Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment (Funders of Last Resort and Other Measures) Bill 2021 introduces two changes from the list of changes that the scheme needs. Namely, it allows governments to take on the role of funder of last resort if an organisation to claim against does not exist or does not have the financial capacity to participate in the scheme, and it improves the naming-and-shaming rules for institutions that do not join scheme. These changes are yet another example of the government being dragged years too late to things that could have been done immediately to improve the lives of victims-survivors. Nevertheless, these changes do represent improvements to the scheme and will be supported by Labor. At the same time, these changes will not result in a scheme that sees Australia live up to its promise to survivors. The list of important and necessary reforms is much longer than what is addressed in this bill. From the second anniversary review of the scheme alone, the number of recommendations the government has failed to make is too long to get through in the time allocated today.

Labor has spent years calling for the introduction of an early payment scheme to ensure that the elderly or unwell do not miss out on redress. The government finally came to the table a little earlier this year. It should not have taken years for the government to come around and do the right thing. It is particularly sad that this has taken so long because it doesn't even cost anything. It just brings forward part of people's payment.

While adopting early payments was an improvement to the scheme, in practice it is still leaving too many people behind. Labor is hearing too many reports of elderly survivors not receiving their advance payment or of their payment being delayed. It's important that the government get the advance payment scheme working efficiently. Survivors have waited long enough, and some do not have much more time left.

The scheme as it operates today is simply too slow to provide justice to survivors. Apart from the time taken to process applications and provide advance payments, the scheme too often takes too long to handle revocations—themselves a delay in process. Survivors deserve a scheme which focuses on their needs, their experiences and on speedy access to justice, not just on proceduralism and box ticking. The scheme as it stands also fails to provide the ongoing psychological support that survivors have been calling for. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse originally recommended this, and the changes in this bill do nothing to address these needs of survivors. In many cases, people are being provided with as little as $1,250 to cover future counselling and psychological care. Many survivors will likely need counselling and psychological care from time to time throughout their lives. A redress scheme that took the needs of survivors as its first focus would provide lifetime psychological support and counselling. That is what Labor has been calling for because that is what survivors say they need.

The government always claims that the changes needed to make the scheme everything it should be require agreements from the state. It's right. They do. But that is not a reason to stop trying. That is a reason, in fact, to take action and show leadership. The government needs to actually do the work with the states to see an increase in the payment, a fixed assessment matrix and an end to the indexation of prior payments, because that is what Australians expect and that is what survivors deserve. If the minister has found any state governments resisting doing the right thing, tell us who they are. Don't let them stand in the way of this country doing the right thing by survivors and doing it now.

Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator McAllister for her contribution on this important piece of legislation. The National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment (Funders of Last Resort and Other Measures) Bill 2021, as has already been outlined, will amend the primary legislation for the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse. The bill ensures survivors of institutional child sexual abuse who are unable to access the redress scheme due to the institution responsible for their abuse no longer existing or being unable to meet the necessary requirements to participate in the scheme can now, as a result of this, seek redress. This was a significant recommendation of the second year review, and on that basis I commend this bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.