Review of public servants’ conduct

On the 2 June 2020, the Deputy Coroner released the Findings of Inquest into the death of Mason Jet Lee .

The inquest found that the handling of Mason’s case was a failure by employees of the (then) Department of Communities, Child Safety, and Disability Services to comply with their statutory obligations, manuals, policies and procedures.

On the 3 June, the Director-General, Department of Premier and Cabinet instructed the then Public Service Commission (PSC) to conduct an independent review to:

• look closely at the conduct of the public servants involved
• review the previous ethical standard investigation
• advise whether there are any grounds for further disciplinary action for those public servants involved.

The Review of public servant’s conduct (PDF, 905.2 KB) provides the results of the independent review, providing three recommendations that have been accepted by government for action:

• Recommendation 1 – The department delegates authority to the PSC to commence a disciplinary process against Manager 1 for the failures noted in the coroner’s report and the Ethical Standards Unit investigation.
• Recommendation 2 – The department delegates authority to the PSC to conduct an investigation into the management decision making chain to determine whether disciplinary action should be taken against responsible officers for their role in the management of resourcing and workloads of the Caboolture Child Safety Service Centre.
• Recommendation 3 – To improve the department’s practice with respect to discipline under the Public Service Act 2008 , the department be required to seek independent expert advice from Crown Law on all disciplinary processes for the next two years, subject to periodic review by the PSC.

The Implementation summary: Review of public servants' conduct (PDF, 395.8 KB), provides high-level details of the review, summary of findings, considerations, outcomes of subsequent investigations, and timeline of activity.