David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Greens will support the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment Bill 2023, but I indicate that we will be seeking to move a series of amendments to the bill and that we will oppose the amendment that's proposed by the opposition.

The National Redress Scheme was established almost six years ago, in 2018. It came about following one of the most extraordinary cases of public information sharing, public education and trauma informed historical review. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, chaired by Commissioner McClellan, is a case study in how we can do things right. After decades and decades and decades of not listening to survivors of abuse and after decades and decades of prioritising the institutions over the survivors and the individuals who were abused and broken by those institutions, the royal commission showed how as a nation we could show empathy, compassion and understanding, and how finally we could put the interests of those individuals ahead of the interests of the powerful institutions that all too often abuse them—powerful institutions like the Catholic Church, the Scouts, the Anglican Church and institutions run at the state and territory level. I thought we had finally changed politics so that even the worst tendencies of this place, the worst tendencies of partisan politics, would be put to one side and that, finally, we would listen to the stories of survivors, listen to the truth of the survivors and respect them.

We got the 2018 National Redress Scheme and there were always concerns about it. It remains a very secretive scheme. Many survivors say they don't know why they received often very modest compensation payments out of it. The reasons are not articulated for them. The process can be incredibly long. Indeed, some institutions are still resisting signing on and being part of the scheme, despite us knowing that they were responsible for the abuse of significant numbers of children. But with all those faults, I thought our politics had improved. And part of that has been the ongoing review of the Redress Scheme.

I acknowledge the work of all members on the Joint Standing Committee on Implementation of the National Redress Scheme and the work of the chair. Indeed, from my observation of the members of that committee, no matter their political party, they have been survivor focused, and they have been seeking to shine some transparency on the Redress Scheme. But there have been these ongoing concerns with how it operates, and one of those concerns is the fact that the bill effectively excludes any person who is in jail or any person who has been the subject of a serious criminal conviction from access to the scheme, unless exceptional circumstances are identified. A serious criminal conviction is serving a sentence of five years or more.

Let's remember who this scheme is meant to serve—individuals who were taken from their families when they were infants at a very young age. Many of them have suffered some of the most horrific abuse you could imagine at the hands of an institution or institutions such that it is hard to comprehend how somebody gets their life back together again after that. Tragically, many didn't. For many survivors, their lives spiralled out of control after the appalling abuse that they suffered. Some went down the path of addiction, while many fell into the juvenile justice system and graduated into the adult criminal justice system. Through no fault of their own but through the damage that was caused to them by the abusing institution, their lives have been off-track for decades. Many have served repeated stints in jail. Of course, not all sufferers of abuse had that pathway. Some of them managed to keep their lives on track. Some of them managed, through a strength that I can't comprehend, to succeed in work, education, in holding their families together, and we should celebrate those extraordinary achievements of the survivors who could do that. But let's also acknowledge the pathway that many others travelled down. It is a dark and hard pathway. At its start and at its cause is the abuse that happened to them.

There has now been a review of the redress act. That review finally acknowledges that the reason why many of the survivors and victims have been excluded is because of this provision that says that 'if you have been convicted and sentenced to five or more years in jail, you are excluded'. The review said that provision is cutting out many survivors who absolutely need the support, who absolutely deserve the support and whose incarceration has, at its core, the abuse they suffered. It is effectively punishing them twice, and the review made this clear. Indeed, the review report noted that those restrictions constitute a significant bar, discouraging applicants and deterring other potentially eligible applicants from applying. It recommended, effectively, removing this exemption except in cases of unlawful killing, a sexual offence, a terrorism offence or related offences, leaving the exceptional circumstances assessment for that core of the most extreme offences.

As I said, I thought we had moved on as a nation. I thought we had understood the pathway that survivors had come through. And yet, to its eternal shame, the coalition is now seeking to move an amendment to this bill to retain that double punishment of survivors, reaching into their playbook of attacking the government or any other political party that shows even a shred of compassion to somebody who suffered institutional abuse and then incarceration. They are now seeking to weaponise this legislation against survivors of abuse, and they absolutely know the pathway of many of these survivors of abuse that happened. They know about the abuse that those people suffered at an institutional level. They know how that impacted those people and often drove them down that pathway to juvenile detention and then into adult prison. In fact, that pathway through prison is part of the pain and the suffering they had from their childhood abuse at the hands of an institution that should have kept them safe.

The coalition now come into this chamber and want to protect the institutions from those claims again. The coalition come into this chamber and want to again punish those survivors and, in the lowest politics you can imagine, beat up on the government about this because the government is showing a shred of compassion. It's the vilest politics you can imagine coming from the coalition here. We should be contemptuous of their position. How could they not have listened to the royal commission? How could the coalition be seeking to weaponise the abuse suffered by survivors of these institutions, seeking to drag it into their ugly gutter politics and weaponise it against the government? How low can the coalition go? The answer is that we're getting a sense tonight with them weaponising this against survivors of institutional abuse and trying to harm the government that is showing a shred of compassion here.

I thought this country had grown a little with the royal commission, but the coalition haven't .The coalition remain in that vile position of supporting the institutions—because that's what they're doing here. They're supporting the institutions and saying the institutions that abuse these children shouldn't have to pay, because the children went through a pathway of going into the criminal justice system. The coalition here are trying to ensure that the Catholic Church keeps the money—the modest amount of redress that they'd have to pay to children that they abused or let be abused in their care. They're saying that state and territory governments can keep the money and don't have to pay survivors modest compensation. They want to protect state and territory government institutions and literally take the money away from survivors of institutional abuse. They want to protect the Scouts, the Girl Guides and the Anglican church. They're again putting all those institutions ahead of survivors of abuse. It is contemptible politics. It should be beyond the shame of any politician, let alone a political party that pretends that it could form government at some point.

I call upon the coalition to withdraw their amendment, to actually have a small shred of public shame in what they do and not weaponise this bill against a government that's actually trying, after six years in this space, to do something decent for survivors of institutional abuse.

There are two amendments to this bill that the Greens will be pressing for. The first is to ensure that a class of women who were abused as children can get fair access to compensation under the redress scheme. We heard this evidence in the redress committee. I want to thank CLAN for their advocacy in this space and Leonie Sheedy for her advocacy for these women who, when they were taken, often as state wards, were often repeatedly abused by the medical profession for so-called virginity testing. Virginity testing has now been criminalised in other countries such as the United Kingdom because it's seen to be inherently abusive of women.

I'll read briefly from one of the submissions we got from a state ward about this issue. She said: 'I was made a state ward in October 1966. I'd been charged with truancy. I don't deny missing a lot of school due to my childhood circumstances, but effectively I was institutionalised for being poor. I was a frightened little girl removed from my family. It was traumatising being sent to a government home. I was extremely afraid being transported to a city I'd never been to before. Still, to this day, I have trouble sleeping, with recurring nightmares, and feel the trauma of that time. Shortly after arriving at this government girls' home, I was sent to a room upstairs where two strangers—a man and woman—were waiting. The man asked me a lot of questions. The lady didn't speak. I was just a little girl with no idea what was happening. I was very scared and confused.'

I won't read on about what happened to her after that in the virginity testing. This appalling medical abuse, this trauma and violence against this young girl that happened repeatedly. But then she says this: 'I was encouraged to apply for redress when I contacted CLAN in 2021, and I lodged my application in May 2022. All members of CLAN, particularly Leonie Sheedy, have been extremely supportive, with their help and understanding of the trauma I suffered as a little girl.

'My application has been refused on the grounds my state sanctioned rape has been considered a medical examination. I feel totally devastated and discriminated against. Other women in the same situation as I was placed have been granted redress. It's very distressing for me. I feel ripped apart in the same way I felt when I was a little girl taken from my mother a few short years after my father committed suicide in March 1959. The Labor government has always respected rights and equality for all Australians, without discrimination. I can't help but feel re-traumatised and assaulted a second time.'

That's the now-older woman's story about the abuse she suffered. We have an amendment that will make it clear that no future redress application which relates to the abuse that happened in virginity testing can be refused because it says, 'to avoid doubt, sexual abuse includes the examination of female genitalia, with or without consent, for the purpose or purported purpose of determining virginity'. We'd ask all parties in the chamber to support that, to listen to the voices—and that's not an isolated case—of these woman who are now in their 60s and 70s who have finally come forward and sought redress. Many of them have been refused for this reason. It shouldn't happen again.

I'll speak to another amendment we have in the course of the committee debate, but, again, I'd urge all parties to remember the royal commission. (Time expired)