Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I was speaking in relation to the National Redress Scheme and the very important amendments that the member for Barton has moved to try and actually get the scheme to live up to the promise that every member of this House made to survivors of institutional child sex abuse—that we would actually put in place the scheme that the royal commission recommended. I stated—in relation, particularly, to the issue of funders of last resort—that Labor's amendments will seek to ensure that governments act as funders of last resort where people would otherwise miss out because institutions are defunct or do not have the capacity to join the scheme. Equally, we think it's really important that there be the capacity for early payment under the scheme.

Finally, Labor's amendments are calling on the government to establish an advance payment scheme for people who are elderly or ill. As I said in my contribution previously, we've had instances of the scheme taking at least 12 months—in one case, 17 months—just to resolve an application, and many of these applicants are incredibly unwell and are incredibly distressed, and becoming increasingly so as they age, and the notion of an advance payment could be similar to a scheme that's currently being used in Scotland, which has been well received by survivors over there.

Given the decades and years that many survivors have waited for a chance at redress and justice, it is vital that people don't die waiting. People deserve to see that the institutions that have done them so much harm are held to account. They deserve to know that eventually they were believed, they are seen, they were taken seriously and the institutions that allowed this abuse to occur—and to be perpetrated not only once or twice but to continue, often for years and years—actually do acknowledge the harm that has been done.

Of course, changes have been made to this scheme before. Labor supports the changes the government made to charities law last year to prevent organisations getting government grants and removing charitable and tax deductibility status if they refuse to join the scheme within six months of an application being received. However, these changes will not guarantee that people will get access if an institution remains recalcitrant and refuses to join, or if they deliberately restructure their affairs to avoid the obligation to join and to hide assets. In these rare cases, we are calling on the government to consider placing a levy on such institutions, in order to cover the cost of redress and to collect funds from these institutions through the tax system if needed.

Survivors should not miss out on the opportunity to get redress because an institution refuses to take responsibility or does all it can to avoid taking responsibility. This National Redress Scheme is about assisting those who were done enormous harm, who had their trust violated and who've been forced for most of their lives to live with their trauma in silence. It has done enormous damage, and it has done enormous damage to people who live in my community and in the communities that many of us represent.

The scheme has the potential to do much good, but too many are being left waiting or being left with too little. I urge the government to support Labor's very sensible amendments. They are amendments that all members of this place should support, because they deliver on the promises that every one of us made, here in this House, to the survivors of institutional child sexual abuse: that we heard them, we believed them, we understood how deep the harm was to each and every one of them and to their families, and that they deserved, through redress, to have an opportunity—a small opportunity, at that—to actually live out the rest of their lives in the knowledge that that acknowledgement had been made, and with some small financial assistance to try and help them through what has been a life of great loss: lost opportunities to get educated, to get a career, to work in business—to actually live the lives that so many of us have.

So, with that, I ask the government to support Labor's amendments. And I again call on the government to listen to the survivors, at the very least.

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