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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-06-16 Daily Xml
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Question Time

Safeguarding Taskforce

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (14:39): My question is to the Minister for Human Services regarding disability services. Minister, did the task force that was formed in response to the terrible and tragic death of Ann Marie Smith have access to any kind of information about the circumstances of her death, and was the task force at liberty to request information about her or in any way discuss and report on aspects of the death of Ann Marie Smith?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:40): I thank the honourable member for his question. I have said many, many times that the role of the task force is to examine matters relating to safeguarding, to which they have clearly applied themselves assiduously and have provided the state government with an interim report which, as I said in my ministerial statement, all recommendations of which we have accepted in principle, and some of the matters that are contained within it we had identified ourselves and therefore had already been working on.

The purpose of the task force was not to examine the circumstances of Ann Marie Smith's death: there is information in the public domain, which anybody has been able to access. My understanding is that they would not have sought particular private details and, as I have also said on numerous occasions, these matters are under police investigation and are subject to the federal regulator having its own investigation by the independent appointee, Alan Robertson SC, a retired federal judge. The files that relate to Ann Marie Smith that would be held by my department are now with the police, and that is the appropriate location for them.

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