can he be satisfied, when the killer of the 20-year-old woman mentioned in the news was able to give a false name in court and have the judge believe that he was a first-time offender, when in fact he was a police informer in the witness protection scheme and had a string of serious convictions dating back to 1997 that should have seen him locked up and a young life saved?
There are serious issues that underlie this case, and we are applying to vary the suppression orders that limit what the media can presently say. The reason those suppression orders exist relates to the safety of people, and the member ought to await the outcome of those processes, rather than speculate in ways that can be harmful in a serious way to the interests of people.
Why has the Minister not released the report on [name suppressed by court order], which he has been sitting on all year and which shows that both the police and the Department of Corrections knew that man’s true identity—in fact, everyone knew but the judge? When will he release it and stop being part of this despicable cover-p?
Rather than suppressing it, I think that on the day of, or the day following, its arrival with Ministers, the Minister of Police took it to the family of the young woman who had so tragically died. We are not suppressing it, but there are already suppression orders—
Hon Annette King—and it is not a year. There are suppression orders currently in force, not from the State Services Commission and not from any arm of the Government but from the courts. Those suppression orders prevent the publication of that report in the form that it was presented to us. If we were to edit that report in full compliance with those suppression orders, it would be largely meaningless to those people who read it. Accordingly, in order for us to be more transparent, not less, we are applying to the court to vary those suppression orders so that we can tell people more than we are currently able to tell them.