And he's done us a great service in settling Heiner.   It's not just the accurate record, it's Carmody's method, his distillation of evidence to findings of fact and his logic that provide a "how to" manual for other complex, old and opaque enquiries the community will need to deal with shortly. 

The Heiner matter had all the ingredients for self-propogating conspiracy theory - in particular the centrality of the destruction of documents.   If the documents aren't there to read any more, it's hard to prove or disprove what was in them.   Carmody's method was exhaustive in this regard - I'll show you how he did it later in this column.  

Many people, Kevin Lindeberg in particular, have tirelesly driven a push for further and better enquiries into the Heiner affair.   Carmody dealt head-on and in a respectful way with each of the claims and submissions made by Mr Lindebergh and others.   I hope Kevin can find peace and satisfaction after all these years.

Commissioner Carmody has referred the persons who made the Cabinet decision to destroy the documents to the DPP for a final decision on prosecution.   I understand the current Attorney General in Queensland is making his own reference to the DPP on Mr Carmody's report and recommendations.   

Here is the very early statement in Carmody's report that colours all else in the Heiner story.   Get this right in your mind and the rest will flow.   Carmody makes this Issue 1, and he delivers it with a forceful assertion with unusual emphasis and number of adjectives .  It's important to understand this point - I know many of you will say it's nonsense, Carmody's wrong.   Well, the simple question is this - was there any allegation or evidence of child sexual abuse in Heiner's material?   The answer, the finding of fact is no.  Carmody expands on how he arrives at that finding later and so will I.  

So the material that was destroyed by the Goss cabinet did not include allegations or evidence of child sexual abuse.

Here's the lesson for all of us.    The contention that the Heiner material did include sexual abuse evidence was so strong and certain that lots of people just repeated it.   I did.   I was wrong.

Carmody points out these letters from Kevin Lindebergh in his various calls for enquiries and the dismissal of governments.   It's easy to see the story develop and get "stronger" over time.   I'll bet Kevin truly believes in what he's written, we're all capable of that.  

Kevin Lindebergh wrote to the Queensland Governor in February, 2003, calling for the Governor to dismiss the Executive Government unless it agreed to appoint a "Special Prosecutor" to investigate what he called the Heiner Affair.   Mt Lindbergh asserted that prior to the destruction of the documents by the Goss Government, it had in its possession and control known evidence of the abuse of children going to the offence of criminal paedophilia.

In a previous letter to the Governor in May 2002, Mr Lindeberg claimed the destruction of the material was a cover-up in the offence of rape and paedophilia against a 14 year old aboriginal girl at the centre.

In 1999 Mr Lindeberg had written that "the knowledge of suspected child abuse was at the centre of the Heiner enquiry and the abuse was reasonably believed to have been carried out by Crown employees.'

But in September, 1994 Mr Lindeberg wrote that the destruction of the documents "occurred in order to obstruct Mr Coyne's (the former centre manager) known course of justice in court proceedings" (that action had to do with grievances over his treatment and the statements made by his employees to Heiner.

There are parallels with some of the AWU scandal assertions, particularly about the Boulder widows and orphans fund, the death benefit money and its treatment.   Sounds compelling - didn't quite happen.

So, with the documents destroyed, how can Commissioner Carmody be so sure about what was in them?  He notes that Mr Heiner and two others have passed away and he notes that the evidentiary base will be thus incomplete.   I don't think Mr Carmody needs to apologise too much.  Listen to what he did.

 

 

About 100 people worked at the John Oxley Centre between 13 November, 1989 and January, 1990.

 

Mr Carmody found them. Of the 100, 72 people gave evidence to the Carmody Commission to say that they were not interviewed and did not speak to or give any statements to Noel Heiner in his investigation. 

27 people said that they were intervied or gave a statement to Heiner.   Each of them was brought before the Carmody Commission to give evidence under oath.  The summaries of what each person said are in the final report.   No one recalled reporting sexual abuse claims.

Much is made of the claim that the Goss Cabinet has admitted knowing that sexual abuse allegations were destroyed in the Heiner material.   Carmody ran that to ground too.

 

 

It is relevant to consider what Ms Warner , the Minister who brought the matter of the Heiner investigation to the attention of the new Cabinet, knew about the nature of the material she recommended should be destroyed.   Ms Warner did not look at the material at any stage.  She understood that Mr Heiner had gathered what she called testimony from staff.   She understod from speaking with Ms Matchett that it  involved "low level comments" made about staffing matters.   It was only at the time of the Forde enquiry in 1999 that she first became aware of media reports asserting a connection between Mr Heiner's investigation and child sexual abuse.Another member of Cabinet, Mr Pat Comben, said in 1999 that ‘In broad terms we [Cabinet] were all made aware that there was material about child abuse’.

 

 

That was not Ms Warner’s understanding and she stated that she contacted Mr Comben about what he had said and asked him what heknew that she did not. She said that Mr Comben replied ‘Nothing’.

 

 

Mr Comben testified that Ms Warner contacted him after he made the statement, which had been broadcast on television, and asked him what it was he had been referring to and what it was that he knew. He said that he told Mr Warner that he knew nothing. MrComben testified that he did not know why he asserted that ‘we’ know something. He said only he knew things and he erred inasserting that Cabinet had knowledge of what he knew. He had never looked in the box which contained the material Mr Heiner had gathered. He had never even seen the box. He said that he had no specific knowledge about any matters involving child abuse. Over some period of time he had receivedn complaints at his electoral office about things that had allegedly occurred at the Sir Leslie Wilson Youth Centre, he had received complaints from homeless youths who were detained at the John Oxley Youth Centre and had received ‘low grade scuttlebutt’ from some staff about children being inappropriately treated or inappropriately punished. He said that it was information of this nature which he had in mind when he referred to ‘child abuse’ in the statement broadcast in 1999.

 

 

In October 1999 Mr Lindeberg had asserted that ‘knowledge of suspected child abuse’ was at the ‘centre of the Heiner Inquiry’ that ‘supporting evidence of child abuse’ was ‘known to be contained in the Heiner documents’ and that such abuse was reasonably suspected of having been inflicted by ‘Crown employees’..

Finally Carmody and his team found the only known surviving people who had read the Heiner material.

 

The only people still alive who claim to have examined the material Mr Heiner had gathered are Ms Lesley McGregor and Ms Kate McGuckin. Ms McGregor was the State Archivist. Ms McGuckin was an officer who was employed at the State Archives. On 23 February 1990 they examined the material Mr Heiner had gathered. It consisted of various cassette tapes, computer discs and a number of typed transcripts. Both said that, insofar as they could determine, the transcripts concerned complaints about the actions of management by the staff at the centre.  Ms McGuckin thought that if therehad been anything in there about child abuse or similar then it would ‘have stood out,I’m sure’

 

 

And that's no real surprise, because that was Heiner's terms of reference (also reproduced in Carmody's report).   Heiner was enquiring into complaints about management style.

The outlandish claims and reactions to decisions in the course of the Heiner history have their roots in false assumptions and repetition.   Blind repetition.   A mix of truth, half truth, wishful thinking and dogged repetition until the "mantras" became unshakable fact, articles of faith to the people - me included - who repeat them.

When I was on the radio on 4BC I saw the public interest in the Heiner matter, it would light the switchboard up.   I saw who else was "on board" with the story.   People I admired and whose judgement I normally trusted. I got on board too.   I would preface statements about the destruction of the Heiner report documents with the false premise that those douments and files contained statements and evidence about the sexual mistreatment of children.   Wrong.

It's most unsettling that a new Goss government destroyed the arguably flawed Heiner documents and files.   That the cabinet did it is not in dispute.   But Kevin Rudd's role in that was minimal and he's not named in The Honourable Tim Carmody QC's report.

Read Commissioner Carmody's report.   The treatment of that little girl was just awful.   But none of that was written down by the late Noel Heiner.   And you can't destroy what doesn't exist.