Tim Storer (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Little is more important in life than bringing children into this world. Nothing is more important than the responsibilities parents face, having made that fundamental decision—that is, to ensure that children can grow up in an environment where they have the best chance to prosper, to know that they are loved and, most importantly, that they are safe. Parents can and do a lot on their own, but the community has a role too. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse showed us how grievously as a community we have failed. Like those who have spoken before, today and tonight, I say sorry to the tens of thousands of children who suffered for so long at the hands of people they believed they could trust and who suffered as adults as their pleas were ignored.

Sixteen thousand individuals contacted the commission with their deeply distressing accounts of abuse. More than 8,000 accounts were heard in person. For the commissioners and those working with them, I know this was a deeply distressing experience but one they weathered for the greater good. The commissioners and all associated with them are owed a great debt of gratitude, not just from the many who suffered for so long—voices in the wilderness often ignored by the institutions responsible for their abuse or, worse, belittled as they struggled for justice. Churches moved around priests who they knew were abusers. They resisted appeals from victims and their parents. They took legal advice designed to minimise their liability.

The nation owes Julia Gillard a pat on the back and a collective hug for having the courage to establish the royal commission. As the former Prime Minister has noted, she worried at the time about the effects of an inquiry probing people's hurt. She was anxious that the inquiry would take a long time and cause frustration. Odd fears, she now notes, given the results and the recommendations of the royal commission.

The Prime Minister, Mr Morrison, deserves to be congratulated too, for promoting and leading the national apology. As the Prime Minister said three weeks ago:

Why were the cries of children and parents ignored? Why was our system of justice blind to injustice? Why has it taken so long to act? Why were other things more important than this, the care of innocent children?

These are unanswerable questions, but now the time for grief ought to be over. Now is the time for redress. How we as a parliament, and as a nation, respond to the royal commission will be the proof of what we have learnt as a community. Words are one thing, but actions are quite another. The government has not rejected a single recommendation of the royal commission. The Prime Minister says that the government is acting on 104 of the inquiry's 122 recommendations, and is consulting with the states and territories on the remaining 18. I note the four key areas of the findings and recommendations to be: child safety as a national responsibility, the need to implement child safe standards, the importance of believing children and the potential for a genuine apology to have a therapeutic benefit.

As Professor Daryl Higgins, the Director of the Institute of Child Protection Studies at the Australian Catholic University puts it:

For the apology to be meaningful, Australians will want concrete actions to provide redress for those already harmed.

…   …   …

… organisations can adopt prevention strategies that focus on modifying risky environments (including physical structures, policies and supervision practices), so that it is harder for would-be perpetrators to behave as they did in the past. Governance, funding arrangements and accreditation should be contingent on serious progress towards a culture of safety.

A National Redress Scheme for victims of child sexual abuse in organisations, to allow psychological counselling and compensation of up to $150,000, has already been announced. But, as Professor Higgins points out, what people really need to hear is that things will change. They want to know what is happening in youth-serving organisations. How will the mistakes from the past not be repeated? They need to hear how child safe strategies will become standard practice. How will they, for example, be embedded in funding arrangements and accountability requirements? If organisations won't prioritise the safety and wellbeing of children, says Professor Higgins, then the public purse should not be open to them.

The statistics revealed by the royal commission are as grim as they are stark. Close to 60 per cent of victims who approached the inquiry reported sexual abuse in religious institutions. A central recommendation of the inquiry was the National Redress Scheme. Despite various statements, the Catholic, Anglican and Uniting churches are yet to fully formally opt into the scheme. Apologies may have been made, but, once again, it is action which counts. As the Prime Minister puts it, justice, decency and the beliefs and values we as Australians share insist that they sign on. So far, though, some key institutions have not. Time is running out. Many of the victims are old, frail and ill. They deserve recognition, justice, treatment and recompense for their suffering.

I applaud Senator Hinch, who has made chasing down child sexual abuse one of the missions of his career, both in the media and in this place. He has a motion on the Notice Paper for tomorrow calling on the government to withhold public funding and deny charity tax concessions to religious institutions that fail to opt into the National Redress Scheme by the end of 2018. It is a motion that I support, and I hope that government senators will support it, too, when it comes to a vote tomorrow. The royal commission reported in December last year. Twelve months is quite long enough for the institutions in question to sign up voluntarily.

Then there is the CREATE Foundation, the peak body for foster care children, calling for:

… a tightening of standards related to the ongoing monitoring of placements to ensure that children and young people in the out-of-home care system are provided the opportunity to have a voice in this monitoring process.

The royal commission revealed that the out-of-home care sector, commonly known as 'foster care', was the worst source of child abuse in Australia in the years before 1990. Nearly 50,000 children are currently in out-of-home care across Australia. As the CREATE Foundation puts it:

We must never again be in the position of ignoring so many children and young people who tried to tell their stories of abuse and were silenced by a flawed and non-accountable system.

The last word should belong to Julia Gillard, who appealed to governments around Australia to develop schemes for the victims that will operate with 'a culture of openness and generosity'. As a community which did not sow such qualities in the past, it is the least we can do to heal the hurt and try to ensure it never happens again.