PRIESTS and clergymen who refuse to break the seal of the confessional and name admitted paedophiles at the abuse royal commission face being jailed for six months.
Cardinal George Pell pledged this week that confession, even if a priest admitted to being a paedophile, was “inviolable”.
However the sweeping powers of a royal commission into the cover-up of child sexual abuse will compel priests to answer questions.
Constitutional lawyer George Williams said yesterday he expected clergymen to face jail rather than divulge what had been confessed to them.
“Royal commissions have the discretion to go behind the confessional if need be to compel evidence of what occurred in the confessional box,” he said.
“You would need to think very carefully (about using the power). You would probably find priests willing to go to jail, which would be a consequence.”
The Royal Commission Act overrides the Commonwealth Evidence Act, which allows priests and members of the clergy of any church to keep confessions confidential.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard yesterday said it was a “sin of omission” to not act when a child was at risk.Opposition Leader Tony Abbott also said priests should tell police when they knew a child was being sexually abused.
“Everyone has to obey the law, regardless of what job they are doing, what position they hold,” he said.Attorney-General Nicola Roxon yesterday told the ABC the seal of confessional when used to guard information about child abuse was “abhorrent”.
“Child sex abuse is a crime, it should be reported, and I know that the royal commission is going to have some very complex issues to deal with,” she said.
Meanwhile, Premier Barry O’Farrell, a Catholic, was criticised yesterday for saying he “struggled to understand, that if a priest confesses to another priest that he’s been involved in paedophile activities that that information should not be brought to police”.
Until August, the state government had the power to charge priests who refused to give up colleagues who admitted in confessionals to be paedophiles.
However, state Attorney-General Greg Smith, a devout Catholic, passed on that authority to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Mr O’Farrell’s spokesman said yesterday the government would not be taking back that power because the DPP was independent of government and therefore the appropriate body to make the decision.
NSW Opposition Leader John Robertson said Mr O’Farrell should have known priests could be forced to reveal the details of confessionals.
“If (the Premier) was serious about it, he would use the laws,” he said. “He should have known this when he stood up.”
Vast amounts of methane appear to be leaking undetected from Australia’s biggest coal seam gas field, according to world-first research that undercuts claims by the gas industry.
Testing inside the Tara gas field, near Condamine on Queensland’s Western Downs, found some greenhouse gas levels over three times higher than nearby districts, according to the study by researchers at Southern Cross University.
The study has potential national consequences because last week’s energy white paper forecast a massive expansion of Australian coal seam gas drilling, and called for environmental objections to be removed to make large-scale gas extraction easier
Methane, carbon dioxide and other gases appear to be leaking up through the soil and bubbling up through rivers at an astonishing rate, the researchers said.
“The concentrations here are higher than any measured in gas fields anywhere else that I can think of, including in Russia,” said Damien Maher, a biochemist who helped conduct the tests. “The extent of these enriched concentrations is significant.”
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The study has potential national consequences because last week’s energy white paper forecast a massive expansion of Australian coal seam gas drilling, and called for environmental objections to be removed to make large-scale gas extraction easier. In NSW, the Planning Assessment Commission is currently considering a proposal by AGL to drill 66 new coal seam gas wells in western Sydney.
The Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, the leading industry, attacked the research, saying it was “premature and questionable”.
The coal seam gas industry has previously maintained that gas leakage in Australia is “negligible”, and the default assumption has been that about 0.12 per cent of gas leaks out of wells during production. Uncontrolled leaks up through rock fissures and soil, of the type measured by the Southern Cross University team, were assumed to be nil, and are unaccounted for under the federal emissions trading scheme.
The researchers drove back and forth on public roads through the gas fields at Tara, taking measurements every second via a cavity ring down spectrometer – the only instrument of its type in Australia. It enabled them to take thousands of real-time readings of several gases in the air, and accurately pinpoint them with a global positioning system.
“Everything we’re finding shows that something major is happening and we need to look deeper into the problem,” said Isaac Santos, a senior lecturer in biochemistry at Southern Cross University, who worked on the study with Dr Maher.
“I think what it shows is we have to go through all gas fields, and potential gas fields, and take measurements, so we have baseline data to work from.”
Inside the gas field, methane was measured at up to 6.89 parts per million, compared to an average background level outside the gas field of about two parts per million.
Carbon dioxide levels inside the gas field were measured at up 541 parts per million, compared to 423 parts per million outside.
The team also took samples of airborne methane from major wetlands and high-density cattle operations near Casino in northern NSW, using the same equipment.
“The concentrations are higher at Tara than at any of these other potential sources,” Dr Santos said.
The federal government is currently reassessing its methodology for measuring greenhouse gas leakage from coal seam gas fields, and the researchers have sent a submission to the government asking it to take their work into account.
“These results provide strong evidence for significant, but still unquantified, greenhouse gas emissions in the Tara region,” the submission says. “Our results demonstrate the need for baseline studies before the development of gas fields. We suspect that depressurisation (fracking, groundwater pumping) of the coal seams during gas extraction changes the soil structure (i.e., cracks, fissures) that enhance the release of greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide.”
The findings were welcomed by opponents of large-scale coal seam gas drilling, including the Lock The Gate group which wants a moratorium on drilling until comprehensive tests are done.
“This study has massive implications for accounting for Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions since methane is a very potent greenhouse gas,” said the group’s president, Drew Hutton. “It also means the CSG industry would need to pay much higher carbon tax than is currently predicted.”
The Greens said a national, independent study was needed to accurately measure gas leaks.
“The gas industry has been hiding behind its claim to be better for the climate than coal for years, and the government has just accepted those claims despite the Greens, farmers and scientists providing evidence that they are deceptive,” said the Greens leader, Senator Christine Milne.
“It makes no sense to develop a new fossil fuel industry at the end of the fossil fuel age, particularly when it is compromising food growing land and contaminating aquifers.”
The Tara gas field operation is owned by BG Group, a British multinational gas and oil company. It directed questions to the industry body APPEA.
“Incomplete research from Southern Cross University academics this week lacks the basics of scientific rigour,” APPEA’s chief operating officer for the eastern region, Rck Wilkinson, said in a statement. “What is presented as research is in reality a funding submission.
“The claim that large-scale fugitive gas emissions are a result of coal seam gas production, before they even do their research, seems to indicate a bias against coal seam gas,” Mr Wilkinson said.
“This does them no credit and it diminishes the good work by many other scientists in an age where scientific endeavour has been wearied by community scepticism.”
The researchers have submitted two papers on their findings, which have been seen by Fairfax, and the papers are currently undergoing a peer-review process prior to publication.
NASA and British Antarctic Survey scientists have reported the first direct evidence that marked changes to Antarctic sea ice drift caused by changing winds are responsible for observed increases in Antarctic sea ice cover in the past two decades. The results help explain why, unlike the dramatic sea ice losses being reported in the Arctic, Antarctic sea ice cover has increased under the effects of climate change.
Global climate models abound. What is harder to pin down, is how a warmer global temperature might affect any specific region on Earth. Researchers have now made the global local. Using a combination of climate models, they predict how different greenhouse gas scenarios would change the face of Greenland and impact sea level rise.
The Moral of Sandy Project Syndicate Consider sea–level rise, which caused by far the most damage in New York. Models show that the world’s most ambitious climate policy, the EU’s “20-20-20” plan, will have a net cost of roughly $250 billion a year for the rest of the century, or about … See all stories on this topic »
The royal commission into child sex abuse is likely to consider whether Catholic priests should be forced to tell police about crimes against children told to them in the confessional.
There are growing calls for priests to be subject to the same mandatory reporting rules that other professions are, despite church rules that the confessional should remain secret.
Federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon says the idea that priests are not required to go to the police with information about child abuse is “abhorrent”.
“Child sex abuse is a crime, it should be reported, and I know that the royal commission is going to have some very complex issues to deal with,” Ms Roxon told ABC News 24.
“But I think we can’t afford to say that that should not be on the table, because clearly that is a concern.”
Australia’s most senior Catholic, Sydney Archbishop George Pell, yesterday said the seal of confession was “inviolable”, a position that has put him at odds with some senior MPs who are part of the church.
New South Wales Premier Barry O’Farrell, who is a Catholic, says he cannot fathom why priests should not be required to pass on evidence of child abuse to police.
“I think the law of the land when it comes to particularly mandatory reporting around issues to do with children should apply to everyone equally,” Mr O’Farrell told AM.
“How can you possibly, by the continuation of this practice, potentially continue to give… a free pass to people who’ve engaged in the most heinous of acts?”
Federal Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne, who is also a Catholic, believes criminal law should take priority over church rules when it comes to child abuse.
“If a priest hears in a confessional a crime, especially a crime against a minor, the priest has the responsibility in my view to report that to the appropriate authorities,” Mr Pyne told ABC News.
“In this case the police, because the church nor the priests should be above the law.”
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has backed the idea, saying there are already various legal requirements on people if they become aware of sexual offences against children.
“The law is no respecter of persons – everyone has to obey the law, regardless of what job they’re doing, regardless of what position they hold,” Mr Abbott told reporters in Brisbane.
Asked if that included priests as well, Mr Abbott replied: “Indeed.”
Each state and territory has its own mandatory reporting requirements, with the South Australian rules specifically excluding disclosures made in the confessional.
Ms Roxon has begun consulting with her state counterparts about the scope and scale of the royal commission, but says it is already clear that more than one commissioner will be required to do the work.
The inquiry is likely to begin early next year, and Ms Roxon is warning it will take years, not months to finish the investigation.
But she says people should not view it as a substitute for police action, and is urging people with evidence of child sex abuse to go to the authorities.
“Individual matters still need to be dealt with first and foremost by the police,” she said.
“Part of the complexity in dealing with the terms of reference is to make sure that the focus, as the Prime Minister has said, is institutional and systematic and working out ways to protect children better in the future and make sure that our institutions don’t fail them.
“But we also need some sort of outlet for individuals who want to be able to tell their story and make sure that the commissioners are aware what happened with them.”
The Prime Minister announced the royal commission on Monday, in the wake of explosive allegations from a New South Wales police investigator who accused the church of covering up evidence in relation to paedophile priests.
The inquiry will cover the treatment of children in all institutions – not just the Catholic Church, which has been facing particular scrutiny.
“We’re asking the royal commission to look at what went wrong in particular institutions,” Ms Roxon said.
“This isn’t an inquiry just about the Catholic Church but it obviously will include them.
“Ultimately I think the thing that’s important is to pick commissioners with high standing and appropriate experience and let them do the job that the Government and the community is asking them to do, which is sifting through what any sorts of barriers, institutional or systematic were there, that when children who had already been treated appallingly raised matters they were then let down as well by other adults.”
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