Watchdog turns into lapdog
27.02.2009

COMMENT
THE Mabuiag Island rape scandal is just another example of how impotent Queensland's Crime and Misconduct Commission has become.
The organisation, which costs taxpayers $40 million a year, handed the case of the nurse raped in quarters provided by the Health Department -- and the Health Department's response -- back to the Health Department to investigate. It does the same with most complaints, including those about police using a Taser gun on a 16-year-old girl being held down on the ground, which were handed back to the police.
We have been waiting four years -- and still are -- for the result of the CMC inquiry, given over to the police, into the investigation of the death of Cameron Doomadgee at the Palm Island watchhouse.
Former premier Peter Beattie watered down the powers of the CMC, formerly the CJC, so much that the organisation is now an expensive ornament serving no real purpose.
The Opposition claims the CMC has gone from watchdog to lapdog. That is difficult to reject, given the overwhelming evidence. The CMC should be abolished, as this latest case clearly shows.
For a rape investigation to be given back to an inept department to investigate itself is an insult to the intelligence of all citizens, and another slap in the face to the attacked nurse. The Health Department did not provide safe accommodation on Mabuiag Island, despite having been warned for four years that the situation was critical. It then treated her with disdain when she was so dreadfully assaulted.
Now, a year later, the officer on Thursday Island is stood down. That should have happened the morning after The Australian reported the matter a year ago.
Yet again, the Health Department has shown it is not capable of running its own affairs, and the Queensland Government has yet again relied on the wimpy CMC to get it off the hook.
It is to be hoped that parents who have daughters working in remote parts of Queensland as nurses, teachers, police or in other public service positions note how the Bligh Government values their children, and give it appropriate consideration when casting their vote on March 21.
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