Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In speaking to the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment (Funders of Last Resort and Other Measures) Bill 2021, I speak in support of the amendments moved by the member for Barton. Ten years after the hopes of so many victims of child sexual abuse were raised, this government is still dithering. The origins of this legislation go right back to the Gillard government, under which, in December 2012, a royal commission was announced. In 2017, the final report was handed to the government. By that stage, it was the Morrison government or, at least, a coalition government. That was an inquiry that went on for nearly five years, and it handed down, I think, over 400 different recommendations in total. It seems that those recommendations are being trickled out a little at a time in a very slow way. Like so much of what the Morrison government does, it is big on headlines and announcement but very slow and very light on following through and actually delivering on those announcements.

Just for the benefit of anyone following this debate, I note that what this legislation essentially does is extend the funder-of-last-resort provisions so that a state or territory and the Commonwealth can agree to equally fund redress payments when an institution no longer exists and there is no linked institution that exists, or when an institution does exist but is unable to join the scheme because it doesn't meet the financial viability requirements. Institutions will also be able to partly participate in the scheme if they don't currently meet the financial viability requirements, and partly participating institutions will need to agree to a reassessment of their financial position at least annually and become fully participating institutions if they have the financial capacity to do so.

Secondly, the legislation further extends the public naming of institutions that don't join the scheme, including by allowing the public naming of an institution that has not joined the scheme and has an application against it or of an institution that has not joined the scheme and is reasonably believed to be associated with abuse. On that point, I understand that, according to the royal commission, there were some 4,000 different institutions identified where abuse may have occurred, yet I also understand that, to date, only about 526 government and non-government institutions across Australia have joined the scheme. I accept that many of those institutions that might have been named in the royal commission inquiry no longer exist, so that may account for most of them, but it's clear that there were other entities that have decided for one reason or another not to join the scheme, and because of that I think it's incumbent on governments, both state and federal, to respond by at least becoming a funder of last resort.

Labor will support this legislation because it is a step in the right direction, but, clearly, it doesn't go far enough. As the member for Barton quite rightly pointed out, to date her figures were something like 5,000 payments being made, but, according to a press release that the Minister for Families and Social Services issued in September, there had in fact been 6,208 payments totalling $529 million made and some 11,835 applications received at that time. Regardless of which figures are correct, right here and now the reality is that, given that there were some 60,000 children who may have been in some way abused in the care of different entities, we are still a long way off from responding to the support that those people need. And, even worse, if in the last three years we've only been able to deal with some 5,000 or 6,000 payments, there is no hope for some of those people who were abused to have their cases or their applications dealt with for years and maybe decades to come, by which time it's very likely that they would have passed on. Indeed, on that very point, my reading of the royal commission's findings was that some 80 per cent of the people that were identified as having been in some way abused were already over the age of 40, and that was back in 2017. So I suspect that that figure is even higher now, which tells me that, if they go through the process as it is currently being handled by the government, many of those people will never ever be compensated because of the slow process that we are going through.

Labor has continuously been calling for more of the recommendations of the royal commission to be adopted, and, in particular, recommendations relating to lifting the cap to $200,000 and ensuring that payments made prior are not indexed when calculating the redress payment. I am aware that in some cases some of the institutions that have now joined the scheme have previously made payments. If the payments they had made were inadequate but were indexed, it would effectively mean that the recipients would be getting less when their application to the scheme was considered. So that matter needs to be addressed as well.

Labor has been calling for the government to ensure that prior payments which don't relate to institutional child sexual abuse are not deducted from redress payments—for example, payments made to children of the stolen generation. Again, given that the commission found that some 14 per cent plus of all victims were people of Indigenous background, that is an important issue, because they may also be entitled to some other support from the stolen generation report.

Labor has been calling for a guarantee that the review of an offer of redress will not result in an offer being reduced. I have personally dealt with a couple of matters where applications were put in for reviews, and the last thing you would want to do is think that if you put in an application for a review that it may well be that you get even less money, because that would become a deterrent to people trying to seek the fair redress that they are looking for.

Labor has also been calling for the ongoing provision of psychological counselling and other support measures to any of the victims. These are all matters important to people who have been victims of this kind of abuse. They are all matters that these people have to deal with each and every day of their life. So, apart from the financial payments that are being looked at, we need to provide these people with a lot more support. In respect to that, one of the things that Labor has been calling for along the way has also been to have face-to-face application processes for First Nations, culturally and linguistically diverse, and disability communities. Again, those people form a significant number of the children that were impacted by the abuse. In fact, if you add together the First Nations, the CALD and the disability communities, we have over 20 per cent of the victims falling into that category. So it's a matter that shouldn't just be dismissed as being something that isn't that important. It is important. For many of those people, lodging applications is difficult enough. When you have to lodge an application after you have already gone through the trauma and you have to relive it is difficult enough for any person to do, let alone a person who might also have communication problems. So we need to provide whatever assistance is possible to them to ensure that they have every opportunity and every support that they need to get their applications properly considered.

One of the other matters, among the many that Labor has been calling for, relates to reviewing the limit of one application so that changes in circumstances and additional information can be taken into account. Again, as things progress, new information might arise or there might be additional information that might affect what the original application payment would have been. So there should be an opportunity for every application to be reviewed, if that is the case.

Another thing that I believe is sadly lacking in the scheme right now is that it does not allow for noncitizens, non-permanent residents, prisoners or those with serious criminal convictions to submit an application. In my view, that is morally wrong. Those people, regardless of where they are right now, should be entitled to apply for redress under the scheme, just like everyone else should be. The fact that they might be a noncitizen or a non-permanent resident should in no way diminish their rights as a person who was abused and should be covered by the scheme to not be able to put an application in.

So I hope that the government is prepared to look at these matters as it considers other changes to the legislation. I heard government speakers talking about how the government is progressing through the recommendations. This is, I think, the third time that this matter has come before the parliament, with improvements on each occasion. That may all be well and good, but that should be done sooner rather than later. Equally, it should also be the case that, where an assessment is made, the guidelines are made public so that survivors know exactly why they received the support they did or the financial support that they did. It shouldn't be something that is hidden away as a decision that no-one is able to understand or question. Along with that part of the decision-making, it is also important that there is some consistency in the decision-making process itself.

Labor has moved an amendment. The amendment goes to the heart of some of the critical issues, including to lift the payment to a $200,000 cap rather than the $150,000 cap that currently applies. The royal commission in fact recommended $200,000. It is important to note what the cap will also do—and this relates to a matter that I have spoken to on previous occasions and relates to a person in my electorate who was impacted by the $150,000 cap. The person would have been entitled to a greater amount of compensation from the institution that he had previously lodged a claim with and who had acknowledged his rights to compensation but, because of the Redress Scheme coming into effect and responsibility for payment having been transferred to the government initiated scheme, the amount of compensation that person then received was less than he otherwise would have received had the institution stayed with its own level of compensation. It's a classic case where a person has actually been disadvantaged by this scheme, and if the cap were raised to $200,000 that person may well be much better off.

My view is that, while some people will say that it's not just about money, the reality is that, for many of the people that were impacted, money does make a difference because they are constantly having to pay out for health and medical bills which have resulted because of the impact that the abuse has had on them over a lifetime. As a result of that, they've had to incur costs, whether it's because from time to time they haven't been able to get secure work, or because the mental health state that they were in might have limited their employment opportunities and the like. So it is not an unreasonable ask to give them a payment that much more fairly responds to their needs

The other issue that I'll touch on relates to comments that I made earlier on when I talked about the number of cases that have been dealt with and the number that are still outstanding, given that there are some 60,000 survivors possibly identified. This is a very serious issue. The member for Barton quite rightly pointed out that the processing times are well over a year, and in some cases have reached close to 18 months. That cannot continue. Under that time frame, there will be people out there who are victims who will simply not lodge applications because they know that it will put them through another 18 months or so of trauma, reminiscing and recollections about what happened to them, and so it would deter them. It is unreasonable. We need to deal with them much more speedily, and I would urge the government to increase the staffing level if they need to so that all applications can be dealt with in a very timely way.

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