Prominent Senate Committee Inquiries
One of the most high-profile Senate committee inquiries was the Senate Select Committee on a Certain Maritime Incident, which in 2002 investigated what became known as the Children Overboard Affair. The events and subsequent Senate committee inquiries were widely reported, and the transcripts of the inquiry formed the basis of a play, A Certain Maritime Incident. Other high-profile inquiries included the Community Affairs committee's inquiry into Children in Institutional Care, which brought to wide public notice the experiences of children who had been placed in care in sometimes inhumane circumstances and was directly responsible for state governments and churches making public apologies to the victims of abuse or neglect; the Select Committee on Mental Health, which contributed to widespread discussion of mental health issues and to a major funding boost for services in 2006; and the 2006 inquiry into the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill, which contributed to a government decision not to proceed with controversial migration legislation.
Read more about this topic: Australian Senate Committees, The Impact of Senate Committees
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