Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Community Safety, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

What a very sad, sad situation it was for all those young children who were put in institutions, for whatever reason. In some cases, it would have been with the parents' consent. At other times, it would have been removal because the parents couldn't care for them. Those young people would have gone to an institution believing and hoping that they would be protected and cared for, but, sadly, they went into the clutches of evil. It wasn't tens or hundreds; it was thousands of children that this happened to. The sad reality for so many was that, when they tried to report it, they were not believed. Also, when the institutions became aware of it, rather than take action, they went into a mode of covering up and hiding. It went on for years and years.

In my own electorate, I've had people come forward and tell me their horrific experiences, and it's something they just can't get over. As a former police officer, I dealt with, obviously sadly, children who had been abused. Giving evidence in court was a harrowing experience for them. They can't remember days and times and everything else like that, and that's why a royal commission was set up. As we've heard from other members, we believe the victims, now adults. We think of you. We acknowledge the awful atrocities you went through, and it should never ever have occurred.

Something I'm very passionate about is having legislation in place to protect young people. Sadly, it doesn't matter what penalties we have in place, what measures we have in place, evil will lurk and evil people will do everything they can to take advantage of children. The sad reality is, as I said before, the children weren't believed, even as adults.

The National Redress Scheme was established in 2018 by the former coalition government as a response to recommendations from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse—a very important royal commission. The Redress Scheme provides support to eligible applicants who have experienced institutional child sexual abuse with monetary compensation; counselling services, as many have obviously lived with the torment every day and can't move on; an option of a personal response from responsible institutions that they are believed; for governments and institutions to take steps to safeguard against these crimes to ensure they're not repeated in the future. Sadly, as I said before, there will always be someone there—it's the modus operandi of a child sex predator, putting themselves in a place where they have access to children.

The scheme is intended to be fast, simple and less distressing for survivors to provide governments and institutions with the means to deliver justice to the survivors. The scheme recognises suffering survivors have experienced, accepts that these events occurred and that institutions must take responsibility for the abuse. Sometimes it took a lot of effort to get those institutions to admit the wrongs of the past—horrible wrongs.

The scheme's most significant step is in addressing the wrongs of the past and providing a just response for survivors. The maximum redress payment a person can receive is $150,000. When they, sadly, have been abused and had their innocence taken away—well, it's an insignificant amount, but at least they receive some acknowledgement in a financial capacity. As of June 2023, the average redress payment was $88,254. There have been 13,741 applicants for redress who have received money from the scheme. That's more than 13,000 victims. Again, going from my experience, going back to my police force days, there will be many, many, many more victims than that who still, even if they were going to receive compensation, wouldn't come forward. The scheme issued 8,729 outcomes to applicants. More than 7,826 applications have been finalised and 7,530 payments have been made, totalling $650 million. But again, that's to thousands of victims. The average payment is nearly $86,000, 33 per cent higher than the royal commission's estimate of $65,000. But those figures, as I say, mean nothing to a victim.

There are 5,472 applications currently on hand being processed, and I urge the government to do everything they can to expediate those. But in saying that, it must go through a process. I understand that. That's a lot of applications to go through. Six hundred and seventy-three offers have been made and are waiting an applicant's decision; 625 applicants are with institutions to provide information.

When the scheme was established under the coalition government, there were some limitations for people who had committed the most serious crimes. If a person was convicted of an offence which received a custodial sentence of five years or more—and, can I say, to get five years or more in jail you would have had to do some very serious criminal activity—the operator may determine that the person is entitled to redress if providing redress to the person would not bring the scheme into disrepute and adversely affect the public confidence in the scheme. When making this determination, the operator takes into account the relevant information, such as advice given by the relevant Attorney-General on the nature of the offence.

The coalition does not believe this arrangement needs to change, and I'll explain a bit more about that. The bill shows Labor's lenience on crime could be benefitting individuals with serious criminal convictions. One thing I do acknowledge is that many people who are in custody serving prison time have been victims of child abuse, which has led to them going down a horrible path in life. Labor's amendment will look at only those sentenced to five years or more for offences such as unlawful killing, sexual offences and terrorism where there is a risk to the scheme's integrity. Applicants would have to go through a special assessment process.

My great concern is that people who have entered the prison system have obviously committed crimes. Again, I know this from precedent experience. There would be a capacity to rip off and rort the system. What we don't want to see is an open slab of applications go through without special assessment. Extortion, distributing child abuse material, possessing child abuse material, accessing child abuse material, kidnapping, robbery, armed robbery, burglary, aggravated burglary, home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking, aggravated carjacking, arson and arson causing death—these wouldn't be covered. The point I make is that the special assessment can take place to make sure that No.1: it's a legitimate claim and No.2: there's no rorting. That's a concern. The bill also seeks to allow those in jail to apply for redress. The coalition believes the current arrangements permitting jailed people to apply for redress strike the right balance and should remain.

With the time I have remaining, there's another issue which I've been on about for a number of years, and that's the need for a national child sex disclosure scheme. It was first raised by the Leader of the Opposition a number of years ago. There were concerns by police and victims even of child sex abuse about how it would work. But we put a lot of time and effort into this. Speaking to law enforcement, it's to make sure we can put something in place which works well, and we'll be looking at a model from the UK called Sarah's Law. I know the Attorney-General previously came out and said, 'We need some evidence before we can do this.' I was hearing this all the time, even from law enforcement.

Can I say as a former police officer that there's a view in law enforcement that, when it comes to recidivist offenders, saying that it's not occurring is completely wrong. I commissioned a report from the Australian Institute of Criminology when I was the assistant minister. I think everyone agrees in this country that it's a highly regarded institute. We arranged for them to get data from the states and territories. Data was provided from the ACT, Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales and Victoria. You'll be interested in this: the ACT figures were so low for recidivist offenders that the Australian Institute of Criminology didn't even take that into account. They said the data was completely wrong up in the ACT. They should be ashamed of not having data going back 15 years and saying there have only been five recidivist offenders. They didn't even take that into account. At the time, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory were unable to provide that data.

The report found, based on the information that came through, that in New South Wales seven per cent of child sex offenders were proceeded against for further sexual offences within 10 years. The evidence determined that the average reoffending for a child sex offender is roughly 10 years. On average, the victim they would target was an 11-year-old girl. The interesting and shocking thing that all these statistics show is that everyone is a victim, but it didn't matter if they previously committed an offence against a boy. They were just predators; they would target a girl. There's also been this notion in Australia and elsewhere of stranger danger—we should worry about the stranger. From my experience as a police officer in a criminal investigations branch, it is, sadly, sleepovers where offences occur. A parent or guardian allows their child to go to someone's house for a sleepover, kids party or whatever else, believing that the child's going to be cared for. No, they're not. They're actually being targeted because their parents didn't know a child-sex offender was living in the place. Offences occur 66 to 82 per cent of the time in residential locations, and up to 61 per cent involve a family member or a person known to the family. That could be someone you drop your child off with each weekend to go swimming or anything else like that.

The scheme which I think we need to put in place is the UK's Sarah's Law. I have the support of law enforcement. I thank Scott Weber from the Police Federation of Australia for raising this with all his police jurisdictions across the country. Sarah's Law comes from another tragic story where a young girl was murdered. The UK has had this in place since 2014, where a person makes an application to the police about another person. It's very confidential. The police make an assessment of the person, then they decide what information gets provided back to the individual who's made the application. A neighbour could make an application and the police might say, 'We're not going to assess that application.' First of all, they assess the application being made. Then they have face-to-face meetings. Then they determine what information should be provided. In fact, it's something that's rolling out right across the UK.

I'd like to acknowledge Madeleine West, the former Neighbours star, who appeared before the Joint Committee on Law Enforcement. Madeleine gave an insight of the tragedy that happened to her. Her offender was just convicted and sentenced to 15 years jail. Madeleine advised us that, if this person had been on some sort of register, she wouldn't have been a victim and other people wouldn't have been victims.

I call on the Labor government. I don't know why they don't support a national child sex offender register. It absolutely shocks me that they don't just support it and make it a reality. For example, you could have a single mum who gets a new boyfriend—and this happened to a family in my electorate where the lady met a guy online. He was more interested in meeting her grandkids than hanging out with her, and then she found out he was a convicted child-sex offender. The internet is a place where child-sex offenders target women to get access to their children or their grandchildren. This was from Dr Rick Brown from the Australian Institute of Criminology.

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