Wednesday, 29 July 2026

 Annabelle CLEELAND (Euroa) (11:01): I need to correct the record for earlier this week saying I would not cry when I made my contribution after hearing my colleagues and committee members speak on the Legal and Social Issues Committee’s report. This is something we are really, really proud of. This is seeing who is in the gallery today and the dedication that they have made, not just to our inquiry and the submissions but in their personal life in making sure that we are here. It is their personal contribution; it is their professional contribution. It has been a mammoth amount of effort and huge personal sacrifice to get this here today, and it is something that our committee is really proud of.

I want to just take a moment to thank my committee for their graciousness in allowing me to take a physical and emotional step back when the fires ripped through my community, because something that people do not understand in this job is you only have so much capacity. It is a huge amount of emotional work for everyone involved in this committee to listen to the trauma of those that are brave and courageous enough to contribute, and that is why it is such an outstanding report. Today here in the gallery we have some extraordinary, courageous people who will change the lives of individuals and children who never consented to a future and a life in a cult. It happens sometimes slowly, with those that you trust most. Catherine and Ryan: I am not going to look at you, Catherine, because we are really, really proud of the courage that you have shown your community.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): Member for Euroa, I will gently counsel you to not refer to anyone in the gallery.

Annabelle CLEELAND: Oh, sure, absolutely. But they do deserve a shout-out – Laura McConnell, Richard Baker. I have got to put it on the record that he was my inspiration to get into journalism. I cannot say I was quite the investigator, but I was a little bit of a fangirl until I toned it down and realised that his work has also contributed to getting us to this place.

This has been some of the hardest work certainly that I have done in this place. Sitting and listening to the impact of coercive control and cult involvement does not leave you when you knock off – when you go home and have dinner with your family and you understand that there are some people whose whole identity has been taken from them, and without their consent. The evidence told us about that physical harm. As we heard from my colleagues, 95 per cent of people who responded to our questionnaire spoke about the chronic fear, the loss of identity, the lasting damage of being shunned by the only community they knew, and many of us would not even be able to comprehend that sort of loss of identity. A lot of those effects can last a lifetime. I do not think that anyone in the committee will forget some of the contributions that we heard.

I need to thank the secretariat. They are extraordinary. Not only are they fiercely intelligent and capable, and their depth of research is just admirable, but they are compassionate in all of their professionalism. Jessica, Danielle, Imogen and Caitlin, you are all just absolutely professional dynamites, and you should be deeply proud of your work. They have pulled an enormous amount of evidence together, and with a lot of it they had to navigate the sensitivity of anonymous contributions as well, and that is no small feat.

We set out as the committee to protect people who are living through coercive control now and to protect the children who are being raised inside these groups with no say at all. Children born into these groups are not recruited. There is no moment when they choose to join, and their whole sense of self is built by the group before they are even old enough to question it. Eventually, when they do decide to leave – if they are able to leave – they are not recovering from an old identity; they are building one for the first time. A lot of those recommendations go towards making sure that they are able to, and that is the point of this report.

A couple of things that I want to just put on the record: I personally had some misconceptions. I did not think my own electorate of Euroa was impacted, but we actually heard recommendations from people that live in my community right now that are impacted by a cult. I was also gobsmacked by the financial accountability. But all in all, I just want to say I commend this report to the house, and I deeply thank everyone who contributed.