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

These amendments from the coalition are shameful, utterly shameful. It's as though they have learnt nothing from the royal commission, which said that this parliament and governments across the country should be survivor focused, not protect the institutions that have abused survivors. Let's be clear about what the coalition is trying to do here. The coalition is trying to shield the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church and state and territory governments who ran state-run institutions from legitimate claims from survivors of child sexual abuse, running again the case for privileged institutions over survivors of child sexual abuse and, in doing so, ignoring all the evidence from the royal commission and the learnings we have had about ensuring that what we do is survivor and victim focused.

The Redress Scheme, as initially drafted, said that if anyone was in jail or if they'd had a sentence of five years or more they were excluded from the Redress Scheme unless they could show exceptional circumstances, in the latter case. As all of the evidence from the royal commission shows and as all of the evidence from survivors has shown, during the royal commission and in the years since, overwhelmingly, victims of child sexual abuse have seen their lives turned absolutely upside down. Yes, some survivors managed to get their life back on track and, despite the abuse, managed to succeed in careers and hold their families together. And that is an incredible testament to those survivors who kept their life on track and succeeded in this traditional measures. But for far too many survivors of sexual abuse that is not what happened to their lives. The abuse led to an ongoing response to that trauma. Many of them found themselves going into the juvenile justice system, then graduated from the juvenile justice system to the adult prison system, and have spent decades in jail. At the core of that was the abuse they suffered in the institution—sometimes repeated horrific abuse in an institution. When you look at the cohorts in our prison systems around the country, far too many of them have this history of childhood trauma and abuse.

What the coalition is trying to do with these amendments is punish them twice—punish these survivors of abuse whose life has been thrown into a downward spiral because of that sexual abuse from an institution. Whether it's the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church, the Scouts, a sporting organisation or a state or territory government, the abuse has thrown their life into a downward spiral and they've found themselves suffering the consequences of that and often decades of imprisonment. Nobody is saying that there should be a complete get-out-of-jail-free card for people's lives if they've been abused. They've been punished and held to account in the criminal justice system for their actions. What the coalition is trying to do is punish them twice and take away any right they have for even a modest amount of compensation for the abuse they suffered as a child in an institution which absolutely knew better and let that abuse happen.

When the coalition comes in here and moves this amendment and tries to make it a law-and-order attack on the government, which is finally doing something decent in this space, let's be clear who the coalition are speaking for. They're speaking for the institutions that abused these children, so they don't have to pay compensation. They're speaking for the Catholic Church that abused these kids and let these kids be abused, so the Catholic Church can keep their money and not see it go to survivors of abuse. They're speaking on behalf of the Anglican Church, Scouts, Girl Guides and sporting organisations that let these children be abused when they knew better. They covered it up, they buried the evidence and they hid the abuse, and who's backing those institutions in? The coalition. The coalition have learnt nothing from the royal commission. They still put powerful institutions before victims of child sexual abuse. They're still backing in the bishops and the cardinals and the CEOs and the abusers. That's what they're doing with the amendments.

The coalition should be shamed for what they're doing. Their backbench should look at what their minister is proposing in this and have a revolt and be ashamed of what the coalition is doing here. We had a royal commission into this, and the royal commission said, 'Put survivors before the institutions.' This is part of this rhetoric that the coalition now have to turn everything into a lowest-common-denominator law-and-order fight, that somehow the Labor government is being soft on law and order because they're allowing victims of historical child sexual abuse to get a small modicum of compensation. That's somehow Labor being soft on law and order. We're going to call that out. This is actually the government listening to the royal commission, looking at the evidence in the Redress Scheme and not sinking to this lowest-common-denominator grubby politics coming from the coalition, when nothing is too low for them. They will even weaponise compensation to victims of child sexual abuse in their law-and-order attack. They should be ashamed, and they should withdraw this amendment.

They should look at the evidence in the review report. The review report said:

The restriction against prisoners applying was in part a response to concerns that confidentiality and access by support services would be difficult. However, given the Royal Commission report stated the evidence that people in jail are more likely than the general population to have been victims of child sexual abuse, the restriction on prisoners applying to the Scheme is perceived as unjust.

That is very much an understatement of the situation. The review report, when it was looking at these restrictions, said they:

… constitute a significant bar discouraging applicants and deterring other potentially eligible applicants from applying.

Yet the plan from the coalition is to actually put more hurdles in the way of survivors—perhaps the most vulnerable cohort of survivors—who have seen their life spin out of control and who haven't had the career and the jobs and the stability that we would hope that all kids would have. Why not? Because, at the core, they were abused by an institution that society trusted. We were wrong to trust those institutions, and we were wrong to prioritise those institutions over survivors. I thought we'd learnt that—but not this mob.