Jess Hill

You know, it could be the thing that just tips public awareness of systems failure over to such an extent that the pressure on premiers to act effectively

and bringing civilian-led accountability for police and bringing, you know, much greater consistency and accountability across their court system to totally revolutionise the way that we do child protection in the country, to link the, you know, issue of child removal and child protection with youth justice.

I mean, there's a whole...

There's so many potentialities.

It could be the thing.

And I think, you know, we saw that with the Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

Did that fix institutional child sexual abuse?

No.

Did they enact all of the recommendations?

No.

But there's a before and after Australia.

when it comes to that Royal Commission.

Before that Royal Commission, we had really very little clue as a public about just the sheer level of institutional collusion with child sexual abusers and pedophiles through every institution from the Scouts to the Catholic Church.

That knowledge is now well established.

But not only that, we actually see in the child maltreatment study that the prevalence of institutional child sexual abuse dramatically drops within a generation after that raw commission.

So they can have seismic effects, but it's just very hard to know when you set out.

I would say that the Royal Commissions themselves haven't lost power.

It's more that the governments that would have made the changes they recommended have lost courage.

A Royal Commission is still one of the most powerful mechanisms we have to establish knowledge and seek accountability and also to really encourage

give people with lived experience of whatever that Royal Commission is investigating the chance to be heard.