Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the members for Newcastle, Barton and Jagajaga for their contributions to this debate thus far—and I'm sure the member for Oxley will make just as important a contribution. The reason I wanted to speak on this motion on the national apology to survivors and victims of institutional child sexual abuse is that when I first arrived in this place the whips put me on the Joint Parliamentary Committee for Corporations and Financial Services. Obviously the whips foresaw that I would be trouble! For anyone who is suffering from insomnia, I encourage you to tune into that committee from time to time! At the time, the chair of that committee was Steve Irons, who was and still is a member from Western Australia. Steve Irons is, without doubt, one of the great people of this parliament. His sincerity, humility and willingness to act in the interests of others, the interests of the institution and his community, above himself remind me a lot of what the priests, when I was at school, used to tell me we should do if we are to be good people. Mr Irons's story—Steve's story—is well known to many in this place. His brother committed suicide because he couldn't deal with the trauma he had been through. Steve's story of having to bury his own brother is an extraordinarily powerful one, so I've always been inspired by Steve.

I also want to recognise Julia Gillard and Nicola Roxon in this respect. As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker Freelander, I am not a great fan of royal commissions. I think the legal fraternity in this country has a lot to be ashamed of, quite frankly. They are not the best people at examining and providing care and compassion. However, the royal commission into institutional abuse—the response to child sexual abuse that was initiated by Prime Minister Gillard—is I think one of the most important royal commissions we've had in this nation, not because it behaved like a royal commission but because it didn't behave like a royal commission. It became very much a commission that wanted to hear the stories of those people who had suffered at the hands of those who had been entrusted to protect them. That in itself provided a bridge from the past to the future. So I think it is incredibly important that this parliament recognises the brave decisions made by others that have led us to this moment.

It was three years ago that then Prime Minister Turnbull stood in front of the parliament and apologised, with former Prime Minister Gillard, as I remember, on the floor of the parliament—appropriately—for the suffering that those children had endured when those who should have known better looked the other way. I personally think it was a very powerful moment. Why do apologies matter? It is because you cannot be fully reconciled with the present until you have recognised the problems of the past and the hurt of the past. That is why apologies matter. Our journey towards becoming a perfect nation will be stalled until we recognise the things we did previously that created unnecessary harm and hurt.

Our national apologies have always been important days of reckoning. When we apologised to the stolen generations, it was an apology for the racism, the cruelties and the injustices inflicted on our First Nations people. When we apologised for forced adoptions, it was an apology for the shame, the stigma and the brutality that forcibly splitting a parent from their child caused. When we apologised to the forgotten Australians and the former child migrants, it was an apology for the unconscionable cruelties experienced by children removed from their families and placed in institutional homes. The apologies reflect our acknowledgement of our failures as a people. Most importantly, they acknowledge that we know that those things can never happen again.

We are a people who live in a liberal democratic society. For societies like ours to flourish we must ensure that we take upon ourselves the importance of recognising that we are not only capable of extraordinary cruelties and mistakes; we are also capable of making those things right.

Truth was always at the heart of the apology to victims and survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. That is what the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, initiated by Prime Minister Gillard, was all about. When thousands of people came forward to describe their experiences, their pain and their anguish, it was more than about them; it was about all of us and what we needed to do as an entire community to ensure that those who come after us will never suffer in the way that those people did and to ensure that this parliament, whenever it is deliberating and considering policies and proposals, remembers how we did so much wrong in that time and in that place by not listening, by not understanding and, in the end, by not knowing.

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