Not Happy John (Hatzistergos)

Those of us who work for the promotion and protection of human rights in Australia are not happy with you Mr Hatzistergos and your department. You are a member of the Australian Labor Party in NSW and you are an elected member to the Legislative Council of the NSW Parliament. Are you genuinely without partisan favour truly representing the citizens of NSW?

Since at least 1999 your state parliamentary colleagues concerned with the portfolios of the Attorney General and Disability Services have had countless representations made from human rights advocates and disability organisations to undertake thorough and proper legal reforms. Your predecessors have been repeatedly asked to reform various acts like The Guardianship Act and the now defunct Protected Estates Act. Nobody did anything. In 2004 the former Protective Commissioner (and former ALP member for Earlwood) Mr Gabb listened to requests for reforms. He even wrote about it in the 2004 Annual Report of the Office of the Protective Commissioner:

"During 2003-2004 OPC reviewed the Protected Estates Act in consultation with a wide cross section of stakeholders. Recommendations for reform were forwarded to the Attorney General's Department in June 2004 for its consideration. I am hopeful our efforts and the efforts of those who helped us will bear fruit in 2004-2005 with an improved legislative framework within which to provide our services." (OPC Annual Report 2004, p. 5).

Mr Gabb was obliged to report to the Director General of the Attorney General's Department, Mr Laurie Glanfield. He handed up his report. So what happened to Mr Gabb's recommendations that were forwarded to the Department? Can you explain what was the over-arching reason to account for why no action was taken to introduce legal reforms? Can you explain why Mr Glanfield in his role of approving the budgets of the OPC agreed to deficits being created in the past couple of years? Why would this Department, which has had administrative control over the OPC and the Office of the Public Guardian for years, allow the Community Service Obligations budgets to go into debt?

Today was the closing day for public submissions to the NSW Legislative Council's Social Issues Committee on substitute decision making. The time-frame for allowing submissions was rather short and not well advertised. The time-frame by which the Social Issues Committee must report to parliament likewise places it under pressure to make its deliberations known by February 2010. How under the sun can comprehensive law reforms in several pieces of legislation be seriously examined and then acted on in such a short period of time?

Many of us are jaded and frustrated with the NSW Labor Parliaments that have existed since 1999, and with your Department.

The public have a right to know that a decade has elapsed while the Labor Government has not really taken our worries seriously. The public needs to know that your Government approved budget deficits that crippled the OPC so that a merger was hastily announced to cover over the tracks.

The public needs to know that there was no consultation with advocates and disability groups over the final version of the 2008 IPART report on OPC fees, and on the OPC merger meetings of 1 April and 5 June, 2009. The meeting in February over the IPART report, and those concerning the merger were, it seems, hastily assembled to give the appearance of being consultative. Your Merger Implementation Team never asked us to contribute to the processes but simply gave us short presentations about what you wanted us to know about the merger plans. That really was pathetic!

So, you can be sure that people will be waiting on the Government's response to this Inquiry on substitute-decision making. The 2011 election will bring the matter into focus, as will the reporting done by Australian disability advocates to the United Nations concerning the failures of your government to conform state laws to ratified UN conventions on human rights.