Mike's Minute: After the Abuse in Care report, the next stage has to go well

The hopeful part in this Royal Commission into Abuse in Care seems to be that everyone who can now do something about it starts on the same page. 

There seems universal agreement we have a national disgrace, it never should have happened and redress is needed as fast as possible. 

It hopefully means, for now anyway, that those who have told their stories know they have been heard and are believed.

What happens next is the bit that could go well. Or not. 

As the Prime Minister and Erica Stanford, the minister tasked with leading this, gave their initial responses, early signs were that agendas were already at play. 

A number of questions were asked about gangs. Some members of gangs are the victims of the abuse in the report. 

The other questions were around potential legal action. How that is handled will be critical. 

The report deals to events up until 1999 that, comparatively speaking, is the very recent past and there are those still working in Government departments that were allegedly involved in the abuse, or in the Lake Alice case, torture. 

The legal system isn't well acquainted with the sort of charges that might come out of that, not to mention the level of detail involved in criminal investigations and the complexities around a case in 1959 and its evidence and witnesses vs 1999 almost two generations later. 

Where it could get ugly around gangs, and the Prime Minister tried to walk the line, was the suggestion that this Government in their gang crackdown might have misread why we have gangs. That gangs are an outworking of abuse and therefore the hardline approach might be brutish. 

We could put it this way - not all victims became gang members, not all victims turned to crime and not all victims went on to terrorise communities, pedal drugs and cause mayhem. 

So although what happened to these people cannot be excused in any way, neither can your background be excused for gangs and illegal activity. 

But that’s not going to stop the narrative and the politics of all this. 

Yesterday was a decent and honourable day because it was driven by acceptance and intent. 

What the Government does, how they do it and to what extent they do it is the far more tricky journey and that has just begun. 

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