Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Attorney-General. Will the Attorney-General update the House on action the government is taking to implement the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse? How will this action help recognise the harm suffered by survivors and ensure these heinous crimes never happen again?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Swan for his question and, of course, for his advocacy over many long years on behalf of survivors. I would just say to him as my friend that there's nothing as powerful as advocacy that's anchored in someone's own endured experiences of some of the cruelties that were hidden under the roofs of these institutions.

The Prime Minister this morning announced his commitment to a national apology for survivors of institutional child sex abuse. This event will be a significant national milestone. It will also be a critical healing event for survivors themselves. The apology will be developed with a group of survivor representatives and representatives of the government, the opposition and the Australian Greens, and a member of the crossbench, so we very much want this to be a truly bipartisan event and apology.

The breadth and scope of the royal commission report is enormous. If I can just, in that spirit of bipartisanship, offer some indication as to how we are progressing with those recommendations. There are 409 recommendations in total, with 189 new recommendations. Of those new recommendations, 67 are directed at the Commonwealth. We've established and provided for a task force inside my department which will coordinate the implementation and the responses from states and territories towards a consistent national response. It will report regularly and transparently via a website for all Australians to track our performance in this area.

Part of that, and critical, is the redress scheme. That itself addresses 84 of those 409 recommendations, so it is utterly critical. We, of course, with the help of members opposite, have introduced the legislation. The terms of the legislation are known. The scheme that we have put into this House is due to start on 1 July. It is funded. We have been utterly and completely transparent with the states, the territories, the churches and the charities.

Having led that negotiation process over the last nine months, I will take this opportunity to say that the horrific circumstances that we are now dealing with came to be because of excuses—excusing the monstrous conduct of individuals and excusing the failures and outrageous wilful blindness of the institutions. What we cannot do now, at the critical point of creating a national redress scheme, is accept any more excuses. Excuses for failing to join the scheme must end. Lingering reasons for delay are now starting to look to any independent observer as if minor details are being manifestly and deliberately used as excuses for needless delay. Excuses are what created this problem, and they should not prevent the churches, the charities, the states and the territories from joining the redress scheme.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On indulgence: I briefly associate the opposition with the remarks of the Attorney-General. We think it is very well said—no more excuses, no more delays. Certainly the opposition will work with the government.