Querying the status of the Recommendation of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse the Victorian Government has accepted in principle, that is relevant to the outcomes our petition seeks, revealed the general lack of transparency and details available to the public, about the progress of all accepted recommendations. Earlier this week we discussed this with the Office of the Victorian Ombudsman, resulting in us making a complaint to the Department of Justice and Community Safety, which publish the Victorian Government Annual Reports - Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Here's the details of our complaint we made yesterday.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

$434.1 million of taxpayer money was invested into the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. For Victorians there exists no publicly available information and details, about the following.

• The Victorian State Government is keeping the commitments it made in 2018 to implement a significant number of recommendations.
• The Victorian State government budgets planned, allocated and spent, on the implementation of those recommendations.
• The implementation status of progress made or planned, including any accepted recommendations the Victorian State government have decided to no longer implement.
• The evaluation of what the Victorian State government has implemented to-date, that provides an indication of whether the outcomes and objectives specified in the Royal Commission recommendations, were achieved.

The Annual Reports do not detail how the reported actions planned and taken, and associated budgets, correlate to what the Victorian Government communicated in 2018:

• accepted 128 recommendations where all elements of the recommendation were supported,
• accepted in principle 165 recommendations where the Victorian Government supported the intent or merit of the recommendation but did not necessarily support the method for achieving the policy, 
• stated that Victoria would give further consideration to 24 recommendations where further analysis was required for the Victorian Government to determine its position, and
• noted 92 recommendations where responsibility for the recommendation did not sit with the Victorian Government.

There is no traceability between each individual recommendation accepted and under consideration by the Victorian government, and what's reported in the Annual Reports.

There is no information about which accepted recommendations are yet to be acted on and why, and the status of progress and implementation of accepted recommendations i.e., implemented in full, in progress, 25% complete etc., and the status of those under consideration.

There is also no information provided on whether the implementation of accepted recommendations have been evaluated against the objectives and outcomes sought, that are specified in the Royal Commission's recommendations.

This could be easily remedied by updating the Annual Reports released to-date with:

• Numbers the Royal Commission assigned to every recommendation, are referenced in the Annual Reports against actions taken and planned, in addition to referencing the Report Volume.
• Including the Table of the full Victorian Government Response to the Royal Commission 2018 in every Annual Report, with additional columns for information on status, budget/cost and how other actions planned or being taken (for example recommendations of the Victorian Royal Commission into Mental Health) impact the implementation of recommendations, and the results of the evaluation of the actions taken against outcomes and objectives sought.

This is the approach to traceability that the Australian Federal Government provide in all their Annual Reports on Implementation of recommendations, from the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.