Royal Commission Research Articles

Ordinary People and the 1979 Royal Commission on the NHS.

In June 1979, the Royal Commission on the National Health Service published its report. Chaired by Sir Alec Merrison, the Commission covered England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In 1976, the Royal Commission published and broadcast calls, asking the public to put forward their views on the NHS. In response, they received around 2,460 written evidence submissions, held fifty-eight oral evidence sessions, and met with about 2,800 individuals. In soliciting evidence, the Commission called on people to comment on their experience of the health service, submit that experience as evidence, and contribute suggestions for the NHS's improvement. These submissions of evidence, mostly in the form of letters written to Merrison, are rich and revealing sources. While NHS staff, trade unionists, and professional organizations were invited to contribute their perspectives, patients and other non-clinical members of the British public also penned letters. In this article, I use the evidence submitted by self-proclaimed 'ordinary' people to contribute to emerging discussions about post-war British citizenship, and its intimate or quotidian relationship to the welfare state. I use these submissions as evidence for popular anxieties in the 1970s, and to explore the various ways that British citizens experienced and engaged with the NHS; investigate how they felt about its services; and consider the affective and political function of complaint.

Informal entrepôts: witness testimony about slave ship arribadas to Santo Domingo and San Juan in the 1620s

ABSTRACT In 1627 and 1628, Francisco de Prada carried out a royal commission to investigate illicit arrivals of slaving voyages to Santo Domingo and San Juan over the previous five years. The witness testimony he gathered during the course of his investigation reveals that—even though Cartagena and Veracruz had become the primary official destinations for enslaved Africans transported to Spanish America—these ports remained closely connected to Portuguese African territories and to regional trade circuits due to periodic emergency entries by slaving vessels using them as alternate entry points to the Spanish Caribbean. While Prada's records obscure the human stories of thousands of enslaved Africans taken to Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, they contain a variety of valuable insights into informal slaving routes and practices in a multinational Caribbean prior to the end of the Portuguese asiento period in 1640.

Special Issue of RAPIDD The Royal Commission and People with Intellectual Disabilities

"Special Issue of RAPIDD The Royal Commission and People with Intellectual Disabilities." Research and Practice in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2

Prevalence and Associated Predictors of Hypertension in Adult Patients with Thyroid Nodules at the Royal Commission Hospital, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Hypertension and thyroid nodules (TNs) are common medical problems that are increasing in prevalence globally. Hence, we conducted this study to assess the prevalence and associated predictors of hypertension in adult patients with TNs at the Royal Commission Hospital, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). A retrospective study was conducted between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2021. Patients with documented TNs based on the Thyroid Imaging Reporting and Data System (TI-RADS) were recruited to assess the prevalence and associated risk factors for hypertension. Three hundred ninety-one patients with TNs were recruited for this study. The median (interquartile range, IQR) age was 46.00 (20.0) years, and 332 (84.9%) of the patients were females. The median (IQR) body mass index (BMI) was 30.26 (7.71) kg/m2. There was a high prevalence of hypertension (22.5%) in adult patients with TNs. In the univariate analysis, there were significant associations between diagnosed hypertension in patients with TNs and age, sex, diabetes mellitus (DM), bronchial asthma, triiodothyronine (FT3), total cholesterol and high-density lipoprotein (HDL). In the multivariate analysis, age (OR = 1.076 [95% CI 1.048 - 1.105]), sex (OR = 2.28 [95% CI 1.132 - 4.591]), DM (OR = 0.316 [95% CI 0.175 - 0.573]) and total cholesterol levels (OR = 0.820 [95% CI 0.694 - 0.969]) were significantly associated with hypertension. There is a high prevalence of hypertension in patients with TNs. Age, female sex, DM and elevated total cholesterol are significant predictors of hypertension in adult patients with TNs.

Epidemics in Fiji’s history: Stories of Power, Resistance and Contradiction

This paper is a historical review of known epidemics that have afflicted Fijians since European contact in the late 1700s, with particular attention to the devastations caused by the measles epidemic of 1875 and the influenza pandemic in 1918. The impact of these outbreaks is documented in numerous archival sources, including government records, the ‘Proceedings of the Council of Chiefs, the Colonial Secretary’s Office (CSO) files, the Fiji Times, and a report of the Royal Commission to investigate ‘the decrease of the native population’ (1896). The paper argues that despite changing historical contexts and epidemiological circumstances, official responses to disease in Fiji were underscored by assumptions of European superiority and power that ignored how non-Europeans viewed Western medicine with suspicion and colonial rules as contradictory.

Funeral Insurance - A New Life after the Hayne Royal Commission

Funeral Insurance - A New Life after the Hayne Royal Commission

Funeral Insurance - A New Life after the Hayne Royal Commission

Funeral Insurance - A New Life after the Hayne Royal Commission

Applying the Rule of Law in Automated Decision Systems through Rules as Code (AustLII’s Submission to the Robodebt Royal Commission)

Applying the Rule of Law in Automated Decision Systems through Rules as Code (AustLII’s Submission to the Robodebt Royal Commission)

Across Time and Jurisdictions: AustLII's Australian Royal Commissions Library

Across Time and Jurisdictions: AustLII's Australian Royal Commissions Library

A Brief History of Reconciliation in Canada

This article provides a roadmap of the process of reconciliation in Canada, beginning with the first articulation of the word in Canadian law, and carrying on through to the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, the Oka Crisis, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and finally, Prime Minister’s promise to fulfill the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 “Calls to Action”. The author argues that in order for reconciliation to be realized, the governments of Canada will need to recognize and affirm local Indigenous education laws, as it pertains to their right to govern themselves in accordance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Reconceptualizing Stigmas in Aged Care: A Typology of Stigmatizing Discourses in the Aged-Care Context.

Stigmatizing discourses surrounding aged care is complex. The stigma associated with people working in aged care is often conflated with negative evaluations about older adults who receive care and/or the institutions and systems that provide these services. This lack of nuance hampers productive dialogue in gerontology required for making sense of the stigmas attached to entities and systems. We propose that an interdisciplinary approach drawing on gerontology, psychology, and linguistics would facilitate a greater understanding of the stigma of aged care. Specifically, a discourse approach underpinned by Stigma Theory and Systemic Functional Linguistics can clarify the different stigmatizing discourses associated with aged-care entities and systems, and inform priorities for interventions targeting each discourse category identified. APPRAISAL, a linguistics framework, was employed to analyze evaluative language in 660 submissions published in the Australian Royal Commission into Aged Care. Through applying predefined language-based criteria, we distinguished between multiple stigmatizing discourses that were interrelated but conceptually distinct in terms of attitude types and targets. Twelve categories of stigmatizing discourses derived from the linguistic analysis established a typology. This typology conceptualized different ways stigma can be meaningfully understood in the aged-care context. By employing this typology, 12 intervention priorities were also identified. This interdisciplinary approach enabled us to examine the diversity and complexity of the social construction of stigma in the public domain. We argue that understanding these linguistic patterns can assist with designing targeted aged-care interventions and policies.

Psychiatry is the flagship of personalized and precision medicine: proposing an epistemic horizon to biological psychiatry

“Perhaps the history of errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow…but error is endlessly diversified.” — Benjamin Franklin, from the Report of the Royal Commission to Investigate Animal Magnetism ,

Child Sexual Abuse, Alcohol and Other Drug use and the Criminal Justice System: The Meanings of Trauma in Survivor Narratives for a National Royal Commission.

Adverse childhood experiences, including childhood sexual abuse, have significant immediate and lifelong effects including higher risks of alcohol and other drug use and contact with the criminal justice system. The concept of trauma to describe adverse experiences and later behaviours provides potential to reshape prevention and responses for victims. We draw on survivor accounts to a national enquiry, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, to examine the ways in which trauma is narrated in adverse childhood experiences, alcohol and other drug use and contact with the criminal justice system, and how trauma is interpreted by others in the context of policy and legal findings. These accounts showed damaging and unjust experiences of childhood, which were compounded by subsequent contact with the criminal justice system. Trauma seems to be important to both the experienced narrated by survivors and the synthesising of these experiences into narratives. National enquiries play important roles in listening to survivors and advocating for reform. There is a risk, however, that they will fail to result in substantive change, and function primarily as a forum for bearing witness to trauma, but not preventing it.

“The Old Colonial Power Can Stand Proxy”: The Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia and the Politics of the 1980s

When Justice James “Diamond Jim” McClelland took to London to “tip […] buckets” on the British establishment for their role in the nuclear tests in Australia, the judge secured his place in history as the defender of independent Australian nationalism. The Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia (1984–85) thus reinforced a narrative of Australian victimhood at the hands of an overzealous British establishment, largely obfuscating Australian colonial complicity. Through its specific terms of reference, the Commission ignored contemporary debates surrounding uranium and land rights policies in an effort to alleviate some of Australia's “colonial cringe”, the weight of which was becoming unbearable in the lead‐up to the Bicentenary. This article undertakes a deeper examination of the Royal Commission to tease out some of the historical motives behind the politics of the inquiry, demonstrating that the Commission served a greater political purpose than merely seeking justice for nuclear damages.

Where Is the Evidence in Evidence-Based Law Reform?

Law reform bodies frequently express a commitment to evidence-based law and policy recommendations. They also endorse the importance of the transparency and democratisation of their processes. They do not, however, connect these two goals of evidence-based policy and transparency. This stands in contrast to the ongoing revolution in several fields of research towards open science and synthesis, which envisions transparency and openness as a means to improve the reliability of research. We suggest herein that several recent concerns surrounding evidence-based law reform, such as allegations of bias among officials, can be addressed through open science and synthesis. We include a novel study of 22 research syntheses commissioned by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, finding uneven adoption of even the most basic transparency measures. We end with five proposals that advance transparent evidence-based law reform, including greater disciplinary diversity among law reform staff.

Feudalism and Indigenous Sovereignty: The Batman Treaty and James Brooke’s Sarawak Regime

Legal reasoning about British sovereignty over its colonies drew on an idea in British law: that a subject was in a feudal relationship of obligation to the British sovereign. When British subjects made land tenure arrangements with native authorities beyond Britain, they were understood to be entering into a feudal relationship with a foreign sovereign – a potentially treasonous action. This article compares British responses to John Batman’s 1835 feoffment with the Kulin in Port Phillip and the 1855 Royal Commission into James Brooke’s feudal agreement with the Sultan of Brunei. The British government understood Batman’s agreement with the Kulin to have placed Batman as a subject of the Kulin. In comparison the Commission did not censure Brooke. The difference between the two cases was in Britain’s conception of its interests in each region. Brooke’s deal did not threaten British interests, but Batman’s deal with the Kulin undermined colonial sovereignty.

A Critique of the Theory of Comparative Propensity

The law of propensity evidence is in a state of flux in Australia as various State jurisdictions decide on their responses to recommendations of the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Controversy persists about the probative value of such evidence, not limited to child sexual assault cases. An influential theory in this area is the theory of comparative propensity, advocated by Professor Hamer, and approved in a qualified way by the Royal Commission. The theory employs a mathematical model based on Bayes’ equation to estimate the probative value of such evidence. This article critiques the theory and concludes that it does not reflect the real world factors that impact the probative value of such evidence.

Australian older persons mental health inpatient and ambulatory services in 2015-2020 - A descriptive analysis and commentary.

To provide a commentary on Australian state/territory older persons mental health service (OPMHS) expenditure, inpatient and outpatient services and key performance indicators (KPIs). Descriptive analysis of data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the World Health Organisation. Between 2015-16 and 2019-20, annual expenditure on OPMHS in Australia increased by an average of only 2.3%, compared to 2.9% for all population groups, despite an increase in the number of over 65 year olds. Per capita recurrent expenditure on OPMHS decreased by an average of 1% annually. Australia's total mental health beds increased, whereas OPMHS beds decreased, mainly due to a reduction in non-acute beds. Outcomes for OPMHS admissions were similar to other age groups, except for a longer length of stay and reduced readmission rate. Older Australians accessed ambulatory mental health care at a lower rate and had a lower rate of improvement after a completed episode. OPMHS expenditure has not increased at commensurate levels compared to other populations. The mental health of people aged over 65 appears to be a neglected policy priority in Australia. The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety may herald service and expenditure changes.

Review: Religious Confession and Evidential Privilege in the 21st Century, edited by Mark Hill QC and A. Keith Thompson

This book of essays investigates legislative and judicial trends toward abrogating the confidentiality of religious confession in Australia, Europe, and the United States. The larger issues, of course, are freedom of conscience and the limits the state may try to impose upon religious groups, most particularly in cases of child abuse. The three essays in Part I criticize the recommendations of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which advised states to remove legal protections for confessions made within a religious setting. Part II considers examples from Europe, where, given the establishment of religion, canon law was part of state codes. Confessional privilege there was largely sacrosanct until the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Part III examines the situation in the United States. Clergy sexual misconduct has driven state legislatures to remove confessional protections, and led to a general decline of religious freedom in that nation.Of particular interest to readers of Nova Religio may be the final essay in the book, which argues that the Church of Scientology has a legitimate claim of confidentiality to shield communications between parishioners and ministers. Since Scientology auditors perform the traditional role of ministers, learning private and personal information in the process of aiding self-realization or problem-solving, auditing meets all the requirements for constitutional protection.The contributors to this volume all view the erosion of confessional privilege as an attack on the free exercise of religion. The editors decry the West’s “growing disinterest in freedom of conscience and religion” and point to its neglect of “Uighur Muslims in China, Rohinga Muslims in Myanmar, Bahais in Iran, Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia and Christians in general in Iraq” (15). Readers interested in issues of religion and law and the protection of religious rights will want to read this book.

Preventing and responding to harm: Restorative and responsive mental health regulation in Victoria

AbstractMental health systems are built on imperfect foundations. Rather than reflect the “dark old days” of psychiatry, mental health systems, still, commit wide‐spread breaches of mental health and human rights laws. During such time, mental health regulators have failed to adequately enforce mental health laws and respond to harms in ways that are transparent and include the community. The Victorian mental health system, with the Mental Health Complaints Commissioner as the principal regulator, provides a case‐in‐point. Following a Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System, the state government will dissolve the current regulator and establish a new Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission, with enhanced powers. This paper argues that this new regulator should adopt a more conscious implementation of restorative justice and responsive regulation, termed here restorative and responsive regulation. Of particular value is the use of restorative practices such as conferences and an augmenting of sentencing circles within a broader responsive regulatory framework.