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

Over recent decades, my home town of Ballarat has been changed for the better by the courage of survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. These survivors have stood up, made their voices heard and are making our community a safer, more welcoming and more honest place. For too long our community was marked by trauma endured in silence, leaving a bitter legacy that touched the entire community. Ballarat does have a long, dark history when it comes to child sexual abuse. For too long that history and that legacy were ignored. Crimes were allowed to continue to go unpunished, to be only whispered about and to impact across generations. Ballarat survivors stood up and they've changed that. They made their voices heard, they pressed for the royal commission, they bravely told their stories and they made our community and our nation a safer place for all of our children.

The National Redress Scheme, recommended by the royal commission, was designed to give back to these survivors, to support those who've lived through so much, to recognise their suffering and to provide assistance so that they can live their lives. But, 31 months since the scheme commenced, the majority of survivors are still waiting. Survivors have waited so long and have been through so much. We made a commitment to deliver redress that was timely, redress that would not retraumatise and redress that did not leave survivors missing out, but, instead of delivering on these promises, too many are waiting. Many are ill, many are dying and many have missed out altogether. Survivors cannot be left waiting any longer. It is time for us to get the redress scheme to deliver on its promise for survivors.

The royal commission estimated some 60,000 survivors would be eligible for redress, but, as at 15 January 2021, the scheme has finalised just 4,660 applications, including 4,620 payments totalling approximately $385.2 million. In June we knew that there were 512 applications on hold, waiting on institutions to join the scheme. At the current rate, it would take 32 years for the estimated 60,000 people eligible for redress to receive a payment. These delays are inflicting further trauma. The anxiety many survivors are experiencing at the possibility of missing out altogether due to their age or illness is also a further form of trauma.

When I speak to survivors I'm told again and again that the scheme is difficult to navigate, inadequate and doesn't properly recognise the impact that abuse has had on their lives. For one survivor, it took 17 months to finalise their application. At estimates in October, the department advised that the average processing time was between 12 and 13 months. The awful truth is that, over time, some will get sicker, their conditions will worsen and some will die. These are people that our society owes an enormous debt, but, instead of delivering on the promises we all made in this place, we are hurting them again and denying them the recognition that they need.

In order to deliver and to support more, Labor backed the changes made by the government at the end of last year to sanction charitable organisations that refused to join the scheme within six months of an application for redress being made. This was an important change and one that could have been made a bit sooner. But more changes are needed to deliver on the promise of the royal commission, a promise which meant so much to so many.

To that end, Labor has introduced a series of amendments to address the longstanding structural and emerging issues with the National Redress Scheme. We call on the government to look at those seriously and to join with us. We are ready to work constructively with you to get the scheme working and delivering for survivors. This is not a partisan political issue; this is a matter that all of us should be engaged in and wanting to get right. I'll go through a few of those.

Of course, there is again the issue of the payment caps. The $150,000 cap on payments is pushing people into civil processes and away from and outside the scheme. It's undermining the fundamental purpose of the scheme, which is to make it easier and quicker for survivors to access payments and support. Redress payments are also being significantly reduced because of prior payments. The joint select committee heard an instance in which a payment was reduced from $50,000 to $20,000 all because the survivor was awarded a payment of $15,000 years prior. As well, there have been reports about prior payments to stolen generation survivors—a separate issue from institutional child sexual abuse—being used to reduce redress payments. That is cruel and it undermines the important work of the royal commission.

To that end, Labor's amendments seek to lift the cap on redress payments from $150,000 to $200,000, as was recommended by the royal commission. Labor's amendments will also ensure that prior payments are not indexed when calculating a redress payment and that prior payments that do not relate to institutional child sexual abuse are not deducted from the redress payments—for example, those payments made to members of the stolen generation.

The redress assessment matrix has also been widely criticised. As the joint committee found, the existing assessment matrix arbitrarily links the amount of redress awarded to the physical type of abuse perpetrated. It fails to recognise the lifelong harm that any sexual abuse has on a survivor. Currently payments in recognition of the impact of abuse are limited to a maximum of $5,000 for exposure abuse, $10,000 for contact abuse and $20,000 for penetrative abuse, no matter what the impact of that abuse was on the survivor. We hear from survivors about the impact abuse has had on their lives—on their relationships, on their children and generations even beyond that, on family, on work, on confidence, on mental health and on reaching their potential. This is not something that can very easily be slotted into a $5,000, $10,000 or $20,000 category on the basis of the type of abuse that was suffered.

The committee has also criticised payments for the recognition of extreme circumstances of sexual abuse, saying of grave concern is the decision to limit the payment of exceptional circumstances to only penetrative abuse. This approach fails to acknowledge the harm caused by sexual abuse overall. If we have learnt anything from Australian of the Year Grace Tame it is that the coercive control, manipulation and psychological abuse that goes alongside often the grooming of young people and children as part of sexual abuse cause extraordinary lifelong harm. It is those harms that people need to focus on when we're actually looking at the Redress Scheme, not the type of abuse someone suffered.

The royal commission recommended that payments for the impact of abuse be calculated separately from payments for the nature of the abuse. The current assessment framework is a noted departure from the original recommendations of the royal commission. Labor's amendments seek changes to the redress assessment framework to properly recognise the impact of abuse when calculating redress payments, in line with what was recommended by the royal commission.

Amendments are also needed to ensure payments reflect that ongoing support is needed for survivors, not simply one-off payments. The approach in the Redress Scheme has been a very legal approach. It has not actually been a health approach, which is in fact what the royal commission recommended. The royal commission stated that many survivors will need counselling and psychological care from time to time throughout their lives. To that end Labor's amendments will ensure that the necessary ongoing psychological counselling and support will be provided to survivors. We are concerned that in many cases people are being provided again a lump sum as little as $1,250 to cover all future counselling and psychological care. That amount will leave too many survivors behind coping on their own and again does not recognise the long-term structural nature of the harm that this abuse has caused to survivors.

Also leaving behind many survivors is the fact that many applications are in limbo because institutions that are the subject of applications are now defunct or have no present-day links to entities. In other cases, applications for redress cannot be progressed because the institution itself does not have the financial ability to meet obligations under the scheme. Where there are no linked institutions that can take responsibility, governments need to step up and provide a guarantee that they will act as funders of last resort. No-one should miss out on access to the Redress Scheme because the institution responsible for their abuse has folded or simply cannot afford to pay.

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