Derryn Hinch (Victoria, Derryn Hinch's Justice Party) Share this | Hansard source

We had a meeting of the Joint Select Committee on oversight of the implementation of redress related recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and I want to inform the committee that, in recent days, I had planned to resign as chairman of the committee. I do not intend to now. The reason was that in October the Prime Minister promised that his apology would be given practical meaning by 'concrete action' through the National Redress Scheme. Why I said that I would resign is because I don't think the government is taking this redress scheme as seriously as it should. We have trouble getting government members on that committee to appear at hearings to provide a quorum. Senator Gichuhi jumped in at the last minute today for a short time just to keep the committee going. It is not good enough, and I say to government leaders in both houses, please get your act together and come to the committee.

The other thing is that, yesterday, as chairman of this committee, I tried to get the details of how many people have actually been paid from all of this. The only detail I could get was that, six months after it started, 28 out of—(Time expired)

Question agreed to.