The Senate has supported a Greens motion calling\u00a0on the Government to urgently legislate\u00a0protections for\u00a0witnesses seeking to make a submission to the\u00a0Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Exploitation and Neglect of People with Disability in confidence.
\nAustralian Greens Disability Rights spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John said confidentiality protections were not only essential, but time-sensitive to ensure that the Royal Commission could\u00a0do its job properly.
\n\u201cThe Government has already wasted the best part of a year\u00a0of a Royal Commission process that has only been scheduled to take three years,” he said.
\n“Failure to act quickly has had, and will continue to have, a chilling effect on the Royal Commission.
\n\u201cI have people contacting my office all the time \u2013 people who have lost all faith in the system because of the violence, abuse, exploitation or neglect they, or their family, have suffered \u2013 wanting to know when it will be safe for them to tell their stories.
\nUnder current legislative arrangements confidentiality can only be guaranteed until the end of Royal Commission.
\nThe Government indicated in the Senate today that they were “considering their options” and that “a decision would be made shortly”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Senate has supported a Greens motion calling\u00a0on the Government to urgently legislate\u00a0protections for\u00a0witnesses seeking to make a submission to the\u00a0Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Exploitation and Neglect of People with Disability in confidence. Australian Greens Disability Rights spokesperson Senator Jordon Steele-John said confidentiality protections were not only essential, but time-sensitive to ensure that the … Continue reading “Senate calls for urgent confidentiality legislation for Disability Royal Commission”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aussie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6964\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.16news.com.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}