Clare O'Neil (Hotham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I grew up in a Catholic family and in a Catholic community. I went to a Catholic school for 11 years, I did all my sacraments and I went to church with my mother every Sunday. It is from that standpoint that I want to express the incredible hurt and anger I have felt in the recent days we have seen Cardinal George Pell make his testimony before the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The extent of betrayal felt by me and, I know, by many other Catholics and many other Australians around this country is deep and profound. We are leaning through the Royal Commission that for decades, instead of the church trying to help people that needed its care, the church was focused on protecting itself, on moving priests around, on sidelining whistleblowers who were drawing conduct to their attention and on ignoring young people who were raising concerns with priests and church leaders.

What is so upsetting about what we are hearing in the royal commission is not just the acts, not just what was done and what was not done but the almost total lack of empathy that is being shown by some church leaders to the survivors, to the people whose lives, in some senses, have been destroyed by things that happened to them while the Catholic church was meant to be their protector. I cannot fathom, watching these testimonies, why church leaders cannot just stand up and say that they are sorry, just acknowledge that incredible pain occurred and that young people were not protected in the way they deserved to be and say that they screwed up, that there are things that can be done to make this better and that we should all work together to do them. But that is not what we have heard, and it is has been incredibly disappointing to see.

Like most members in this House, this affects many people who live in my electorate of Hotham. To the survivors; the people from the Sacred Heart parish in Oakley in my electorate; the survivors who have made their way to Rome; to Julie Stewart who has been so incredibly brave in her testimony before the commission and in the interview that gave on 7.30 last night, I want you to know that there are millions of Australians who are standing with you shoulder to shoulder and thinking of you. For those who are religious, there are people praying for you but there are millions of Australians who are right there with you, who are outraged by the things that have happened on your behalf. I am so sorry that these things happened to you.

I have a community just to the south of my electorate on a border that I share with the member for Isaacs who are grappling with a difficulty of this nature at the moment. Media reports of the royal commission have uncovered that the priest who services two parishes and two primary schools just outside my electorate was actually a perpetrator of sexual abuse when he was a seminarian. There were no children involved in the incident, but he was found by the church to have sexually abused another seminarian.

There is a group of parents and parishioners in this community who have been asking for months to meet with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne. They have written to Archbishop Denis Hart and, would you believe, the archbishop has not responded to their letters. This community of people approached the member for Isaacs and me, so we wrote to Archbishop Denis Hart. What do you think happened? The archbishop has not responded to our letter either.

I call on the archbishop: please. As a member of parliament, I do not think it is appropriate for me to take a position on what should happen to this priest. That is a matter for the archdiocese and for that Catholic congregation but, at the very least, you owe these people a conversation. I would ask you, please to meet to meet with those people and, if you are not willing to do that, at least respond to their letter.

I want to say a final word on the royal commission. I am very proud that Prime Minister Julia Gillard initiated this royal commission—and I note that, in setting this up, this goes well beyond the conduct of the Catholic Church, which happens to be in the media at the moment because of the current personnel before the commission. However, setting up that royal commission was a fine act, and I think that former Prime Minister Julia Gillard deserves due credit for doing so.

Some Australians might not be aware that the commission has actually already recommended a national redress scheme for survivors, despite the fact that the commission is going to run on for another 18 months or so. Labor has adopted that as Labor policy When in government, we will introduce a national redress scheme and we call on those on the other side of the House to do so too. It is not going to make everything better for the people who are victims of this. We cannot give those people back the safe childhood that they deserved, but I think it would say to all those people that, as Australians, we unite in saying that was —(Time expired)