Kimberley Kitching (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the leadership shown by the former Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, when she announced the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in November 2012. It is perhaps her finest legacy. As she said at that time:

… too many children have suffered child abuse, but have also seen other adults let them down—they've not only had their trust betrayed by the abuser but other adults who could have acted to assist them have failed to do so.

There have been too many revelations of adults who have averted their eyes from this evil.

Julia Gillard was determined that Australia could no longer avert its eyes from evil—and it is evil, with the full import of that word—and the report of the royal commission has fully vindicated the decision she took in 2012.

I don't want to name him, but I want to talk about a friend of mine. He went to one of the finest schools in Melbourne. He was a boarder there in the 1970s. He was sexually assaulted. The headmaster and the school supported the teacher, even calling the teacher a hero and someone who always acted in the best interests of the boys. These statements were made just prior to eventually paying my friend $500,000 in compensation, decades later. My friend was sexually assaulted by a teacher when he was 15 years old. When he told the headmaster what had happened, he was told that his claim was outrageous, that he had a vivid imagination, that he needed discipline and that his parents needed to consider whether he should stay at the school. The headmaster said that the teacher was an 'honourable man'. My friend's father was not a particularly physically demonstrative person, but he held my friend tight and he said, 'Son, we love you, we believe you and we'll make this right.'

My friend eventually received an apology from the school in June of this year—more than 40 years later. The only reason I know about this is that we were chatting a few weeks ago and he said, 'I'm coming up to Canberra on Monday.' This was the day the apology was given in the other place. I said: 'Oh, great! Are you coming up for work?' He said, 'No, I'm coming up for the apology.' He interpreted my silence quite correctly as my needing further elucidation. He said: 'I want to hear the apology. I think I will find it healing.' We were on the phone, but I just wanted to hug him, to hold him tight, as his father had done so many years before, because I could hear not only the voice of the adult but also the voice of the child. I didn't see him until the day after the apology. He is a lovely man, a very competent man, a very funny, intelligent and engaging man and a well-known man in Melbourne. But for the first time, when I saw him that following day, I saw the child he had been and the unnecessary journey he had had to undertake because of the betrayal, the grief, the anger, the pain and the awful, awful maelstrom of emotion. I am sorry. But my friend, not surprisingly, is a better person than the criminal who abused him. My friend said, in the only interview he has given:

My message is stand up, be heard, you're not alone.

I will stand with you.

Don't be a victim, be a survivor.

He said to me the following day that the apology will help him move on, that it is healing.

I want to acknowledge some people without whom we would not have had a royal commission. There is the former New South Wales police officer Peter Fox, whose investigation into the cover-up of child sexual abuse triggered the government's decision to appoint the royal commission. He had a great deal of difficulty in bringing his investigation into the light and he should be commended.

As a Catholic, I have found the report of the royal commission to be painful reading. It is difficult to reconcile the deep love and compassion that one knows exists within a faith with the evil that has been done to innocence. I sincerely hope—and I'm sure that this hope is shared by all Australian Catholics and all people of faith—that the church will change its attitude and its behaviour. We are starting to see some changes, including in the solemn vow: 'Never again will the safety of the child be placed behind the reputation of the church. No more cover-ups or transferring of people accused of abuse to other places.' The church was the first non-government institution to opt into the National Redress Scheme.

The Catholic Church is, however, not alone. I want to acknowledge, for example, Manny Waks, who courageously exposed the sexual abuse that he and others suffered in institutions of the orthodox Jewish community in Melbourne. There have been many others who have helped, from many religious and non-religious institutions and from government and nongovernment. They have exposed a failure to protect children and the fact that perpetrators were instead protected. It is now clear that there has been a systemic failure to protect children in institutional settings of all kinds—state and private, religious and secular—for many decades. That must now stop, for, if it doesn't, we must ask: what kind of society do we want? 'Sorry' is a word and only has power because one understands why one is sorry and the actions that therefore flow from that state of being. There is little point in saying sorry if there is no change.

The royal commission has given us a powerful set of recommendations. I thank the commissioners for their diligent carrying out of what must have been, at times, a harrowing duty. We as parliamentarians now also have a duty, and that is to put the recommendations of the royal commission into effect. I note the commitments given by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to that effect. This parliament—all of us, from all parties and the crossbench—needs to ensure that those commitments are acted upon, whoever is in government—for, if we shirk that duty, we will not be forgiven.