Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for taking to your feet so I can finish outlining our amendments. I do note you responded to amendment (2), but, for your clarification, the first question before the chair will be amendment (1), which is about the review.

Amendment (9) requires that the impact of abuse be better recognised. In the committees I've participated in, survivors have told us about the arbitrary nature of the matrix, which links payments to the nature of the abuse; for example, was it physical, was it penetrative, was it exposure, was it contact, was it penetrative rape, was it fingers—what was the nature of the penetration and what sex organs were involved?

It has actually been very hard for some survivors of abuse to be so explicit. In some cases, while they've outlined the very traumatic impact that the abuse has had on them, they haven't been able to bring themselves to be as explicit as they need to be in their documentation. Others have outlined the nature of their abuse but the matrix has discounted it because it rates payments on the basis of the nature of the act that took place, rather than on the impact of that abuse. This amendment calls on the government to report again on these issues so that payments for abuse are calculated independently, as recommended by the royal commission.

Amendment (10) requires non-participating organisations to participate. It makes sure that, if an organisation refuses to participate in the scheme or deliberately restructures its assets so as to appear that it can't participate, the government will be able to get funds from it in order to pay redress. This could take the form of a levy or collection through the tax system. As we know, there are constitutional limits on seizing assets; however, it is indeed unacceptable for organisations to simply refuse to participate or to hide their assets. They need to be compelled to do so. It needs to be legislated that they pay redress to those they have hurt.

So I've ripped through our 10 amendments, and I now seek to move our amendment (1). This amendment means that, if a person seeks a review of their offer, the offer cannot be reduced. This will give people more confidence to seek a review. I move opposition amendment (1) on sheet 1196 revised:

(1) Schedule 1, page 14 (after line 12), after Part 5, insert:

Part 5A—Reviewing the original determination

National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Act 2018

46A At the end of section 75

Add:

(4) When reviewing the original determination, the person may not vary the original determination or set aside the original determination and substitute a new determination in a way that would result in the amount of the redress payment or the amount of the counselling and psychological component of redress being less than the amount determined in the original determination.