Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

The Annual progress report 2019: implementation of recommendations from the final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is, in fact, the second progress report. I think this process of an annual report on the implementation of the recommendations is a very good idea, because it keeps this issue front and centre and puts pressure on both the Commonwealth and the states and territories to implement the findings of the report.

While the report has a number of themes—making institutions child safe; causes, support and treatment; responses to abuse; the issues around redress, which I want to come back to; criminal justice and the protection of children; and accountability and annual reporting—I don't have time in this short contribution to address all those. What I want to address are the implementations of redress and the National Redress Scheme. We continue to see problems. It has been problematic from the start. We have seen some changes there, but we are still continuing to see problems with this Redress Scheme. It was absolutely critical to survivors to get this scheme right. Unfortunately, as I said, it has been plagued by problems from the outset, many of which have not been resolved. There has been some progress—I'm going to come to that—but there are still outstanding problems, or problems to be resolved.

Many institutions have dragged their feet in joining the scheme, including charities, churches and schools. While the report does articulate that we have seen a significant improvement in the number of institutions signing up, there are still 14.6 per cent who haven't, which means that we still have 557 applications on hold because institutions have not joined the scheme. As we all know, they only had two years to join the scheme. That time limit is up at the end of June this year. That is a very short space of time to get those institutions signed up.

The fact that these institutions have not joined up is causing so much distress to survivors. There are still many unresolved issues continuing about the funder of last resort, too. I'm urging the government to work on and to press the outstanding institutions as strongly as they can to ensure they meet this June 2020 deadline. The Redress Scheme will not be truly accountable, truly delivering and truly transparent until all these institutions have joined.

In January, we learnt that at least 10 survivors, unfortunately, had passed away still waiting for an official decision on their application for redress. This highlights the level of importance to get this scheme right, right now—because people are getting to that age where, unfortunately, they're passing away. Honestly, we need to absolutely address that issue. Some of those who have passed away, as I just touched on, are elderly, and their applications are sitting there, not being processed in time to give them that redress. We should be ashamed that people are dying, still waiting.

In August last year, it was uncovered that there was a massive backlog in the processing of applications, with less than 10 per cent of applications being processed. Data that was released this year shows that the scheme is still struggling to meet demand and to process applications in a timely manner. As of January this year, just last month, the National Redress Scheme had received 5,829 applications, and 3,733 applications are still being processed. Only 975 people have received redress payments to date, and there are, as I just said, 557 applications on hold because those institutions haven't joined.

I also want to very quickly touch on the issue of counselling. Counselling was very contentious when we were debating this scheme in the chamber. I was speaking to somebody on Friday who was deeply, deeply distressed. They work with a number of people about access to counselling, particularly for First Nations people but across the board. The maximum of $5,000 simply isn't enough to deal with the years and years and years of abuse and trauma that people have suffered. It is not working. There is a mishmash across the country of how people can access the counselling, because, as senators who were here during that debate may recall, it was up to the states—and it is not working. I have not only met the stakeholder who I was talking about; I've had lots of feedback as well. The counselling process for many people is not working. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.