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Royal Commissions: what do they do and how do they work?

Martin Cuddihy reported this story on Tuesday, November 13, 2012 12:15:00

ASHLEY HALL: In Australia, royal commissions have been called to investigate everything from police corruption to bushfires and Aboriginal deaths in custody.

They've led to changes in the law, the creation of new regulatory bodies, and even the jailing of a former Queensland police commissioner.

But how exactly do royal commissions work and what can they achieve?

Martin Cuddihy has some of the answers.

MARTIN CUDDIHY: Mick Dodson is the first Indigenous Australian to graduate from law.

He's a prominent advocate for his people, a former Australian of the Year and was counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody. He says enquiries like this one are hugely important.

MICK DODSON: We've got to deal with these things as a nation, we've got to confront them head on, we've got to allow the truth to come out, we've got to allow people to have their say, we've got to allow people to have officially their life experience validated and vindicated.

MARTIN CUDDIHY: Once the terms of reference have been set out it will be easier to explain how the Royal Commission will run. But traditionally, a commissioner or commissioners are named, before the counsel assisting is appointed - that's a lawyer with a team of assistants who helps run the inquiry.

Then the commission starts investigating. Police and other investigators are assigned to the inquiry. They often have the power to seize documents and search premises.

Their inquiries could take a year or more, and once the investigation is complete, public hearings start.

Mick Dodson again.

MICK DODSON: I think it's very traumatic for the people who are the subjects of abuse. It's painful for people to relive those memories and the commission just announced has to be aware of that, you've got to build support around people who are very, very vulnerable.

MARTIN CUDDIHY: Scott Prasser is a political analyst and the author of Royal Commissions and Public Inquiries in Australia.

SCOTT PRASSER: Now there's no doubt that things have got to be fixed, there's no doubt about that, but governments - given the power of royal commissions and the other issue about royal commissions - once they start, once they leave the station if you like, you don't sometimes quite know when they're going to stop, how long they may go on for.

I think everyone's got to sit down and have a think about exactly what they want. What's the outcome you want to get from this.

MARTIN CUDDIHY: He's warning against letting the enquiry turn into a witch-hunt.

SCOTT PRASSER: They can become media circuses and they can put a lot of innocent people sometimes, cause them a lot of problems. So that's one of the problems about the issue of royal commissions. They have immense powers, they're not courts of law, they take difference types of evidence, they listen to scuttlebutt and so on.

And there's increasing criticism of royal commissions, especially from the legal fraternity that they're not subject to legal review or not much legal review. And they've been an arm of executive government and sometimes get away with too much.

MARTIN CUDDIHY: Douglas Meagher QC is one of Australia's leading legal minds. He was admitted to the bar almost half a century ago, and was leading counsel at the Royal Commission into the Ships, Painters and Dockers Union.

DOUGLAS MEAGHER: I don't see how in this instance the Royal Commission is going to be much help. We have adequate laws against this sort of thing.

MARTIN CUDDIHY: He's believes a Royal Commission is doubling up on work that's already being done.

DOUGLAS MEAGHER: I'm not sure just what it's hoped to achieve. One thing it won't achieve, or it's very unlikely to achieve, is putting more of these criminals in jail, that is, more than what the police are presently doing.

So far as I can see they're doing a pretty good job of it.

MARTIN CUDDIHY: Why do you think that there won't be more prosecutions to come out of this?

DOUGLAS MEAGHER: Well the evidence you adduce in a royal commission will be no better than what the police could assemble.

MARTIN CUDDIHY: Mr Meagher do you think that a royal commission is the best way to inquire into this vice as you put it?

DOUGLAS MEAGHER: No I don't. I think it's better to just use normal law enforcement agencies.

MARTIN CUDDIHY: Once a commission's investigations have finished and the hearings have wound up, the commissioner prepares recommendations.

Mick Dodson believes this is one of the most important elements of any enquiry.

MICK DODSON: The reason that these inquiries make recommendations is in order to stop the problem recurring, stop the abuse from recurring. Now we're not going to eliminate the abuse altogether, but we can minimise it if we follow these recommendations.

People spend years sometimes in these inquiries, working out what went wrong, why it went wrong, and how to fix it, otherwise if you don't embrace these things, if government in particular doesn't embrace these recommendations and implement them to their letter and in the spirit of them, the problem is going to persist.

ASHLEY HALL: Professor Mick Dodson ending that report by Martin Cuddihy.


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