Commissions of Inquiry Amendment (Private Sessions Information) Bill 2025 (No. 37)
- genevievecooley
- Sep 25
- 2 min read
Thursday 25 September 2025
[12.42 p.m.]
Ms ARMITAGE (Launceston) - Mr President, this is a very simple and straightforward bill. I thank the Leader for Government Business for bringing it forward today. This bill will enable people who shared their experiences during the commission of inquiry in private sessions to help us better understand what happened, what went wrong and what we could do to ensure that no child or vulnerable person could ever be harmed under state care again.
The commission held more than 120 private sessions from 2021 to 2023. Currently, records of these sessions cannot be provided to the participants unless they and any person they spoke or wrote about consents to that information being disclosed. For a great number of participants of these private sessions, mentioning names or actions of others might now present a significant barrier to participants who want to gain access to their own records. To this end, the bill seeks to introduce the proposed section 19C(2)(da) to ensure that private session records can be disclosed to the person who gave the information, without obtaining the consent of each person referred to in those records.
As we heard in briefings, in the event that a private session had a co-participant, this bill requires that person to consent to the disclosure to protect their identity. Where that consent is not given, their identity will be redacted. That is fair and appropriate.
Finally, this bill applies retrospectively to the records of the commission and to any future Tasmanian commission of inquiry.
The commission of inquiry was one of the most significant and important inquiries in the state's history. It relied on the courage of many people who had to relive their trauma so that we could understand what happened. It would not have been possible without their participation and their help.
It's likely that ongoing changes will need to occur around the legislative framework of the COI. I will always support anything that puts victim/survivors at the centre of these changes and ensures that their welfare and their wellbeing is prioritised.
This is a reasonably technical bill. I hope it will make a difference to some of the participants of the COI's private sessions. I thank them. I support the bill.
