LET ASHLEY CLOSURE BE A PRECEDENT
PREMIER Peter Gutwein has been widely praised for his decision to close the Ashley Youth Detention Centre. Mr Gutwein’s announcement on Thursday followed years of revelations about the centre, from the mistreatment of children to the sexual harassment of staff. Nobody has spoken up in favour of retaining the almost 100-year-old institution.
While the Premier has been praised for acting, nobody could suggest the response has been swift. In October 2016, the Noetic Custodial Youth Justice Options Paper recommended: “That the Tasmanian government construct two purpose-built secure detention facilities, one each in Hobart and Launceston.”
The consultants worked it out in a five-day visit to the state, but the government backed the status quo. Since then, the momentum for change has only grown. Closing Ashley has been the Greens’ policy for at least five years. There have been calls from lawyers, former inmates, from MPs. Along the way, the tales mounted: claims of abuse, staff being suspended, the most recent sexual harassment claims. The government has had years to act but the impetus has been strangely absent.
Although the voices for change have been many, clearly they have been too quiet to be heard in the corridors of power. This week the case for the closure of Ashley became a crescendo that could no longer be ignored. Ministers could not at first assure parliament that children were safe in Ashley. Whistleblower Alycia spent time with the Premier giving him the benefit of her experience. This newspaper put the case in black and white in this space on Wednesday.
As with the decision to call the commission of inquiry into the Tasmanian Government’s Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings, the government was slow to bow to a self-evident case. It should not take the determined courage of an individual like Alycia, or the persistence of lawyers such as Sebastian Buscemi, or the dogged work of MPs, and of journalists at this outlet and others to convince the government of what is obvious and right, should not wait for the pattern of behaviour to become so entrenched or the mountain of lawsuits is too high to jump over, or when a commission of inquiry is on the cusp of terrible revelations.
This decision, as right and as worthy as it is, has simply taken too long.
Our state faces its share of tough questions. But on issues of basic rights, the issues of humanity and decency, there is no room for politics, nor delay. We must learn from this experience. To hear, we must listen. There is merit in hearing the whisper before it becomes a roar.