Tasmania’s Implementation Monitor Robert Benjamin AM KC has published his first Annual Report 2024-25.
Entitled ‘Who is looking after me? Child safety reform monitoring and oversight’, the report theme follows on from the Final Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Tasmanian Government’s Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings (COI), entitled ‘Who was looking after me?’
It also provides a companion document, tracking the status of each individual recommendation relevant to Mr Benjamin’s role.
A former Commissioner of the COI, Mr Benjamin was appointed to this new oversight role (COI Recommendation 22.1) in December 2024.
Governed by special legislation (the Child Safety Reform Implementation Monitor Act 2024) it is independent from Government and comes with extensive powers.
Mr Benjamin has been appointed to a five-year term to independently monitor, evaluate and publicly report on the progress of the 191 COI recommendations committed to by Government in 2023, as well as on recommendations from other child safety inquiries in Tasmania.
These include:
- In-scope recommendations of the national Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2017)
- The Independent Inquiry into the Department of Education’s Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2021)
- The Independent Child Safe Governance review of the Launceston General Hospital and Human Resources (2022)
- The Weiss Independent Review into Paul Reynolds (2024)
“With the release of my first Annual Report today, we set an unprecedented baseline of the status of child safety recommendations in Tasmania,” said Mr Benjamin.
“While the data in this first Report is reported by Government agencies, it allows a crucial starting point from which to measure against, evaluate and report on in future years.”
Mr Benjamin said he was aware public expectation for meaningful change was immense, and paid tribute to victim-survivors, their advocates and those with lived experience of child sexual abuse.
“The impact of child sexual abuse is profound and long-lasting, and it is children who must be at the centre of reform efforts,” he said.
“We must show those who have bravely shared their stories that it has not been in vain. This is a whole of system change and to rebuild trust in the system, we must be so careful to get it right.”
Mr Benjamin said as well as holding Government to account, his work by necessity was collaborative and it would also be important to shine a light on the good work being done to progress reforms.
The Office of the Implementation Monitor has met with many people to help develop the Report, including victim-survivors and advocates, children and young people, the community sector and Government agencies.
The OIM is also developing a framework to guide future in-depth monitoring and evaluation, focused on outcomes.
The Implementation Monitor Annual Report 2024-25 can be found on the OIM website.
It is due to be tabled in the Tasmanian Parliament on Tuesday 4 November 2025. Mr Benjamin will appear before the Commission of Inquiry Recommendations Scrutiny Committee (Joint Sessional Committee) on the day prior.