Senator Joyce writes for the Canberra Times:
‘That’s outrageous” the feigned emotive cry that echoes around the chamber. ”Shame” is another quintessential superlative.
I have never seen anyone buckle under these taunts. So I am going to combine the two and say it was an outrageous shame that one of the final acts of former Senator Steve Fielding was combining with the Greens and the Labor Party to block a motion by Nick Xenophon which would have allowed an Aboriginal lady to speak publicly about the events surrounding her rape, when she was only 14, at the John Oxley Youth Detention Centre in 1988.
Another chance to give the person her day of some sorts in a public examination of her plight has been removed. She wants the issue ventilated. She has received $120,000 by the Queensland Government as some sort of compensation but is that where justice stops? What about the perpetrators, what about the evidence that was destroyed? An inquiry would have allowed her to speak under parliamentary privilege.
The paradox is that there is a general belief in the community that the Greens would be the first party to vote for an inquiry which would allow a rape victim to have her case more thoroughly investigated.
But the Greens, Fielding and Labor voted as a block so that the vote was tied with Nationals and Liberals supporting Xenophon’s motion.
Unfortunately a tied vote is a lost vote in the Senate.
What discussions did Labor, the Greens and Fielding have to give reason to and co-ordinate this cover-up? A senate inquiry would assist to put this matter to the test of examination and such bring a form of transparency that has been severely lacking on this matter.
The media has been scared by those who have good reason to keep this under wraps by claiming that it’s just a conspiracy theory. Well if it is, then an inquiry would be the best way to dispense with this illusion. If that was the case then I suppose the supporters of this inquiry would look foolish. I would be very much at ease to be proved wrong in my suspicions and would happily accept the derision as the boil would be lanced.
In the absence of an inquiry there will be no resolution so we are not going to relent on the pursuit of this issue. The Greens and Labor have not solved their problem by not allowing this lady her inquiry, they have merely delayed the outcome and increased the serious question marks that are held as to their motivation.
We know the evidence pertaining to the rape at the John Oxley Youth Detention Centre was shredded by the Queensland Government.
We know that those involved in the pursuit of justice on this matter, such as Kevin Lindeberg, have had to deal with afflictions such as family breakdowns, yet they have never relented after years of having their character and motivations besmirched by both politicians and at times the media.
The only defence that is put up against the more thorough ventilation of this issue is that of technicalities of process.
The events themselves are not in dispute. In 1988, a group of juveniles raped a 14-year-old girl at the John Oxley Youth Detention Centre while two supervisors watched. No one has been brought to account for their actions in this affair, neither the perpetrators nor those whose duty it was to oversee and protect the young girl.
No one denies that information pertaining to this rape was shredded. No one denies that in the final week of the previous Senate a vote, to more properly deal with this issue and to give this victim some process of justice was organised so that an inquiry would not be conducted.
Labor, the Greens and others have to understand that an issue that is still alive so long after 1988 is not going to go away and the more that transparency is denied the more that questions will be asked about why.
A very bad taste is left from this cover-up and disparaging statements about this type of conduct in other nations now also rests with us.
Barnaby is right.
This is arguably the most disgraceful abuse of our system of governance ever seen in this country (my words).
Former Senator Fielding, and the Labor and Greens Senators all, should be rounded up and purged from our Parliament.
And IMO … jailed.
It seems that the last remaining shreds of moral integrity in our so-called “house of review“, reside with Senator’s Xenophon and Joyce.
Don’t forget to read Barnaby’s “outraged” press release on this –
Barnaby Is Right 
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