Greens minister Emma Davidson, speaking at a press conference at the Legislative Assembly

The Canberra Times

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00:00 career authorities.

00:01 - Mr. Braddock, the same question to you.

00:03 - Sorry, just before, Ms. Davidson,

00:05 you say when we brought that matter

00:07 to Mr. Rattenbury's attention,

00:09 does that mean your office was aware

00:10 of this information before Mr. Rattenbury's office?

00:14 - The staff member who brought the information

00:18 to the organisation's attention

00:22 had brought it to the organisation through me

00:26 and we then passed that information on

00:29 to a senior member of staff to ensure

00:31 that the proper process was conducted.

00:34 - Are you happy in that case,

00:35 the way that you handled this in hindsight?

00:38 - It takes a lot of courage for someone

00:41 to bring information of this nature

00:44 to a person in a position of authority

00:47 and I support and commend the staff member

00:52 who did that for their trust in the organisation

00:58 to make sure that the right actions were taken

01:02 and that is in fact what we did.

01:05 - Should you have acted sooner, do you think?

01:06 Should you have gone directly to police

01:08 with these allegations as soon as they

01:11 came to your attention?

01:12 - In order to be able to make referrals

01:15 to other authorities, we needed to better understand

01:18 the nature of the information

01:19 that had come to our attention.

01:21 When it first came to my attention,

01:24 I was receiving information a few steps removed

01:28 from the 17 year olds that we're talking about

01:31 and so we needed to actually gather some more information

01:35 in order to be able to take those steps.

01:37 - To clarify, how soon before it went

01:39 to Mr. Rattenbury's office did it come

01:40 to your office, this information?

01:42 - On the Monday before.

01:45 - So a whole week?

01:46 - Yes, that's correct.

01:48 - Minister, if I may, it's known that beyond

01:53 a professional relationship with Jonathan Davis,

01:56 that you two are also friends.

01:59 What sort of impact has, I guess, these allegations

02:02 had on, I suppose, the Greens team

02:04 and perhaps yourself, if you are willing to comment?

02:07 - Yeah, I came into this place to do work

02:11 on progressive policy and ensuring that

02:14 we have better services for our community,

02:16 particularly around health and social services

02:18 and I am continuing to do that work

02:20 and I am committed to continuing to do that work.

02:24 I also think it is very important for the community

02:27 to know that when something like this happens,

02:31 the kind of information that we're talking about

02:34 can be very difficult for people to process

02:40 and very difficult for people to talk about.

02:43 It takes great courage for people to ask for help

02:45 when they need it, but there are support services

02:48 here in Canberra that are ready to help people

02:50 right now if they feel that they need help

02:52 and I would encourage anyone who's feeling like that to reach out to those services.

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