The Glenn inquiry

Phil Kitchin at Dom Post reports:

The future of Sir Owen Glenn’s $2 million inquiry into family violence is on a knife edge after three more staff resigned, and world-leading experts it recruited expressed deep concerns about its future.

The trumpeted inquiry – set up last year with Sir Owen’s promise of $80m to fight family violence – was already reeling from the resignations of its two senior managers and three of its four chairpersons.

Yesterday, three contracted experts in the domestic violence and child abuse sector resigned.

Deborah Mackenzie, Deanne Littlejohn and Alex Port, who have more than 30 years’ collective experience, said they had lost confidence in the inquiry.

They held serious concerns for the safety of information from people interviewed so far, as the inquiry was no longer being led by experts in family violence.

They also lost confidence in its integrity when it announced it would take a “corporate” approach.

“Corporate values revolve around ideas of profit, shutting out the competition and self-interest. Those values are not aligned with social justice,” Ms Mackenzie said.

I don’t know what exactly led to the fallout, but I think we get some idea from the comment above.

If one of the experts has a view that corporate values are evil, and it is all about social justice, I can only imagine where the inquiry was heading. I suspect they had already decided child abuse is a result of capitalism and colonialism, and that all you need to do to stop child abuse is tax rich pricks more and give more money to beneficiaries.

The motivations of Mr Glenn are excellent, and the fact he is offering $80 million of his own money to help fight child abuse is hugely commendable. My hopes from the inquiry, if it continues, is it will produce something worthwhile.