Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Clearly, the bill that we're debating today has absolutely no relevance whatsoever. This is actually a technical bill that seeks to make—

An opposition senator interjecting—

Indeed, but I just wanted to make it very clear that these are technical amendments to support the act to make sure that it is functioning in a way that is more effective, so this bill has got nothing to do with the matters that are before the chair in relation to the amendments.

As I said in my previous contribution, we have a redress board. The redress board is made up of me, as the representative of the Commonwealth government, and also all of the other ministers in the states and territories who have responsibility in their respective jurisdictions for the Redress Scheme. On the process that would happen after we receive the review, clearly we would have the opportunity to have a look at the recommendations of the review and then we would seek to go back, because, as I said, we require a consensus amongst all of the ministers that sit on that redress board.

I want to reiterate that this government absolutely is committed to a program of continuous improvement in the Redress Scheme. We know that, when we started off with this scheme, it certainly did not start off as well as we would have liked it to. The complexity of the applications that we received from survivors was much greater than we ever imagined. But we don't shy away from the fact that we are absolutely committed to continuous improvement. We will give an absolute commitment to say that we will work with the state and territory ministers, informed by the review and informed by the advice that we've received from survivors, to make sure that we continue to provide the redress in the most timely way we can for survivors who have come forward.