Approval of the Napthine government’s move to ensure the Auditor-General’s independence came today from Liberty Victoria.

Liberty President Jane Dixon SC said it was vital for the proper oversight of government to keep this office as independent as possible.

The State Services Authority had the power to investigate the Auditor-General.  The authority is being replaced by a Public Sector Commission, which will be stripped of such a power.

Public confidence in the legal system is threatened by jamming people into jail while hiding a study of the State’s prison population, Liberty Victoria said today.

 Liberty President Jane Dixon SC echoed the warning by the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service that the crisis in prisons presents a perfect storm. “It is dangerous to Victorian prisoners and dangerous to the community,” she said.

“The newly announced Coalition’s proposal to never allow over thirty thousand stranded asylum seekers settle in Australia, plumbs new depths of cruelty. It is a policy that will cause severe psychological harm. It extinguishes all hope and re-traumatises people who have already been traumatised many times over – in the repression they suffered in their previous homelands, their perilous escapes, and their impoverished limbo status in Australia.”