Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's an honour to stand in this chamber following my colleague the Minister for Social Services, Amanda Rishworth, and the member for Bass. I thank them both for their exceptional efforts to ensure that we find justice for those who have had the most heinous crimes committed against them as children. I, too, rise to make a contribution today to mark this fifth anniversary of the national apology to victims and survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. The apology was delivered five years ago by the former prime minister Julia Gillard AC, a colleague and friend, and it marked a historic moment in recognising the tens of thousands of innocent victims of child sexual abuse, much of which occurred in what should have been our most trusted institutions.

More than 17,000 victims, survivors and advocates gave evidence at the royal commission. Having had the commission sit in my hometown of Newcastle for a number of days, sadly we have two volumes dedicated to the shocking crimes that were committed over many decades in the diocese of Maitland and Newcastle. Many, many survivors have told me that that royal commission and their experience of that was the gold standard of royal commissions, and I really congratulate, retrospectively, not just the former prime minister Julia Gillard but those prime ministers that followed, as well as the current Attorney-General, who was also the Attorney-General then and had so much to do in shaping that royal commission process, ensuring it was a safe space for survivors and that they would be able to get the evidence that was required to shine a very big light on what had previously been part of Australia's very darkest histories.

The royal commission certainly did expose the horrors that thousands and thousands and thousands of Australian children experienced in places where, as I said, they should have felt safe. Their courage in coming forward and reliving their trauma cannot be understated. It was the result of that courage that, finally, after many years of living with untold trauma, their perpetrators got exposed and the institutions that in some cases turned a blind eye—or, even worse, engaged in acts that covered up what were clearly explicit crimes—were held accountable. The excellent work of the royal commission and the subsequent establishment of the National Redress Scheme have gone a long way to validating survivor experiences and reminding us all of the need to always ensure that our responses are survivor focused and that everything we do is, indeed, trauma informed.

I do wish to make note of a recent High Court ruling that has paved the way for many survivors of abuse from perpetrators now deceased to go ahead and seek justice. The significance of this decision is enormous. We're yet to see it really play out in Australia, but it means that survivors of child sexual abuse will no longer be excluded from a pathway to justice simply because their abuser has died before this matter has come forward. The High Court decision to overrule the infamous dead man's defence is especially important given that we know that it takes an average of more than 20 years for a survivor of child sexual abuse to tell someone about that experience. The case will put to an end, as I said, the shocking misuse of the dead man's defence, ensuring that more survivors can pursue justice for the lifelong trauma of the horrific abuse they experienced as children.

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