Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

This is Stan's story. A couple of weeks after Brother Benton arrived at Christian Brothers orphanage in Victoria in 1953 he started raping 12-year-old Stan three times a week. That lasted more than two years. It took Stan 59 years to be able to talk about what happened to him. He told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse his story a few years ago. He did not tell the other boys at the orphanage what was happening to him but he found out afterwards that it was happening to them too. Two of them later committed suicide. There are thousands of stories like this. More than 24,000 people have already given oral or written evidence to the royal commission.

Yesterday was the first anniversary of Malcolm Turnbull becoming the Prime Minister of Australia. It was also the first anniversary of the release of the royal commission's interim report. That interim report recommended the establishment of a national redress scheme—a compensation scheme for people like Stan, funded by the governments and organisations that abused and neglected them. A year later we are still waiting for the Prime Minister to implement this important recommendation.

As many of you know, I am a patron of CLAN, so is Richard and so is the Prime Minister. It is set up to help people like Stan. Of all the disappointments I have with the first 12 months of this Prime Minister's service this is the biggest. He knows how important this is. Prime Minister, please implement the recommendations of the royal commission. (Time expired)

See this speech in context