Wednesday, 30 August 2023

Statements on parliamentary committee reports

Integrity and Oversight Committee

Performance of the Victorian Integrity Agencies 2020/21: Focus on Witness Welfare

Mathew HILAKARI (Point Cook) (10:06): I am so excited actually to be back here speaking on committee reports. Last time we were in the chamber I had not finished a discussion around the Performance of the Victorian Integrity Agencies 2020/21: Focus on Witness Welfare report. I was midway through the recommendations, and I was up to recommendation 6, as you would remember from the time, Wednesday a fortnight ago. That went through the consultants, with the consent of the witness, providing proactive periodic mental wellbeing and health calls to make sure that witnesses who have been there to improve the integrity of the state get supported, because there is a significant time that exists between when a witness provides that information to IBAC and the time of the report landing. Of course this is an incredibly important part of the services that were recommended to support witness welfare.

I would like to take us next to the Victorian Inspectorate and recommendation 9 of the report, which was to:

engage an external and independent person or body with psychological expertise to review its Witness Welfare Policy, templates and standard practices to ensure they conform to best practice principles

I think that is the right thing to be doing. We of course want to have best practice principles wherever we can when it comes to the support of witnesses who provide these services to the state, so I am so pleased that the Victorian Inspectorate has received this recommendation as part of this report too. Recommendation 9 also goes on to investigating the feasibility of making sure there could be a 0.5 full-time equivalent ongoing complainant and witness welfare officer. Having these professional staff – and they recommend particularly a psychologist, mental health nurse or mental health social worker – onsite, available to be there for support for witnesses who provide these services for the state and for the benefit of all Victorians is incredibly important. There were two other recommendations, which I do not think I am going to have the time to go into today. But I might just take us finally to the Victorian Ombudsman and the recommendations related to them. Recommendation 11 goes to:

That the Victorian Ombudsman (VO) ensure that persons who are served with a confidentiality notice or summons to appear can directly access welfare support services provided by the VO’s Employee Assistance Program provider, without the need for a referral by the VO.

It is an important thing for witnesses to be able to directly contact and get support services without actually breaking confidentiality and going through the body that they have provided the witness services to, so of course I look forward to the progress on each of these recommendations.

I would just like to mention a couple of things before I finish my contribution on this matter. Sean Coley, the committee manager, and all of the secretariat provide incredibly important services to the Parliament and the Integrity and Oversight Committee on this occasion in making sure that these reports are done accurately, in a timely manner and in a professional way so that these recommendations can then be considered and adopted by the agencies. So I thank Sean Coley, the committee manager; Dr Stephen James, the senior research officer; Tom Hvala, the research officer; Holly Brennan, the complaints and research assistant; Maria Marasco, committee administrative officer; and Bernadette Pendergast, committee administrative officer. As a member of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee – and I see a number of other members of PAEC here – I know how much the committee staff do work behind the scenes to make sure that we have appropriate reports in a timely manner.

Finally, I just want to pay a tribute to some of those committee members, and certainly some of them are in the chamber right now: the member for Narre Warren South, who was the chair of the committee at that time; the member for Sandringham, who was the deputy chair; member for Western Victoria Mr Stuart Grimley; the member for Ringwood at that time, who was Mr Dustin Halse; the member for Bayswater Mr Jackson Taylor; the member for Eltham, who is in the chamber today and it is great to see her here; and the member for Rowville. I am so glad I had this second opportunity to conclude my remarks on this report. I look forward to hearing the remarks by the member for Kew.