Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has been proceeding with its important work since 2013. The Australian people are rightly horrified by what it has revealed. While the commission will continue until the end of next year, it has already made its final recommendations on a national redress scheme for survivors of abuse which it delivered to the government last August. I am proud that Labor in government established this royal commission, and I am proud that last year we announced that, were we returned to government, we would implement its recommendations for redress. This is right. It is just. It is overdue. Unfortunately, the position of the current government on this matter is not so clear.

The government has not made clear whether it is committed to a single, national scheme. It has not announced when the scheme will begin, what its financial contribution will be nor what forms of redress will be made available to survivors. This is, frankly, not good enough. Survivors of child sexual abuse deserve justice, and the government must explain how this will be achieved. As a matter of simple respect to the royal commissioners who have taken the trouble to report early on their final report on redress so that the federal government could take action, this government must now do something.

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