Former Anglican Diocese of Grafton registrar and Clarence Valley councillor Patrick Comben AO has been deposed from Holy Orders. The decision, dated Wednesday, 16 September, ends a process that began in July 2023, and extends back decades.
Bishop of Grafton Dr Murray Harvey accepted a recommendation from the diocese’s Professional Standards Board. Mr Comben, a former minister in the Goss Labor Government in Queensland, was Registrar and General Manager of the Grafton diocese from 2004 to 2010. He sat on Clarence Valley Council from 2008 to 2012.
In his notice of decision, Bishop Harvey said the Board’s report contained convincing evidence of inappropriate and unreasonable conduct and omission by Mr Comben. It covered five separate matters.
They involved the diocese’s response to claims and to serious allegations of sexual and other abuse of children, including allegations against clergy.
“The Diocese of Grafton is especially mindful of the survivors of historical abuse who brought these matters to our attention, and who have waited a long time for this to be resolved,” said Bishop Harvey, according to the independent news site The Other Cheek.
The Board also found Mr Comben had taken on some duties meant for the Director of Professional Standards. Bishop Harvey stated that this put him in a position of conflict. The Board concluded he showed no insight into the failings in his conduct.
The Board heard the matter on 10 and 11 December 2025. Mr Comben attended with legal representation and gave evidence under oath. He later sought a review, arguing there had been a breach of natural justice, that required procedures were not followed, and that the decision was so devoid of justification that no reasonable Board would have made it.
Carol Webster SC, who was appointed on the recommendation of the President of the NSW Bar Association, dismissed the application. Bishop Harvey received her decision on Monday, 14 September, so the Board’s recommendation stands.
“Any failure by a deacon or priest to report abuse when they become aware of it, breaches the standards of the Church and must call into question their fitness for office,” said Bishop Harvey, as reported by Anglican Ink.
Under the decision, Mr Comben may not act as a priest or deacon of the Anglican Church. He is to be treated as a lay person. The decision will be recorded on the National Register of the Anglican Church of Australia.
Mr Comben’s conduct was also examined by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
Its case study three looked at the diocese’s response to abuse claims linked to the North Coast Children’s Home in Lismore. The commission heard evidence of frequent sexual, psychological and physical abuse at the home between 1940 and 1985.
Former resident Tommy Campion first wrote to the Grafton and Sydney dioceses about his abuse in 2005. In 2006, more than 40 former residents, led by Mr Campion, began a group claim.
In its October 2014 report, the commission found the diocese took a legalistic approach at the expense of pastoral care, denied financial compensation for some victims, failed to follow its own policies and dealt with victims insensitively. It also found that settlement negotiations in December 2006 were conducted in a hostile manner.
“We are satisfied that Bishop Slater, Bishop-in-Council and Reverend Comben adopted a legalistic and ‘hard line’ approach to the group claim,” the commission’s report stated.
The report also found that, from 2004, Mr Comben knew a priest had been convicted of sexual offences against a child, but did not start disciplinary proceedings against him.
It stated that Mr Comben could not explain why he did not refer all allegations of criminal conduct to police. ABC News reported that counsel assisting Simeon Beckett asked Mr Comben why he did not give police the serious allegations he held.
“I have no idea,” said Mr Comben, as reported by ABC News.
The report notes that Mr Comben signed letters relinquishing Holy Orders during the hearing. In July 2015, the diocese removed him from Holy Orders on the recommendation of an independent professional standards board. Brisbane Times reported that the diocese said at the time there was no avenue of appeal under church law.
That changed after the Anglican Church of Australia’s Appellate Tribunal found the diocese’s board had no jurisdiction over former Grafton bishop Keith Slater. The diocese then told Mr Comben his deposition was null and void. He was returned to Holy Orders in 2017.
Mr Campion said he had pushed for action on both occasions.
“Because I hounded the church, Comben was defrocked in 2015, but because of a glitch in the system in 2017, he was reinstated, and it was myself, not the church, who had to act again to push the Anglican Church to do so again,” Mr Campion wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday, 17 September.
The Royal Commission looked at how many churches, not only the Anglican Church, handled abuse complaints. Cardinal George Pell, who was Archbishop of Melbourne and later Sydney, gave evidence to the commission in 2014 and 2016. In 2020, the commission found he knew of clergy child sexual abuse in Ballarat by at least 1982.
It also found he failed to act on complaints about clergy in Melbourne in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Cardinal Pell always disputed those findings. The High Court quashed his separate convictions on 7 April 2020. He died on 10 January 2023, aged 81.
The Diocese of Grafton has said it remains committed to hearing survivors, supporting their healing and strengthening safeguards for children and vulnerable people.
For Mr Campion, the decision follows two decades of campaigning.
“It has taken an immense amount of personal courage, resilience, and unyielding persistence for me to spend two decades fighting institutional inertia, especially when the entities involved seem more focused on self-preservation and protecting assets than protecting human lives,” Mr Campion said.
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