The New South Wales government will support all 19 recommendations from a landmark inquiry into historical gay hate crimes. It investigated unsolved deaths across four decades exposing investigative shortcomings and systemic problems with evidence and record keeping. The state government says victims and their families were "fundamentally failed" and it can never happen again.
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00:00This inquiry held a series of hearings over 18 months, and it explored an extremely dark
00:06and painful time in Sydney's history.
00:09It was looking at the period of 1970 to 2010, and many of the witnesses at those hearings
00:14gave evidence about the homophobia, transphobia and prejudice that existed at that time not
00:20only in society generally, but in the New South Wales police force.
00:24Now the inquiry closely examined 34 deaths, many of them were described as lonely and
00:29terrifying, and it found that there was reason to suspect LGBT bias was a factor in 21 cases,
00:36and that it was a factor in four of the cases.
00:39In December, the Commissioner Justice John Sackar gave his final report, and he made
00:4319 recommendations, including that fresh inquests should be held for four of the cases.
00:49Now the New South Wales government has issued its formal response, and it's going to support
00:54all of the 19 recommendations.
00:56The state government here says that this inquiry will be remembered as a crucial step
01:01in coming to terms with the role that the New South Wales government played in these
01:05many tragedies.
01:07Penny Sharp, who is a senior government minister, said in previous decades New South Wales government
01:12institutions set a standard that not only stood by inequality and injustice, but fostered
01:18and at times participated in it.
01:20She also said, we fundamentally failed the victims of these hate crimes and their families,
01:25and we can never let that occur again.
01:28The recommendations also included a review of all unsolved homicides in the decades within
01:33the inquiry's scope, as well as monitoring DNA databases for any matches that might come
01:38up between the database and the evidence that the inquiry established.
01:43In February this year, the Police Commissioner in New South Wales, Karen Webb, issued an
01:47apology to the families of hate crime victims, and she acknowledged that there had been missed
01:52opportunities for investigations in the past.