The Department of Injustice

In February 2013 the Director of Prisons filed a 9-page complaint to the Tasmanian Integrity Commission. This was tabled in Parliament on 23 May 2013.

Mr Barry Greenberry made a number of serious claims calling into question the conduct of Department of Justice officials and highlighting an insular, conflict-riven culture within Risdon prison’s management.

Within weeks Mr Greenberry’s complaint was ‘assessed’ and without any reason given was summarily ‘dismissed’.

By late March 2013 Mr Greenberry had resigned after having been offered a $260,000 settlement deal with built-in confidentiality provisions.

In Parliament on 21 May 2013 Minister for Corrections Nick McKim declared, ‘They are incredibly serious allegations’.

Barry Greenberry told the Integrity Commission, ‘I was selected for a five year contract as Prisons Director, and both my partner (name redacted) and I gave up work to settle here in Tasmania which we both really enjoy.’

After a debate on 23 May on a motion of no-confidence in the Corrections Minister, and following intense questioning through Budget Estimates hearings in early June 2013, Mr Greenberry sent an email to Mr McKim on 5 June, 2013 in which he declared, ‘Your assertion in the House that all my serious complaints had been dismissed by the Integrity Commission are false. They did not investigate the matter of me being asked to supply incomplete budget figures from the government. This, in my view, has deliberately misled people to think that all the allegations I have made were dismissed, when in fact the Integrity Commission told me there were remaining matters for the relevant department (the Department of Justice) to manage. To date, I am completely unaware, despite Simon Overland’s written assurances that they would be investigated, whether any such action has taken place.’ … ‘The confidentiality clause which the Department insisted on me signing has effectively prevented me from commenting … whilst you have used parliamentary privilege in a way that has disadvantaged me …’

Diane Merryfull, the Executive Officer of the Integrity Commission (excerpts from Budget Estimates, June 2013) said, ‘We try to reserve our investigations to systemic or more serious matters … we are getting more complaints from people inside the Public Service. Information about misconduct is much more held inside the Public Sector than outside the Public Sector. Now we are getting more complaints coming from – I guess you might call them, whistleblowers – inside the Public Sector and they are complaints of substance, so they require a lot more work.’

The acknowledged ‘incredibly serious allegations’ made by a senior corrections professional specifically selected to run Tasmania’s Risdon Prison [b]should have been[/b] the core business of Tasmania’s new anti-corruption watchdog; maladministration; mismanagement and malfeasance.

Diane Merryfull, commenting on Greenberry’s complaint, declared ‘I am not going to talk about a particular case, sorry.’

Mr Greenberry in his formal complaint to the Integrity Commission claims he was undermined, bullied, intimidated, offered inducements, and side-lined. Finally his health was affected, and he wrote, ‘Both my own doctor and the department’s [DoJ] doctor have confirmed that I am unwell as a result of trying to manage the toxic relationships at work…’. Mr Greenberry received workers’ compensation and he was sent packing back to UK with a settlement based on a Workers Compensation payment and yet his deed of settlement states Mr Greenberry resigned for ‘personal & family reasons’.

He declared, ‘If this is the way Public Service operates in Tasmania then I want nothing to do with it’.

In negotiating the final wording of the reasons for his resignation, Mr Greenberry wrote, “I would still like to keep ‘personal and family’ as this actually represents the truth and covers all the reasons, although if you need one word, please use ‘family reasons’.”

The Department of Justice, the Integrity Commission and the Corrections Minister are all unwilling to explain why Mr Greenberry’s serious allegations of misconduct levelled at the State were not thoroughly investigated. The Public Accounts Committee of the Tasmanian Parliament has now agreed to investigate the Greenberry resignation.

For a highly credentialed senior prison professional to make such detailed claims that were never tested by any independent authority is astonishing – and why, if the Department of Justice felt Mr Greenberry’s allegations were baseless, did the Department of Justice settle the matter for over a quarter of a million dollars?

(A pdf copy of Mr Greenberry’s Integrity Commission Complaint as tabled in the House of Assembly on 23 May 2013 is available on request.)