The 'raw unfairness' driving WA Ombudsman Bevan Warner as the people's advocate

When Bevan Warner stepped into the role of Western Australia's Ombudsman in May 2025, he inherited an office still reeling from scandal — and a workforce with morale at rock bottom. But the newly appointed people's advocate says a moment decades earlier, standing in a remote Kimberley community beside a broken water system, is what has always driven his sense of purpose.

Taking over a troubled office

Warner's appointment came in the wake of one of the most damaging episodes in the WA Ombudsman's history. His predecessor, Chris Field, resigned in 2024 after the Corruption and Crime Commission released a scathing report finding he had engaged in serious misconduct by failing to seek ministerial approval for extensive international travel in 2022 and 2023 — trips connected to his role leading the International Ombudsman Institute during the final stretch of a 17-year tenure.

The episode dragged the normally low-profile office into an uncomfortable public spotlight, and Warner acknowledges the damage was real. "Morale was very low," he said. He is keen to signal a change in culture and direction, noting the international travel question has since been settled with clear boundaries. "I can't independently travel out of the country without the approval of the premier," he said, adding he has no current plans to do so. "I think the focus of the role should squarely be on WA."

In the 12 months since taking the role, Warner and his team have visited 16 different regions across the state. His first trip was to the East Kimberley — a deliberate signal, he suggests, about where his priorities lie.

A winding road to the Ombudsman's office

Warner's path to the role was anything but straight. Born and raised in Western Australia, he enrolled at UWA to study philosophy, Latin and politics — and lasted about six weeks before quitting to go surfing for a year. He returned to university to study commerce, which he describes as fashionable at the time, but managed to talk himself out of finishing that degree too.

"I self-sabotaged after a couple of years. I did two and a half years and I realised that if I completed the degree, I'd probably end up an accountant," he said.

A need for income led him to an entry-level clerk position in the public service — his first window into how government decisions are made. But it was a posting in his early 30s to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs that changed everything.

"I went to a remote community in the West Kimberley, and the water supply and the septic system was built in a floodplain, and the community was being blamed for children having skin diseases," he said. The infrastructure had been designed by technical specialists and jointly funded and implemented by federal and state governments — yet the community bore the blame for the resulting health problems.

"It got me thinking about the raw unfairness of it all," Warner said. "An Aboriginal community was being criticised through no fault of their own because of decision-making between both levels of government that was also then rolled up as waste and mismanagement."

That experience crystallised a question that still defines his work: "If government for the people, by the people, is meant to deliver benefit to ordinary citizens, why in this instance were the citizens… being blamed for the failures of government organisations?"

The power — and purpose — of the people's advocate

After the Kimberley, Warner went on to work for WA Legal Aid, then spent a decade running Victoria Legal Aid, followed by a stint leading a community housing provider, before returning west to take the Ombudsman post.

The office he now leads carries significant investigative powers — including the same powers as a Royal Commission to compel agencies to produce documents. It most commonly acts on individual complaints about government departments, but those complaints can trigger systemic change. Warner points to a recent case in which a hospital patient complained about lost valuables and a refusal to reimburse them. When his office examined the complaint, it uncovered broader problems with administrative procedures across the health system, ultimately leading to major changes in how hospitals manage patients' personal belongings.

For Warner, that kind of outcome — where one person's experience exposes a failure affecting many — is exactly what the office exists to achieve. With trust in the institution needing to be rebuilt and 16 regional visits already under his belt, he appears determined to demonstrate that the people's advocate is squarely focused on the people.