Mrs WICKS (Robertson) (12:01): On behalf of the Standing Committee on Petitions, I present the committee's report entitled Making voices heard—Inquiry into the e-petitioning system of the House of Representatives Petitions Committee, together with minutes of proceedings and evidence received by the committee.

Report made a parliamentary paper in accordance with standing order 39(e).

Mrs WICKS: by leave—Today, I present the report for the inquiry into the e-petitioning system of the House of Representatives Petitions Committee entitled Making voices heard. When e-petitioning was introduced to the House at the commencement of the 45th Parliament, the aim was to engage more Australians in the petition process, many of whom were already used to accessing public services online. With over 300 e-petitions certified at the conclusion of the committee's inquiry, it is clear that the House e-petitions system has been successful in engaging Australians in petitioning the House. The committee's inquiry examined what is working well with the e-petitions system and how the system might be improved and enhanced. In doing so, the committee considered the experiences of jurisdictions around Australia and overseas that have also introduced e-petitioning.

Most importantly, the committee heard directly from users of the House e-petitions system and spoke with stakeholders interested in the e-petitioning process. Users generally praised the introduction of the e-petitions system but considered there were some aspects of it that could be improved. Much of the feedback, however, focused on how the system could be made simpler and more accessible for all users.

The committee found it valuable to hear about the experience of e-petitioning in parliaments around Australia and overseas. In particular, the committee extends its thanks to representatives of the parliaments of the Australian Capital Territory and Tasmania, who took time to speak to the committee in public hearings. We also heard from a very enthusiastic group of year 5 and year 6 students from St Anthony's Catholic Primary School in Marsfield, Sydney. This was a highlight of the inquiry. It was a delight to hear how the students valued petitioning in the House, and it showed how petitioning can be used even by young Australians. The committee drew on their very helpful suggestions for improving the e-petitions system in formulating some of its recommendations to the House.

The committee has proposed initial changes designed to improve the user experience of the e-petitions system and provide greater accessibility for all Australians, within current resources. Some issues raised during the inquiry were relevant to the practice and procedures for petitioning the House more broadly. The committee considers that these issues could be explored in a future inquiry into the role of the House Petitions Committee and the procedural framework of petitioning.

I would like to express my thanks to the Deputy Chair, the member for Richmond, and also to my colleagues on the committee for their ongoing support of petitioning in the House and for their hard work and professionalism. I also acknowledge the previous chair, the member for Bonner, who launched the inquiry on the committee's behalf.

On behalf of the committee, I warmly extend my thanks to the inquiry participants who prepared submissions and who gave their time to the committee. It was important to hear such informed perspectives from a variety of stakeholders, including individuals, school children, organisations and parliaments from other jurisdictions. On behalf of the Petitions Committee, I thank all Australians who have enthusiastically lodged an e-petition or signed an e-petition to the House. I commend the e-petitions process and this report to the House.

Mrs ELLIOT (Richmond) (12:05): by leave—I'm pleased to also be speaking on our Petitions Committee report relating to the inquiry Making voices heard—Inquiry into the e-petitioning system of the House of Representatives Petitions Committee. The inquiry examined the introduction of electronic petitioning and the public's response to it. Petitions generally—in whatever format, paper or electronic—are a really valuable way for individuals and communities to engage with all levels of government about issues that are important to them. In this day and age of increasing social media, it's vitally important that the parliament has adopted e-petitions, because we as parliamentarians know how increasing our interactions with constituents are through all these growing social media platforms.

Electronic petitioning has been discussed for a number of years, as e-petitioning was quite rightly seen as a means of reinvigorating petitioning the House and allowing people to generate support for their petitions online. It was great to see that, after a number of years in development, e-petitioning was introduced during the 45th Parliament. This inquiry allowed the committee to reflect on how the e-petition system has been received by both members of parliament and members of the general public. The committee looked at what was working well with the e-petition system and what could be done to improve that system.

The committee acknowledges all the users of e-petition system, and thanks those who made submissions to the inquiry or took time out to complete the online user survey. The survey received 293 responses. The committee received 18 submissions and two supplementary submissions to the inquiry. The committee held three public hearings in Canberra for the inquiry. As the committee Chair referred to, it also included hearing from a group of enthusiastic primary school students via video link from Marsfield in Sydney. It was great to see years 5 and 6 students engaging with the petitions process and the wider workers of the House. The committee also heard from a number of other parliaments about their e-petitions experiences, including from the Scottish Parliament, the House of Commons in Canada, the House of Representatives in New Zealand, the House of Commons in the UK and the Committee on Petitions of the European Parliament.

Since the introduction of e-petitioning to this parliament, the number of e-petitions presented to the House has closely matched or exceeded the number of paper petitions over the same period. What a great result that people are embracing it. The committee believes e-petitioning will continue to grow as people use social media and other online platforms to gain support for their causes. The changes to the e-petition system proposed by the committee aim to make submitting or signing an e-petition easier for all users. It is a great initiative in terms of having e-petitioning encouraging all Australians to get more involved their parliament and make their voices heard.

I would like to conclude by thanking the Chair, the member for Robertson, and all members of the committee who embraced the opportunities around electronic petitioning. I know all members of the House are committed to improving electronic petitioning. I would also like to thank the secretariat for their work in terms of this inquiry and, indeed, at all times for the committee as well. I think e-petitioning has a great future under this parliament and provides so many more opportunities for the general public to engage with their government.

Ms McGOWAN (Indi) (12:09): I was three-quarters of the way through this speech on Thursday when we ran out of time, so I am continuing today. I had been acknowledging the CLAN group of care leavers in my electorate. I had been talking about the impact of the royal commission and, in particular, the impact of the diocese of Sandhurst, which is in my electorate. I had got to the stage in my speech where I was talking about the role of alternative models of redress that were being used by the Victorian Women's Trust and I was about to outline three principles that the Victorian Women's Trust has found useful. They talked about them in their publication The paradox of service. The three main principles that they use are: having a champion in your corner, transparency of institutionalised responses and education about the nature of abuse.

I will take a few minutes to talk about the importance of having a champion in your corner. The Victorian Women's Trust talks about the experience they've had with nuns who have left religious orders. The trust talks about their ability to advocate on behalf of the nuns to get appropriate redress. They said that each of the formerly religious people have been able to rely every step of the way on having an advocate who is trusted and effective in representing their position and in their efforts to gain some personal relief.

The trust also talks about a significant aspect of this experience: religious orders have come some way in profound recognition for past hurt. In a large measure this is because they've not just had to listen in the right spirit to the formerly religious people but also had to deal with trusted brokers with a commitment to see some form of redress. That seems to me to be a really important element in what we're trying do with the survivors that we're addressing today with this redress system: the need to have a champion in your corner—someone who'll stand up for you.

The second principle is the transparency of institutionalised responses. It can't just be done in private. We need public recognition from our institutions that serious hurt has been caused, that they are going to make appropriate changes to the way they do things and that they are going to work with survivors to improve the situation—not just to make it better, but to actually improve the situation. While I understand some of the institutions have gone some way in this regard, I think there is a lot more in terms of humility and in terms of practical signs of sorrow that they could show to our survivors.

The third principle is education about the nature of abuse. Again, this is a major area I think we need to do a whole lot more work on, particularly the major religious institutions. There are many recommendations in the royal commission about what the institutions should do to improve the education, the culture and the understanding within our institutions about what causes abuse, why it happens and to then make the necessary changes that it never ever happens again.

In bringing my comments to a close, I would really like to acknowledge the work of the care leavers in my electorate, to Rhonda and her team—what a fantastic job you've done—and to say how grateful I am for the work that they do. My final comment is to use the dictionary definition of 'redress'. Redress means to rectify, to repair, to cure and to heal. My hope is that, in passing this legislation, we are able to do that in some way to the many, many survivors of our institutions. I'd like to finish by acknowledging, honouring and thanking them for their resilience, their persistence, their empathy, their tolerance, their patience and, most of all, their courage.

Mr MARLES (Corio) (12:13): With a degree of concern and with a heavy dose of sadness, but ultimately with a complete sense of amazement, I stand here today in support of the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018. I've been connected to the issue of those fellow Australians—half a million of them—who grew up in orphanages around Australia for as long as any issue I've been connected with in this place. Indeed, I started my connection with this issue prior to becoming elected to the House of Representatives. I was the preselected candidate for the electorate of Corio when Leonie Sheedy, director of the Care Leavers Australia Network, affectionately known as CLAN, rang me and told me about this issue. She said I had an obligation to make this a key part of my work in this place and she invited me to become a patron of CLAN. This was out of the blue. I wasn't sure what to make of this phone call, but, after two hours, I absolutely signed up.

The basis on which she said I had a particular obligation to become a patron of CLAN was the particular story of Geelong—the city on which my electorate is based—as to those who grew up in orphanages. There were more orphanages in Geelong than in any other non-capital city in Australia. That means, I suppose, that today there is a higher proportion of those who have grown up in orphanages in my electorate than in perhaps any other in the country. The issue of those people who have been in orphanages and the abuse that they have suffered is a national story, but there is a very strong Geelong story which is a part of it. It became clear to me that being a patron of CLAN was something that I needed to do.

It was also a point of connection with an existing member of the class of 2007, Jason Clare, the member for Blaxland, who also knew Leonie Sheedy and became a patron of CLAN at the same time. Very quickly, Jason and I teamed up in providing advocacy around this issue. Now there are many people in this place and in the other place who are patrons of CLAN.

Those who grew up in orphanages suffered sexual abuse, as has been outlined by the royal commission. But it was more than that. People were removed from their families—often from situations of no more than simple poverty—and placed in large institutions where there was an absence of familial love. The point that Leonie made to me is that the overwhelming, consistent feature that has been experienced by everyone who has grown up in an orphanage is that: an absence of familial love—not being seen as being special to anyone, which is at the heart of a healthy childhood and something that those of us who have grown up in families take completely for granted.

In 2009, along with Steve Irons, the member for Swan, and Senator Claire Moore, we worked with the minister for family and community services at the time, the member for Jagajaga, on having an apology made to the forgotten Australians and the former child migrants. This occurred in 2009 in this building, and it was a remarkable day—a day soaked with tears, but a day on which, for the first time, people who had horrendous stories, which they had been telling all their lives and which, by and large, had not been listened to, finally were acknowledged as having told the truth.

In November 2012, the then Gillard government followed up the apology by announcing the establishment of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The final report of that royal commission was handed down in December of last year. It recommends the establishment of a national redress scheme, which is, of course, the subject of the bill that we are debating today.

The royal commission was a remarkable phenomenon for the country and for those who participated in it, many of whom I have spoken to. It was a place of pain. It was an unexpected place, which took this story in directions that none of us thought it would go. But ultimately it was a place of healing. The ability to have individual stories told and listened to and acted upon was deeply powerful. To this day, I think that the royal commission stands as one of the lasting achievements of the Gillard government.

So, as I stand here today, I'm filled with emotion. I'm filled with emotion about the journey that it has taken to get to this point. I'm filled with emotion in thinking about the people who I've met along the way—people who, when you look at the cards that they were dealt in life, were given a horrendous set of options for their life and yet faced up to them with enormous bravery and determination and, in the process, changed our nation. They are the bravest people I have met in this role. They are the people from whom I have taken the most inspiration in what I do here. This makes this debate that's going on in the House today enormously significant.

I do have mixed emotions, because there are aspects of this legislation which are not perfect. The quantum which is being provided via this legislation is $50,000 less than that which was recommended by the royal commission. It's a pity that the full $200,000 was not provided as the cap. The indexation provision for those people who have received payouts via other actions previously feels unfair. That indexation over a number of years, measured against what payment may be available through this process, may see some people getting not much at all. It would be better if that were changed. Part of the story, very sadly, of those who have grown up in orphanages, those who have suffered sexual abuse as children, is the path that it set them on in their lives, and often that is a path that has led to incarceration for themselves. It is a very significant number. It is a community that is overrepresented in our custodial institutions, and that people with significant criminal records will be prevented from gaining compensation through this redress scheme is also a pity. It denies a fundamental justice to people who started their lives with profound bad luck. The other point to make—and it goes back to the terms of reference for the royal commission to begin with—is that this only relates to people who have suffered sexual abuse. There were, of course, so many other forms of abuse which occurred for people in orphanages, and they are not part of this scheme.

That said, this redress scheme, and that it will be happening on 1 July this year, is hugely significant. It is a hugely significant moment, and I can barely believe that, from the time that Leonie Sheedy first said to me that this is what needed to occur, and it seemed to me unlikely that it ever would, we stand here in this place in a bipartisan way, knowing that a national redress scheme will be in place from 1 July this year for those who grew up in orphanages who suffered child sexual abuse. Of all that I've seen in this place over the last decade, that is as remarkable a set of events and as remarkable an achievement as I have witnessed, and I spend a moment to contemplate that.

I want to acknowledge the Minister for Social Services, the member for Wannon, for what he has done in bringing the redress scheme to a point of conclusion, to a point of operation. He deserves credit. I want to acknowledge the member for Jagajaga. From the outset, she was the person who carried the policy debate. She did so with wisdom and practicality, but she did so with an enormous sense of purpose, and her judgements in dealing with difficult issues were done with a sincerity and an integrity which represent a form of inspiration, I think, for all of us in this place who seek to represent Australians through the political process. She is an inspiration for our calling.

I want to acknowledge Leonie Sheedy, who is the head of CLAN. She is a force of nature. Her own story is tragic, and she has had her own personal demons to deal with throughout her life, and it would have been understandable if it had taken her down a more destructive road. But instead she has created a phenomenon. She is compassionate, she is generous, she has empathy, she has determination, and the number of hours that she has spent listening to the stories of those who have suffered renders her an angel. The achievement of the national redress scheme is as much hers as it is that of any person in this nation, and she deserves to be very much acknowledged at this moment.

But I want, finally, to remember her brother Anthony Sheedy, because Anthony is a person who will miss out. Anthony was dealt just the most appalling set of cards during his life in orphanages, and this was detailed in a wonderful piece written by Danny Lannen in the Geelong Advertiser. He says Anthony:

… became state ward 69411 and his 16-year journey to adulthood was spent within 10 institutions, including Geelong's St Augustine's boys home.

He entered these institutions at the age of two. Anthony tells this story from when he was 12:

"I first saw my parents at 12 years when they came to see me at St Augustine's. I didn't believe the Christian brother who told me to go upstairs to get dressed to see your parents.

"I said no because I didn't think they were my real parents. So I got the strap by the Brother and forced by his hand to go to the front door.

"My mother said 'Why are you crying?' I said 'Brother hit me for being naughty', as this is what the Brother had told me to say."

That was not the beginning, at the age of 12, of a wonderful homecoming: Anthony's parents left that day and he stayed at St Augustine's. He continued to live there.

Danny takes the story up again of Anthony, aged 15. He said:

He told of being held in solitary confinement at Melbourne's Turana home, forced to sleep on a mattress with no blanket, and of being transferred as a young teen by train from Turana to Bendigo Training Centre in handcuffs.

He told of beatings and sexual abuse by fellow state wards and the people charged with his care …

That began a life that Anthony lived on the edge. For 30 years—for 30 years!—he didn't see any of his siblings. It was a life that was soaked with alcohol, which he ultimately weaned himself off in his late 40s because he had seen so many others go down a path of ultimate destruction by pursuing the drink. He said:

"My life has been terrible. I have been lonely just about all my life until I was 62 years old.

It was at that age that he opened, after six months, a letter that had been sent by his sister Leonie, who was in search of him. It gave him nine years of comfort, a number of which were spent volunteering in my office. The person we knew was actually cheeky, he was cheerful, he was diligent, he was a keen supporter of the Geelong Football Club, he loved Frank Sinatra and he loved talking about Frank. In fact, he would continue to talk as much as we would let him talk.

On 22 June 2011, Anthony died very suddenly. He died on the very day that a letter, sent by his lawyers, for a settlement conference for compensation had arrived at his house. He will not get compensation. He is one of thousands of those who grew up in orphanages for whom 1 July is too late. This is a day on which we need to remember Anthony and everyone like him. Ultimately, for its failings, this scheme is a huge achievement for this country; it will make an enormous difference for thousands of Australians. In the process, though, today I remember Anthony Sheedy.

Ms CATHERINE KING (Ballarat) (12:28): I join with many colleagues in this place to talk on the National Redress Scheme, and I want to commend the member for Corio for his contribution. Anthony's story is one of many, many, many that men and women have told. Anthony is one of many who went through appalling abuse in our orphanages and our institutions whom we have lost and for whom this compensation scheme, this redress scheme, comes too late. It is their voices we hear echoing through this chamber, and it is important that we have resolve to get this done.

My community of Ballarat, of course, knows too well the legacy of child sexual abuse. There have been countless cases highlighted through the royal commission. The Ballarat cases warranted their own part of the commission's inquiry, their own booklet as part of the inquiry, as there were so many of them. There will be others who have never come forward to this day and have never spoken about their abuse, and there are many others who we have lost to suicide or early death. Our community has had an incredibly deep hurt inflicted through its heart, a hurt that lingers to this day and will take generations to heal. Child sexual abuse hurts everyone in a community. It affects every one of us, from the children growing to adults through to their children and their partners. It affects our police, our welfare workers and our teachers—all of us. That is why the royal commission has been so important: shining a light on what has occurred and providing a powerful symbol to the many, many survivors, that they are heard and believed across the breadth and the depth of this nation—that we believe you.

At hearings across the country, the royal commission heard from tens of thousands of Australians and shone a light on a shameful part of our history—a part of our history that has been ignored and denied for too long. In Ballarat I attended these hearings and I saw personally both the hurt and the strength of those who told their stories. I echo the member for Corio's words, that these men and women are some of the bravest people I know. There was the sight of some of these men attending Rome when Cardinal George Pell had been unable, or unwilling, to attend Australia to be part of those hearings. The survivors in Ballarat went to Rome to highlight that case and to speak with him, to encourage him to come and tell what he knew. They are some of the bravest people I know.

Of course, when Prime Minister Gillard established the royal commission, it was more than about symbols. It was established to provide redress and to make changes across all policy areas to ensure the protection of children and to make sure this does not happen again. In recognition of this important role, the commission deliberately handed down an interim report on redress so that the policy work on implementing such a scheme was not delayed. While this legislation has been a long time coming, it's an important step. And while I respect the complexity of negotiating such a scheme on behalf of the many people of my electorate who this affects directly, it would be remiss of me not to point out its shortcomings.

This is not the redress scheme recommended by the royal commission. When I talk to survivors, there are several things that they tell me. One is that the constant retelling of their stories to health professional after health professional and counsellor after counsellor perpetuates the harm. They need ongoing, lifelong access to counselling and other health services that provide them with dignity and continuity of care. They need recognition financially that many have lost jobs, housing and financial security—if they were ever able to get these in the first place—and it's been a direct result of the trauma that they experienced. This scheme does some of that, but falls well short of what many in the community need and expected.

While we are still trying from this side to seek improvements to this legislation, we are deeply conscious that many survivors have already been waiting too long and that the scheme is due to start on 1 July. My criticisms of the scheme are already on record, but they include, firstly, the government's decision to allow states and institutions to opt in, which, in essence, handed over all of the negotiating power to them. It's resulted in the Commonwealth having to make substantial concessions to get them into the scheme. We still do not have all states or institutions in.

There is no excuse for any of these bodies not to sign up to this scheme. No institution could possibly justify a decision not to offer the redress that means so much to more than 60,000 survivors of institutional sexual abuse. The failure of some institutions to sign up to the scheme adds a further hurdle to many survivors. The failure of some institutions means that, despite no recommendation from the royal commission, the government's bill states that only one application to the redress scheme can be made for each survivor. That means that some survivors may have to make the difficult choice of whether to delay pursuing a claim in the hope that all institutions responsible for the abuse sign up, or deciding to access redress when only one or some of them have opted in. This would be a particularly difficult decision for the survivors who are nearing the later years of their lives.

Secondly, one of the concessions that the government has made to get states and institutions into the scheme has resulted in the maximum cap for redress claims being watered down. Whereas the royal commission recommended a $200,000 maximum for redress claims, the bills before the House specifically say that the maximum available will be $150,000. This amount is important not only because of the possibility that the amount of redress offers but because those who accept an offer of redress made under the scheme will lose their right to make a civil claim against the institutions responsible for their abuse. I've heard countless stories of survivors of abuse who have never been able to work or who have in later years lost jobs and businesses and are suffering from significant financial insecurity. While redress is not a compensation scheme, it should also not be so low as to afford little recognition of this harm. The issue of indexation of previous payments made is also of significant concern, meaning that there will be some recipients who are entitled to redress actually ending up receiving absolutely nothing, because of the indexation of past payments.

One of the more contentious measures of the original legislation has been improved but is still of concern. The government has now allowed that people imprisoned for five years or more may be considered eligible for the scheme so long as providing the person with redress does not bring the scheme into disrepute. As someone who spent the early part of their career working with people in prisons and youth training centres, I get it—they have often done terrible acts and committed unforgivable crimes—but I also know that very few of them that I worked with had not experienced some form of abuse, some of them sexual abuse, while in the care of institutions. There is considerable evidence that a history of childhood abuse and trauma can increase the likelihood that an adult will engage in criminal behaviour. The later decisions and crimes of these survivors do nothing to negate the abuse that they as innocent children suffered. This childhood trauma may have been a significant cause that led to their later crimes. These bills seek to potentially deny them justice and redress.

Thirdly, the bills also go against the recommendations of the royal commission regarding access to counselling. The commission recommended access to counselling and psychological care be provided for the rest of their lives if required and not be limited to a lump sum payment. These bills fall far short of this. The bills state that either counselling will be provided through an existing state service for the life of the scheme or a payment for counselling of up to $5,000 will be made to the survivor. This is one of the key areas I think the government needs to rethink. Survivors who've suffered abuse at the hands of state-run institutions may not be able to or wish to use state- or institution-run services. This needs to be taken into account by states when delivering these services. In such a case, the $5,000 payment will not be adequate to provide access to lifelong support. As I said at the commencement of my contribution, it is this issue that is so important to ensuring the future health and wellbeing of survivors. The government has not got this right in this legislation. It is deeply unfair and it does not recognise the incredible harm done.

Labor has long argued that the recommendations of the royal commission should be implemented as intended and that no changes be made that limit the benefits the scheme offers to survivors around Australia. In light of these many concerns, Labor has referred these bills to a Senate inquiry so that the community can be consulted more thoroughly before a vote is taken. As a gesture of good faith in our ongoing discussions with the government to resolve these concerns and in acknowledgement of our longstanding commitment to the establishment of a national redress scheme, Labor will support, as the member for Jagajaga said, the bills in the House today, but we need to do much better.

On 24 May in my local newspaper, the Ballarat Courier, some survivors spoke about their disappointment with the redress scheme. As I conclude my contribution I want to quote from that so that their voices are heard here in this chamber. Gary Sculley said:

The redress is quite poor in a way, going against a lot of the Royal Commission recommendations and whittling it down to the point where it is insulting.

…   …   …

Survivors are put in a position now where it's basically take the redress, go away and die; it is appalling …

Stephen Woods said that there is so much frustration and anger. He said:

The survivors and families … we are all still holding on.

Like so many others, my life has been a small percentage of the potential I have, of what I could have achieved.

They are important words for us to hear. Whilst I don't want to underestimate the moment that we have here of actually achieving a national redress scheme, I have to speak for the many voices of the men and women of my community who have been so deeply affected. This isn't the scheme that the royal commission recommended. We do need to do better, particularly in the area of access to counselling and other healthcare services for the lives of these men and women. We know many of them have been deeply traumatised by what happened and are deeply traumatised still to this day. Every day of the commission, and every day this is debated in this place, more and more of them talk about the harm done. They are exhausted by the process. They want us to get this done, but they also want to make sure that what we do is right by them.

As I say, whilst we'll support these bills, it's important for us to hear where the scheme needs to be improved, and it's important for us to hear the words of the many survivors. It's important for us to remember that, whilst the commission has done its work and it's concluded its work, ours has only just started and we still have a very long way to go. I thank the House.

Ms CLAYDON (Newcastle) (12:40): I rise today to contribute also to this important debate on the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018 and the associated National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2018. Together these bills establish a national redress scheme which, to a very large extent, mirrors the recommendations made by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, an inquiry that was established by the former Gillard Labor government back in 2012 to investigate decades of the most appalling sexual abuse and terrible violence in institutions across Australia.

I want to acknowledge at the outset that, if it were not for the courage, tenacity and persistence of survivors, this royal commission would not have happened and we would not be standing here debating the creation of a national redress scheme in the Australian parliament today. To the survivors, I want to say: while we took far too long to respond to your pain and suffering, to expose the nature and extent of the systemic violence, abuse and cover-ups, and to ensure that your voices were heard and believed, the establishment of a national redress scheme is a critical part of the healing process for both you and, indeed, our nation. The scheme before the parliament today will give victims and survivors of child sexual abuse access to three elements of redress, including a monetary payment, access to counselling and psychological services, and the opportunity to have a direct personal apology from the institution responsible for the abuse.

The life and work of the Royal Commission is deeply embedded in the Newcastle and Hunter region. In communities that I and my neighbouring Labor colleagues live in and represent, there are few who don't know somebody who bears the scars of this appalling abuse, perpetrated by the very organisations that should have protected them as children. Indeed, a lot of the reporting that helped build the case for the royal commission was printed over many years in the pages of my local newspaper, the Newcastle Herald. Much of that was written by the Herald journalist Joanne McCarthy, who pursued one of the most formidable investigations of abuse on behalf of local victims and survivors. Over many hundreds of articles, Ms McCarthy documented terrible cases of both abhorrent abuse and callous, cynical cover-ups by many of the most respected people in some of the most trusted institutions in our community. This truly was journalism at its finest, and in today's era of fake news we must never forget the critically important role that a free press has in shining a light in the darkest corners of our society and calling wrongdoers to account.

The shocking cases that were uncovered by Ms McCarthy, along with revelations from a local detective inspector, Peter Fox, contributed significantly to the former Prime Minister Julia Gillard's decision to launch the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in November 2012. This was a marathon campaign, and I again pay my tributes to all of those people who found the courage to speak out at a time when their voices were at best questioned and, indeed, many times rebuked.

In launching the royal commission, Prime Minister Gillard gave a voice to the tens of thousands of survivors of abuse, who not only had their childhoods ripped away from them but who had been repeatedly accused of malice or deceit when they dared to speak out. The royal commission allowed survivors to tell their stories, without judgement, for the first time. In doing so, it lifted the veil of secrecy and revealed shameful systemic abuse, enabled by an insidious culture of cover-ups that lay deep at the heart of so many religious institutions, not-for-profit bodies and state care providers and agencies.

Since 2012, more than 16,000 people have made contact with the commission and it heard more than 8,000 personal stories face to face. It is a dangerous path to single out any voice in that royal commission but I do want to pay a special tribute to former Anglican bishop Greg Thompson, who, in the course of his duty of trying to take care of a diocese reeling from the trauma that was being spoken of on a daily basis in front of the royal commission and in our media, revealed that he too was a victim of child sexual abuse—had been groomed through the Anglican Church and abused by the very people in the diocese he later came to govern as bishop. I raise that case because Bishop Greg Thompson knows full well the impact of people who questioned your motives for talking about that abuse. He was dealt great resistance from the diocese he represented. It is to my great sorrow and regret that we, as a community, were clearly unable to provide him with enough support to remain in that role. He has now retired and I have no doubt he will go on to ensure that justice and redress are sought, and he'll continue that work in many ways. It is one example of just how difficult cultural change comes in these institutions, that we were unable to lend the support required for him to retain his role when he dared speak up, when he drew a line saying zero tolerance to sexual abuse in the diocese of Newcastle. When he insisted that the culture of the Anglican diocese had to change, the resistance and pushback he felt were astonishing.

My community is now under the leadership of a new bishop, who, thankfully, shares many of those concerns. I know he will be working tirelessly to ensure that the diocese of Newcastle is reformed so that the culture that enabled that abuse to take place, that enabled that silence to be normalised in some way, is intolerable. The community will not stand for it any more and the church must change. They know that and I know they are making serious attempts to do that. But everybody is on notice that the entire community is watching very carefully the institutional cultural changes that must happen.

As a result of the royal commission, more than 2,500 individuals were reported to authorities and it's estimated there are some 60,000 victims and survivors of abuse that occurred in as many as 4,000 institutions across the country. Those figures are just staggering. The extent and the scale of that systemic abuse is truly shocking. This was reiterated in the final report, which stretches to tens of thousands of pages across 17 volumes and contains more than 400 recommendations. Eighty-two of the final recommendations related directly to the establishment of a National Redress Scheme as a fundamental right of survivors and a critical part of the healing process.

As I mentioned earlier, the courage of survivors who shared their stories cannot be overstated. Their contribution to calling out and putting an end to appalling systemic abuse will never be forgotten. Now, it is time for justice to be delivered. While no-one suggests that the redress scheme can make up for the pain and trauma of the past, it will lay foundations; it is the start of our making amends. In establishing this scheme, we must be unswervingly focused on ensuring that every decision we make is in the best interests of the victims and survivors of this abuse. That is the prism through which we must consider this bill and all of the work we do in this space. I understand that the bill before us today is the outcome of negotiated agreements with the New South Wales and Victorian governments. It will supersede the earlier Commonwealth legislation. Every state, aside from Western Australia, has now signed up to the scheme, which is excellent news. The scheme, of course, only works if it is truly national. I again welcome the calls this morning from some of the Anglican churches and others who are urging all of their groups across the nation to sign up to this scheme.

Labor was first to announce support for a national redress scheme when it was recommended by the royal commission's interim report back in 2015. We know that the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse in institutions waited decades for that royal commission, and we know that they should not be waiting any longer than necessary for an adequate and just scheme to be put in place. As previous speakers have said before me, whilst Labor will be supporting the bills before us, it is not without concern and there are some very real areas that need further investigation, on behalf of government, to make this redress scheme the very best it can be. One of those areas is the issue around the maximum redress value. We know the royal commission recommended that be set at $200,000. This bill only allows for a monetary value of $150,000. I remain unconvinced by the government's argument that this can't be revisited, and I would strongly urge some rethinking in this area.

Likewise, the issue of indexation is proving to be extremely problematic for survivors. Certainly, under this bill, any payment offered under the redress scheme would take into account any payments received for institutional child sexual abuse. Whilst that component is fair, the notion that we would somehow be indexing those payments over time has very real implications for survivors, where we may in fact end up in a situation where there is virtually nothing left in the redress scheme for those people. A payment indexed annually for decades-old payments could see survivors ending up with a pittance, and that would be an unjust outcome. I don't think anybody in this chamber thinks that's a fair outcome. That needs some rethinking from the government. On the time frames for acceptance, I'd also like to see the government reconsider the period of time that survivors are given to decide whether to accept a redress offer or not. While the royal commission recommended a year, this bill only allows for six months.

The other area of concern for Labor is the decision that survivors who have been given a custodial sentence of five years or more must apply for special permission in order to access the scheme. We believe this is unfair. I know that there are some very difficult cases that the redress scheme will have to deal with; I've no doubt about that. As much of the evidence made clear in the royal commission, people weren't offenders when they were children; they were just children who were sexually abused and they went on to lead lives of great trauma. For many, many reasons, there is an incredibly disproportionate group of survivors of child sexual abuse who now find themselves in the criminal justice system. The idea of somehow excluding those people from the redress scheme is unfair and problematic, and I think that the government would do well to revisit that decision

The final issue I now raise relates to the provision of counselling. Under the royal commission's recommendations, survivors would have access to counselling and psychological services for as long as they need. I cannot stress enough the importance of that. People need lifetime access, because we have no idea whether people are going to need access in six months time or 10 years time. That should be available to people in the same way as we don't ask veterans to put a time limit on post-traumatic stress; we enable free and lifelong access. The same privilege should be afforded to victims of child sexual abuse. I trust the government will work with Labor on all these matters and also the issue of the funder of last resort. We will support this bill but will continue to work tirelessly with the government for a fairer and more just outcome for victims of child sexual abuse.

Ms RISHWORTH (Kingston) (12:55): I am very pleased to be able to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, as this issue about the effect that child sexual abuse in institutions around this country has had has been something that I have worked with survivors in my own electorate to address, discuss and shed light upon. I was incredibly proud to stand as part of the Gillard government in 2013 when we announced the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Many people had been calling for this for some time. Quite frankly, once we saw the outcome of that royal commission, as the evidence and information provided started to snowball, it galvanised everyone's view that this was so important, timely and critical. Over five years the commission held 57 public hearings over 44 days, and heard evidence from more than 1,300 witnesses.

I need to place on record here thanks to all of those that shared their personal stories. It is really hard to talk about yourself. As politicians we come in here and advocate on behalf of others; it is much more confronting to talk about your own personal experiences, especially when they are such private experiences that have been associated with such difficulties, personal shame and a whole range of other emotions. It is so difficult to talk about those, and I need to acknowledge here in this place those survivors that got up and were able to share their stories. When I spoke to a number of those survivors, I found that their motivation wasn't for themselves; it was to make sure that this never happened again, that no other child had to endure what they had to endure. I think that needs to be placed on the record—that this was for many a very brave and difficult moment, motivated by not only telling their story and seeking justice for themselves but also trying to make sure that this never happened again. I would like to thank on record all of those that were brave enough to tell their story.

I would also like to thank all those advocates who, even before the royal commission, had been advocating so powerfully for these stories to come out, for government to do something to address the wrongs of the past. Many organisations have been part of that. CLAN, led by Leonie Sheedy, has been one of those. They have done an amazing job at ensuring that governments dealt with this issue instead of forgetting it, ignoring it or pushing it under the carpet. I place on record my great thanks to them because, as a result of their bravery and advocacy, we now have these important pieces of legislation before the House today.

The National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018 and the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2018 are critically important, and I am very pleased to be supporting them today. I am pleased that the majority of states and territories have come on board. It does need to be a national redress scheme, so I would absolutely urge that the government continues to negotiate with those states that have not signed up and that it continues to pursue this. We need a truly national redress scheme. We also need a redress scheme that is in line with the recommendation of the royal commission. Labor were very clear once the recommendation came out from the royal commission that we supported a national redress scheme. We were very clear about it, and that is why we want to work constructively with the government to make sure that it comes to fruition.

Labor has some concerns, and I certainly have some concerns, with the current bill. In particular, most of us are concerned about the limitation on access to counselling for the survivors. I think anyone who listened to the stories that were presented to the royal commission and who spoke with any of those individuals would have to acknowledge that this abuse has had lifelong consequences. It has affected many, many aspects of those individuals' lives. There is grief that comes with it about 'what could have been'. 'What could my life have been like without this terrible situation that happened to me?' 'What have I lost as a result?' It is a deeply difficult issue to deal with. I don't think it's too much to ask that those individuals get proper access to counselling in a way that actually helps them address the issues that they face. Therefore, I absolutely understand that the royal commission did recommend that recipients of redress be able to access counselling for the rest of their life. However, this bill only provides access to state-provided services for the length of the scheme or a payment of up to $5,000 to be put towards counselling.

As I have said, these circumstances are woefully inadequate. I certainly join with the shadow minister and the rest of Labor to call on the government to give assurances that this will be addressed. I think survivors often consider that government is responsible for their abuse and do not wish to use state or institution-run services, and this does need to be taken into account by the states when delivering services. This is something which we do need to work on with our state colleagues to address. For survivors who receive the $5,000 payment, this amount of money will not provide adequate access to services. So I call on the government and urge the government, as previous speakers have done, to seriously address this issue. We need to seriously look at the upper limit that we place on the amount of redress. The upper limit set by this bill is $150,000. The royal commission recommends that the maximum payment be $200,000. I guess we need to understand the logic that the government has made for not implementing the full recommendation. Why aren't we seeing the royal commission's recommendation in full and why aren't we seeing the maximum payment of $200,000?

Also, we have concerns that the bill gives applicants only six months to make this decision, while the royal commission recommends a year. Once again, it is unclear as to why the government has chosen this limit. I think we do need to acknowledge that, for many people, this is a deeply distressing process. It is difficult to take that first step, to take the second step or to take the third step in the redress process. So, limiting this time does put, I think, a large amount of pressure on individuals that is just not necessary. Why will the government not just accept the royal commission's 12-month period? There are a number of other issues that have been raised, and certainly I support Labor's concerns in this regard. We want to see the government work in way in which we can actually achieve a really good step towards a truly national redress scheme.

In conclusion, I want to draw the House's attention to an area that was a direct result of the Commonwealth's mismanagement. A lot of the institutionalised sexual abuse that we saw was in churches and other religious institutions, as well as in state-run institutions. But, of course, the royal commission also looked into and examined the Department of Defence, and the ADF's responses to allegations of child sexual abuse at some of the institutions that were directly operated by the Commonwealth and the ADF. They concluded that from the 1960s to 1972 the system of management at HMAS Leeuwin was ineffective in preventing and responding to child sexual abuse. The Royal Navy failed in its duty to care for junior recruits who were children.

It was also found that there was a failure to adequately address harmful bullying conduct and that the culture of intimidation by older apprentices and staff represented a failure in duty of care by the Army to provide a safe environment for junior apprentices at the Australian Army Apprentices School at Balcombe. Further, during the 1970s and 1980s the system of management at Balcombe was ineffective in preventing and responding to abuse, a failure in management which allowed sexual abuse to occur.

At the time of the public hearing of the royal commission, the approach taken by DVA in assessing claims for child abuse at these two locations was incorrect in requiring assessors to reject any claim that was not supported by independently corroborated evidence. Following the hearing, Defence confirmed that DVA had put into effect a new policy for determining claims for child abuse. So we can see that evidence that occurred in the royal commission about abuse that happened directly as a result of the Commonwealth's mismanagement has now led to a change in process, and that is critically important in moving forward.

The royal commission also found that the impact of abuse on these individuals has been lifelong and severe, and include physical injury, mental illness, suicide attempts, alcohol abuse and broken relationships. It found that, since at least 2000, policy guidelines and training manuals of the ADF cadets were incomplete and misleading in regard to the legal age of consent and the effect of special care provisions.

We have seen, really, that not only was it the states and territories' in their responsibilities, and also that of private institutions, but, indeed, that the Commonwealth itself did let those under its care down. They let those under its care down, and this royal commission and the redress scheme are critically important to setting those wrongs right. It is incumbent, I think, on all of us to continue to ensure that this is not a set-and-forget policy, that we continue to recognise the impact of what past behaviour has had on individuals—the continuing lifelong impact that has had. We must continue as a parliament and as a nation to recognise this and to ensure that we do everything in our power to say sorry and also, importantly, to bring in a national redress scheme that actually goes some way in this. We can never change the past and we can never make up for all the damage that has been done, but if we get this redress scheme right—if we make sure that it's truly national and that it's in line with the royal commission's recommendations—then we can go some way in saying that we got it wrong but we're trying to make amends. I commend the bill to the House.

Mr CONROY (Shortland) (13:09): I'm proud to rise and make a contribution to the debate on the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018.

Over the last five years we have heard about the most heartbreaking of stories, from the bravest of people, at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. I, like my colleagues in parliament, want to make it clear that we believe them. We know they were victims of horrible crimes, we know they were let down by people in institutions that were meant to keep them safe and we know that they deserve adequate redress for this. The persistence and strength that they have shown in this fight has been an inspiration, and we commit to dutifully providing a national redress scheme that recognises the injustices that they have suffered, the struggle they have gone through to get here and be heard, and the tough road that lies ahead for so many.

That's why Labor will work with survivors and the government to implement legislation that realises the recommendations of the royal commission and acknowledges the hardship of so many survivors. This must be a scheme that is inclusive, accessible and adequate. It would be offensive to the courage shown throughout this process and to the hard work which paved the way to a royal commission to accept anything less.

In 2013, the Gillard Labor government took responsibility and created the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and I'm proud to be able to thank my predecessor, Greg Combet, the tireless activism of dedicated Hunter locals and of course Ms Gillard for this achievement. In June of that year, Prime Minister Gillard put aside what was a chaotic moment in Australian politics to focus on an issue that she knew was more important. After years of Australian governments ignoring mounting evidence, the Gillard government took action. Members in that government still cite this royal commission as one of their most important moments and one of their proudest legacies. None has been more stalwart in their pursuit of justice in parliament than the member for Jagajaga. I know how proud she is of what this movement has achieved and how deeply she cares for the thousands who have been let down in this country over the years. This parliament is united in its recognition that the creation of the royal commission was one of the most significant moments in our history. To those who worked so hard for so long—like Julia and Jenny, and like so many survivors—we are grateful.

However, these fighters and gutsy survivors have been quick to remind us of our responsibility, saying that the hard work of those who came before us was not for show, and that, while the chance to tell their story and be heard was a welcome relief, the job was not done yet. We have a duty to this nation and to those who bravely shared their experience with the royal commission to deliver real justice and appropriate redress. The Labor Party established this commission. We have supported it throughout the process. And we will not be giving up now. We have a chance here today to deliver on the promise of the royal commission, to turn appreciation and belief into action, and I look forward to working with the government to address a national redress scheme which achieves these outcomes.

I turn now to the Hunter, because the truth is: this process has impacted the Hunter region as much as anywhere else and more than most. As a community, we've been shocked by the extent of, and the lack of response to, child sexual abuse right on our doorstep.

One of the most shocking stories of abuse in our region was that of the crimes committed by James Patrick Fletcher, a priest who preyed on young boys in the Hunter for decades. We now know that this abuse was allowed to take place thanks to a culture of cover-ups and deceit that permeated the entire diocese of Maitland-Newcastle for many years.

In 1976, Peter Creigh reported the abuse he had suffered at the hands of Mr Fletcher to the then priest, and later Archbishop of Adelaide, Philip Wilson. Mr Wilson not only concealed this abuse from the authorities but also allowed Mr Fletcher to continue working as a priest with boys in that area. This not only saw Fletcher avoid professional criminal consequences for his actions but in fact allowed him to continue abusing young boys in the Hunter for years to come. The royal commission has shown us that that is an all-too-familiar pattern, and that the culture of protecting child abusers has permeated institutions in this country to the highest of levels.

Last Tuesday in Newcastle, Archbishop Wilson was found guilty of concealing these crimes in a courtroom populated by many who should have been spared the abuse that was allowed to continue. He is the world's highest-ranking Catholic official ever convicted of concealing child sexual abuse and did so in my home region of the Hunter. In the verdict handed down last week, the magistrate said of Mr Wilson: 'You have to ask why the accused did not do what he himself says he would do now'—that is, to go to the police—'in the same situation. The answer, I believe, relates to the accused having a sense of knowing what he was hearing was a credible allegation. In addition, the accused wanted to protect the church and its image.' As Daniel Feenan put it on the steps outside court: 'If this bloke had done something in 1976, which was the year that I was born, my life would have been a lot different to what it is today.'

My thanks go to former detective Peter Fox for his hard work in putting James Fletcher behind bars and for his continued work in this area which led to the New South Wales special commission of inquiry which was the predecessor of the royal commission. To him and the current Strike Force Lantle police for their investigation and prosecution of these crimes, I and many in the Hunter are grateful. I also want to acknowledge the tireless work of the Newcastle Herald, Joanne McCarthy and their Shine the Light team.

The frequency and severity of this abuse has been so damaging to so many in our region. I want to pay tribute to the commission for giving these survivors a platform to share their experience and shine a light into these dark corners. It is because of this that we're now able to begin a process of healing and to reach out to our neighbours, friends and family to support each other.

In late 2012 more than 400 Hunter residents attended a forum of what became known as 60 years of shame for the region in terms of child sexual abuse. Tracey Pirona was there to tell a story of her husband John who took his own life months earlier. John was one of 12 others who is no longer with us due to the actions of a single priest. Tracey's words painted a familiar picture.

That man alone—

the priest—

… changed the path of John's life from such a young age and teachers and principals knew what was happening to these children and they condoned it by not reporting it …

On the royal commission's website you can read thousands of stories of abuse, neglect and betrayal in institutions across this country. I would like to share one of these now from the Central Coast, another part of my electorate damaged by such abuse.

After suffering sexual abuse at the hands of her father, and subsequently being forced to live in unsafe conditions which saw her badly burned by a family friend, Corrine was made a ward of the state. She was sent to a children's group home on the Central Coast of New South Wales at the age of 11. Corrine and many others at the home were forced to perform sexual acts on other children and forced to assault other children due to a lack of supervision and a lack of security in that home. Corrine was placed into foster care at the age of 14 where she was again repeatedly sexually abused by one of her guardians. She left this home and nobody from community services supervised where she was or checked on her wellbeing at the age of 14. As a teenager, she had two children to her husband who also abused her, and she eventually fell into an addiction of painkillers. Corrine has struggled with suicide ideas and has continued to live with anxiety. For Corrine a chance to speak openly about her experiences helps her heal after such a long period of trauma. This story paints a picture of constant failure of institutions to provide the care and protection that she was entitled to. This betrayal has stayed with Corrine, who said to the commission:

No-one has ever, ever said sorry for what happened to me in care when I was a child. I was supposed to be looked after.

The royal commission has methodically exposed institutional abuse in our nation, in churches and in schools by coaches and by carers to boys and to girls.

These stories from the Hunter, from the Central Coast and from communities around Australia turn feelings of hopelessness and fear into solidarity and anger. A public that looked the other way for too long has taken notice and is demanding action. That is what we are here to do now. We're in this parliament to take action and respond to these irrefutable findings. This legislation must not fail survivors. Having finally heard their stories, this is now our first chance to start the process of change, to demonstrate that institutions in this country will do what it takes to make sure we do not let them down again.

Labor looks forward to the findings of the Senate inquiry into this legislation, but there are some initial concerns worth highlighting. We want to make sure that any legislation guarantees support services are accessible, regardless of where a survivor lives or what language they speak. We want this bill, as it stands, to bring some measures into line with the recommendations of the commission. As it stands, survivors would have six months to decide whether to accept an offer to of redress, despite the royal commission recommending a year. The bill offers a limit of $150,000 for survivors compared to the $200,000 called for. Legislation must not be limited, as it currently would be, to Australian citizens or those living in Australia. This ignores the large number of child migrants and the abuse of children in immigration detention. I want to also say the legislation must be fair to those with criminal records.

We know from evidence to the royal commission, from experts in the field and from undeniable statistics that suffering abuse such as these people have often leads to addiction, to mental health issues and to crime. On this basis, to exclude people let down by a system meant to protect them is totally unacceptable. We must be brave. We must go beyond a fear of a few tabloid headlines about providing compensation to people who have been in prison to recognise that this abuse has led to addiction and has led to massive mental health issues, and the inevitable result of that is criminal convictions. We must provide redress and we must provide justice to all survivors of institutional child sexual abuse, even if they have gone to prison. I urge the Senate inquiry to give this issue particular consideration so that all survivors have access to compensation. That is why we're having the Senate inquiry.

Getting this legislation right is so vital in supporting survivors now and into the future, and I trust that my Senate colleagues appreciate the gravity of this task. This is not a partisan issue. This is as clear as it gets in politics. This goes to the heart of why we're here, why each of us wants to be in this House, and that is the chance to make a genuine, positive impact on the lives of Australians. I am confident that we will come together across the aisle and deliver justice on the back of the hard work of so many.

In conclusion, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has brought into the public eye something that has been an ongoing feature of every community across this country for far too long. If you have not done so already, I urge you to read some of the 4,000 stories from survivors, available on the royal commission's website, because this is not just an issue for me or for parliament; this is an issue we all have to face together as a nation. We need to be united. State governments, churches, schools and all institutions must together make a statement that survivors have been wronged and deserve better. I want to place on the record my sincere and humble thanks for all those who have made this happen and to commit myself to working with the Hunter region and the Central Coast region to support survivors and to change this devastating culture.

I finally want to acknowledge all those who have lost their lives and livelihoods because of this institutional abuse, and to pay respect to those who have fought to this day but who were not around to receive the justice they so deserved. I am so tremendously sorry.

Mr PERRETT (Moreton—Opposition Whip) (13:22): I rise to speak on the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018 and the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2018.

Child sexual abuse is abhorrent. I cannot state that in strong enough terms. It is vile. For way too many years it was hidden and too often suspected but unspoken of and not reported. And that is our great shame. Too often, too many of us turned our backs on the horror of child sexual abuse. We were afraid to confront the dreadful truth, to even acknowledge the victims' stories, let alone believe them, and then to seek justice on their behalf. But, as the scorching light of the royal commission has been shone on this hidden horror, we have listened, we have been shocked and we have believed. I say again: we believe you.

We now accept without question that the horror of child abuse has occurred and that, too often, it was right under our noses. As I speak on this bill, I acknowledge that there has been a societal change in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and the change is this: where once we turned our backs, now we look and listen. Where once we heard through a filter of doubt and scepticism, now we hear the full horror of shattered lives. Where once we may have said, 'It's none of my business,' now we know that protecting children is everyone's business. This is a fundamental change that will have a lasting impact on the protection of children in Australia. This change has occurred not because of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse—although the work the royal commission has done has been invaluable—and certainly not because of the institutions who have been shamed during the royal commission. It is squarely because of the bravery of the victims of child sexual abuse who came forward to tell their stories. They came forward even though some of them had told their stories before and not been believed. And some had never before told their stories, not to a single soul. I don't think any of us can understand what courage that takes. I know I can't. The lasting legacy of their courage will be that, when the next child speaks out—and the child after that—they will be believed. We will never again turn our backs as a nation.

The work of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has been extraordinary. I am very proud to have been a member of the parliament in November 2012 when Prime Minister Gillard announced that she would recommend to the Governor-General that a royal commission be appointed to inquire into institutional responses to child abuse. Her Excellency Quentin Bryce, the then Governor-General, announced in January 2013 that six commissioners, led by Justice Peter McClellan, would undertake the task of conducting the inquiry. I particularly mention Bob Atkinson, the former police commissioner from Queensland, for the great work he did as one of the royal commissioners. The royal commission handed down its final report in December 2017. The commissioners made a total of 409 recommendations. The workload of this royal commission was phenomenal. I thank all of the royal commissioners, and particularly their staff, for their considered work over five years. The horrors they must have waded through will no doubt leave a lasting imprint on all of their lives as well. Carrying that distilled horror and heartache is a great burden for any human, so I thank them again.

The royal commission received 42,041 calls, and 25,964 letters and emails; held 8,013 private sessions; and made 2,575 referrals to authorities, including the police. The royal commission's terms of reference were:

… to inquire into institutional responses to allegations and incidents of child sexual abuse and … what institutions and governments should do to better protect children against child sexual abuse …

The evidence the commission received was shocking, perhaps more so because we have all been part of those institutions that ignored or, even worse, covered up the abuse. The institutions that were referred to the commission including schools, childcare centres, sporting and recreation clubs, religious institutions, youth detention facilities and the armed forces. In one way or another we have all been involved in at least one of these institutions. We were there while these horrific crimes were taking place. We didn't see—or chose not to—the lives being shattered in our midst, the quiet crumbling of spirits right alongside us.

For the victims the impact of child sexual abuse can be devastating, life-changing, life-limiting and, sadly, as we have heard too often, life-ending. It is especially important to look beyond the shattered husks of lives gutted before they had even begun. When a child is abused at school, they won't want to go to school. That's not too hard to understand. Their education has been stolen from them along with their childhood. Without an education, and suffering from extreme trauma, their capacity to work is reduced, and it is not surprising that victims of child sexual abuse can then as adolescents become vulnerable to the call of criminal activity. We have to acknowledge with much sympathy the path that the survivors have been led or pushed down. Where survivors have been led into crime and convicted, they have taken responsibility and paid their debt to society, just like everyone else who is convicted of a crime. The government has sought in this bill to place restrictions on the redress that can be accessed by survivors who have a criminal history. I believe this is wrong and deeply unfair. The redress scheme is an important step in the healing process for survivors.

There are three elements of the redress scheme: it will provide a monetary payment, access to counselling and psychological services, and the opportunity to receive an apology from a representative of the institution responsible for the abuse. Applicants who accept an offer for redress will be required to waive their civil law rights against the responsible institution by signing a deed of release, support services and legal services will be provided to applicants throughout the redress scheme process, and financial advice will be provided to applicants who accept an offer of redress. I have some concerns about the proposed scheme contained in the bills. There must be sufficient support services available for the survivors to access, wherever they are living and no matter what language they speak. The bill gives applicants six months to decide whether or not to accept an offer of redress. The royal commission recommended they be given a year to make this decision. For survivors this will be an emotional and overwhelming process. Applicants are allowed only one application to the scheme. There is no policy rationale for limiting the time for applicants to make this important decision. I am concerned that rushing survivors into making this once-only decision may not be in their best interests.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Hogan ): The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour.

Mr PERRETT (Moreton—Opposition Whip) (16:13): In noting my concerns about the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse redress scheme legislation, I point out that I have concerns about the support services being provided and the time limits, but I also have significant concern about the monetary limits. The National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018 bill limits the redress available to survivors to a maximum of $150,000 to any one survivor. The royal commission recommended that the maximum amount payable to survivors should be $200,000 and the minimum should be $10,000, with the average payment being $65,000.

By accepting an offer for redress, a survivor will be signing away their right to pursue a claim for compensation against the institution. It is important that survivors are adequately remunerated through the redress scheme. Obviously, no amount of money will ever, ever repair the emotional damage done to survivors or go any way to regaining their stolen childhood or recovering the life opportunities that they have missed, but nevertheless money can help rebuild lives. This will be the one and only chance for these survivors to seek redress. I want to make sure it is adequate to rebuild their lives.

We're all aware of the horrific abuse that occurred in institutions that cared for child migrants, and we're also aware that abuse of children has occurred in immigration detention, but this bill limits the redress scheme to people who are living in Australia or are Australian citizens. It is unfair that survivors of child sexual abuse that occurred in Australia are not able to access the same redress scheme if they have returned to their country of birth and are no longer residing in Australia. So I call on the government to ensure that this group of survivors is also able to access the redress scheme.

The royal commission recommended that survivors who accept an offer under the redress scheme be able to access counselling for the rest of their lives, but the government bill only provides survivors with access to state-provided services for the length of the scheme or with a payment of up to $5,000 to put towards counselling. For survivors whose lives have been utterly shattered, who have had to face their tormenters to retell their stories and who will never truly get over the trauma that has been inflicted on them, the paltry provision of counselling in this bill is woeful. All of the elements of redress are important, but counselling needs to be ongoing to be of any utility at all. It is critical that the provision of counselling be addressed and revised urgently.

Survivors who have been led into criminality should not be denied access to redress. There is clear evidence that people with a history of childhood sexual abuse and trauma are more likely to be incarcerated later in life. Denying this group of survivors access to redress not only will deny them the ability to rebuild their lives but is likely to foster recidivism. Attorney-General Porter, I would suggest to you that this exclusion is cruel, short-sighted and unfair.

Although I have concerns about this bill, as I've outlined, a national redress scheme is crucial to the more than 60,000 survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. No amount of money can make up for the pain and trauma experienced by survivors, but redress is an important step along the road to healing for survivors of child sexual abuse. When the royal commission released their interim report in 2015, Labor was the first to announce support for a national redress scheme. It took the Turnbull government until 2016 to commit to a redress scheme. It is very encouraging that Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory have all publicly announced that they will participate in the national redress scheme. I encourage the three other jurisdictions to also sign up to the scheme. For survivors to obtain justice, the scheme must be a national scheme. I urge churches, charities, and other institutions to stand up and be counted and to opt into the redress scheme now. I urge the parishioners and supporters, people connected with these institutions, to tell them to sign up for the scheme now. Whatever has happened is in the past, but it must be remedied in the future, and the future must include a national redress scheme. Working together, Australia can move forward. We must not forget the past, obviously, but we must make sure it is never, ever repeated again, and that is a task for all of us.

Labor will work with the government to address these concerns, because a national redress scheme is so important, and it's important right now. The bills have been referred to a Senate inquiry. This inquiry will allow the community to be consulted on points of difference in these bills and the earlier Commonwealth legislation. The inquiry is due to report to the Senate before the Senate next sits. With the proposed start date of the bills being 1 July 2018, barely a month away, the Senate inquiry will not delay the start of the scheme. Labor fully understands the importance of a national redress scheme, so we will support this bill in the House and, as always, we will continue discussions with the government to resolve the concerns that we hold about these bills. A national redress scheme is too important to delay any further, and it is too important, equally, to get wrong.

So, to all of the survivors who had the courage to tell their stories and to sit in those rooms, both public and private, with the commissioners I say thank you. I will do all I can make to make sure the national redress scheme is the best that it can possibly be. To the commissioners and all their staff, I again say thank you. I would like to finish with the words of a survivor in a note sent to the royal commission so that the words of these courageous people who spoke up are the final words in my speech, because it is because of their courage that we have this legislation in front of the House right now:

Thank you for the opportunity to tell my story—you cannot know what it meant to be listened to with such respect and made to feel what happened to me really mattered. I hope my experience will help to promote the change needed to prevent this ever happening to another child.

Mr DICK (Oxley) (16:20): The implementation of a national redress scheme for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse has been a long time coming for this country, as the member for Moreton outlined in his powerful address to the House today. Survivors of child sexual abuse have been waiting their whole lives for redress for the horrific crimes that were perpetrated against them as children. For decades they have suffered in silence, tormented by the truly awful acts committed against them over many, many years. We've heard it's a long road to recovery for these victims, but hopefully the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse will begin to heal the wounds that they have suffered.

I'm honoured to be a member of the joint select committee on the oversight of the implementation of redress-related recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, alongside my Labor colleagues the member for Newcastle and Queensland Senator Claire Moore and alongside other senators and members in this place. The national redress scheme is as a result of the royal commission into institutional responses, which the previous Labor government, as we heard, created in 2013. Over the subsequent five years, 16,953 people who were within the terms of reference contacted the royal commission. The commission heard from 7,981 survivors of child sexual abuse, in 8,013 private sessions. They received 1,344 written accounts and referred 2,562 matters to police. Every single one of those statistics matters because every single one of those people matters. These striking numbers only begin to scratch the surface, clearly, of just how big this issue is for thousands of Australians.

I want to sincerely thank each and every single survivor who shared their story. I can only imagine that this took an enormous amount of courage and composure. Words are simply not enough to describe the harrowing nature and the horror of the stories that came forward. The average age of victims when first abused was just 10 years old, with 85 per cent of survivors saying they'd experienced multiple episodes of abuse. But actions speak louder than words, and we now have an opportunity to address the many wrongs of the past.

The royal commissioners outlined a clear vision for what a national redress scheme would be in their final report on civil litigation and redress in 2015. Like many of the colleagues who have spoken in this debate already, I want to add my thanks to the commissioners and all of their staff—in particular their staff—for their careful and considered work over five years. I simply cannot imagine what it was like to be a staff member dealing with this important issue. We understand that they did not make these recommendations lightly.

I believe that the recommendations should be implemented faithfully and as much as possible. But, like my colleagues on this side of the House and as the Leader of the Opposition outlined last week, I do have a number of concerns with the legislation before the House—the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018 and the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2018—as it's drafted. It is critical that any scheme provides survivors with the genuine opportunity to access justice and that it takes into account and caters for the unique needs of this group.

As we've heard, the bills have been referred to a Senate inquiry so that the community can be consulted on the points of difference in these bills and the earlier Commonwealth legislation. In the light of the proposed start date of 1 July 2018, this inquiry is due to report before the Senate next sits so that the inquiry does not delay the commencement of the scheme. As a gesture of good faith in our ongoing discussions with the government to resolve Labor's concerns and an acknowledgement of our longstanding commitment to the establishment of a redress scheme, Labor will support the bills in the House today. But, as we have heard, there is more work to be done, and it starts by working together. We know that the Victorian and New South Wales governments have already signed up to the redress scheme, with Tasmania also announcing their intention to join this week. I was particularly pleased to hear recently of my home state of Queensland also signing up to the scheme. That decision opens the door for Queensland based non-government institutions to join the redress scheme. In announcing that the Queensland government will pay its share to survivors of sexual abuse in government-run institutions, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said that it was an important milestone, acknowledging the suffering of those abused in care. As the Premier said, although no amount of money can return a lost childhood, it is important that we acknowledge what these victims have been through. Ten thousand Queenslanders are expected to be eligible: 5,000 abused in government institutions and another 5,000 in non-government institutions. It's certainly a step in the right direction, but, as I mentioned earlier and as other members of the opposition have indicated, we still have concerns with the bill as it stands.

As the redress scheme begins operation from 1 July this year, we must ensure there are enough support services for all survivors who are considering making an application for redress and that the services are accessible, no matter where the survivor lives or what language the survivor speaks. We simply can't be left in a situation where we have an unfunded and under-resourced scheme which has been such a long time coming. There can be no excuses that we did not know. We need to make sure that survivors have sufficient time to decide whether or not to accept an offer of redress. As we know, the bill gives applicants six months to make this decision, while the royal commission recommended a year. It's important that survivors have sufficient time to consider this decision, as only one application to the scheme is permitted. I think it's safe to say that for many this will be an emotional and overwhelming process and it will take time.

There's no policy rationale for rushing this process. Simply choosing to apply will mean many survivors will have to relive their horrific past as they recall the acts committed against them. This will no doubt have a heavy emotional burden and will result in some survivors needing extended time to make a decision. The bill places an upper limit, as we know, of $150,000 on the amount of redress that would be payable to any one survivor. The royal commission, as we have heard, recommended the maximum payment be $200,000, that the minimum payment be $10,000 and the average payment be around $65,000. Accepting an offer will also mean signing away any rights survivors may have to pursue their claim for compensation through litigation. There are heavy pressures we will be placing on already very vulnerable people.

The bill also limits eligibility to the redress scheme to people who are living in Australia or are Australian citizens. We know that horrific abuse occurred in institutions that cared for child migrants and that the abuse of children has occurred in immigration detention. I am concerned these people will not have access to redress if they have returned to their country of birth, and today I call on the government to confirm that provision will be made for these groups of survivors to access the national redress scheme.

I am also concerned that the counselling provided to survivors through the scheme will not be adequate. The royal commission recommended that people accessing the scheme be allowed counselling for the rest of their life. The bill only provides access to state provided services for a length of the scheme or a payment of only up to $5,000 towards counselling. These arrangements are woefully inadequate and I call on the government to give assurances that this will be addressed. Survivors often consider the government is responsible for the abuse and do not wish to use state or institution-run services. I really do think this needs to be taken into account by states when delivering services. Survivors who are granted redress late in the life of the scheme could also be disadvantaged because they will not be able to access services for the same length of time as survivors who are granted redress early in the life of the scheme. It's important that this is taken into account in any future reviews. For survivors that receive the $5,000 payment, this amount of money will not provide adequate access to support.

The government has sought to place restrictions on survivors who themselves have a criminal history from accessing the redress scheme. We believe this is deeply unfair. This would require those who have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of five years or more to request special permission from the scheme operator to access the scheme. The rule ignores strong evidence that shows that people with a history of childhood abuse and trauma are more likely to be incarcerated later in life. The facts on this matter cannot and should not be ignored. For many, the root of their problems will be an horrific experience they suffered as a child and which clearly led them to a life of crime. To punish them unfairly now would be only to further deepen their already traumatic wounds.

In closing, there is no excuse for any state government, church, institution or non-government organisation not to join the redress scheme. With only a matter of weeks until the proposed 1 July start date, Labor urges all states and institutions to sign up to the scheme as soon as possible. Survivors of institutional child sex abuse have been waiting for redress for decades. They shouldn't have to wait any longer.

Redress means so much more to the 60,000 survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. I understand that no money can make up for the pain and trauma experienced by survivors. However, redress is a vital step along the path to healing for survivors of child sexual abuse. I believe it's incumbent upon all of us in this parliament to work together on further improvements to ensure we get the best possible redress scheme for survivors. I want to make it clear today that I will continue to work with the states and my colleagues towards making sure we address the issues of concern that I've identified today.

Once we've got the agreement in place and once all the states, churches and other institutions have signed up to an agreement, I believe only then may we have an opportunity in the future for us to build on this and for us to do much more as part of the healing process.

Ms BURNEY (Barton) (16:31): I rise to speak on the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sex Abuse Bill 2018.

On 12 November 2012, Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the appointment of a Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sex Abuse in Australia. She said at that time:

Any instance of child abuse is a vile and evil thing.

She continued:

… too many children have suffered child abuse.

We knew Prime Minister Gillard was correct. She continued:

They have also seen other adults let them down.

They’ve not only had their trust betrayed by the abuser, but other adults that could have acted to assist them have failed to do so.

Prime Minister Gillard and the Labor Caucus understood the importance of finally giving these people a voice:

There have been revelations of child abusers being moved from place to place rather than the nature of their abuse and their crimes being dealt with.

There have been too many revelations of adults who have averted their eyes from this evil.

The commission received 41,770 calls, 25,770 letters and emails, held more than 8,000 private sessions and 57 public hearings, and made nearly 2,600 referrals to police and other authorities. Thousands of brave and courageous individuals shared thousands of brave and courageous conversations, many of them for the first time.

The sharing of these conversations, experiences and stories saved lives. The commission heard of experiences from over many decades from people with disabilities; from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; from people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds; and from those who were in prison at the time of their abuse.

The inquiry lasted five years and was recorded in the 17 volumes of the final report. Many people, as I said, were speaking for the first time. The report produced a range of recommendations, including providing victims and survivors with access to the appropriate support and treatment; reducing the stigma of child sex abuse; encouraging victims to speak out and seek support and treatment; and promoting best practice in providing treatment and support services.

No amount of money can ever repair the pain and hurt inflicted. I know everyone has said that in this debate. But it is also clear that these crimes cannot go unacknowledged and uncompensated. Redress is a vital step in the journey towards healing, and everyone—every single member of this chamber and this House—understands that.

It was clear that many victims and survivors were in need of a great deal of support and treatment. However, it is also clear that victims and survivors were simply not accessing compensation. They were either reluctant or otherwise unlikely to pursue compensation through the courts system. Survivors were less inclined to want to relive their experiences and traumas in the public hearings. Furthermore, the prospects of a successful claim for compensation were also not guaranteed. In many instances and especially with the passage of time, there would be great difficulty in collecting evidence or making contact with witnesses, let alone perpetrators. It was a very, very brave thing for people to give evidence. The capacity for perpetrators to provide for compensation was uncertain, and the liability of institutional entities for perpetrators was also unclear. Without redress schemes, many victims would simply not have the opportunity to access monetary compensation in relation to their injuries, whether physical, emotional of, of course, psychological.

Today I rise to acknowledge the injustices and hurts committed on the watch of various state, territory and federal governments and many church and other institutions. I rise today to acknowledge the victims and survivors who participated in this inquiry. I rise to support them, and I rise to support this bill.

The scheme provides three elements of redress, in the form of a redress payment, counselling and psychological services, and a direct personal response from the institutions. Survivors will be provided with access to legal advice services. The scheme will cover sexual abuse and any related non-sexual abuse that occurred when the person was a child and where an institution is primarily or equally responsible for that abuse. The intention of this payment is to recognise the wrong that person suffered, to acknowledge that trauma and to listen to the truth. Access to counselling or psychological services is intended to enable survivors to access trauma-informed and culturally appropriate counselling or psychological services. Survivors will also have the opportunity, if they wish, to receive a direct personal response from the participating institution responsible for that abuse. The survivor will have the chance to have their abuse acknowledged and tell their personal story of the abuse they suffered and the impact on them. This, to me, is the most important aspect of this scheme.

I want to take a moment to briefly discuss the significance of the scheme for First Nations people. The disproportionate impact of abuse on First Nations peoples was explored by the inquiry in its final report. The inquiry found:

… Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are significantly overrepresented in out-of-home care and youth detention, exposing them to environments with greater risk. Racism and lack of cultural safety can also increase Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children's vulnerability and prevent them from speaking out.

It also said First Nations people were placed at significantly greater risk of abuse because of disproportionately greater prevalence of removal from family. It is clear that the consequences of abuse were compounded by, as the inquiry states, the impacts of colonisation, past social policies and the legacy of the stolen generations. First Nations people were placed at greater risk of abuse by reason of racism, denigration of identity and culture, and the destruction of language and intergenerational trauma. The stigma of sexual abuse further perpetuated the disconnection from family, community, cultural traditions and country. The inquiry found that widespread institutionalisation of children fractured whole communities, disrupting relationships and traditional ways of healing. The report also discussed the cultural base barriers inhibiting disclosure and seeking support. Survivors often said they tried to disclose during childhood but were ignored, dismissed or punished. These experiences meant that many First Nations survivors simply could not trust police, government and people in leadership positions. Many institutions simply did not respect, recognise or acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

But the report also made a finding about the importance of culture and identity in the healing process. The royal commission found that being strong in culture is protective for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children's wellbeing because it can support strong identity, high self-esteem and strong attachments. Strong cultural identity, positive community connections and connections to culture are strong sources of resilience and healing. It is difficult to ignore how the issues of institutionalised child abuse and the removal of First Nations children are inextricably linked.

Before closing I, as have other members of this side of the House, will briefly reiterate our areas of concern, which have previously been outlined primarily by the member for Jagajaga but by other people making a contribution as well. Firstly, we want to make sure there are enough support services for all survivors of child sexual abuse and that they are accessible, no matter where the survivor lives. The bill also limits eligibility to the redress scheme to people who are living in Australia or Australian citizens. We know that horrific abuse occurred in institutions that cared for child migrants, and that abuse of children has occurred in immigration detention.

Secondly, we want to make sure the survivors have sufficient time to decide whether or not to accept an offer of redress. Accepting an offer will also mean signing away any rights that survivors may have to pursue their claim for compensation through litigation. This is a very major decision. We are also concerned that the counselling provided is not adequate. The royal commission recommended, as other members have said, lifelong access to counselling, but this bill provides only $5,000 worth of counselling. We believe the government's placement of restrictions on the ability of survivors with a criminal history, primarily people in jail, to access the redress scheme is absolutely wrong. This ignores the evidence showing that people with a history of childhood abuse and trauma are more likely to be incarcerated later in life. This part of the bill must be changed.

In conclusion, I take a few moments to recall my personal involvement with people who have been brave enough to give their story. Almost a decade ago in the Royal Botanic Garden in Sydney as the then Minister for Community Services I led the state government's apology to the forgotten Australians. I also, along with many other people, was here in 2008 when Kevin Rudd gave his apology to the stolen generations. I was also here in the federal parliament when the apology was given to the forgotten Australians. You were in the presence of people that you knew had such a generosity, such a desire to heal and such a spirit that had been damaged as children, and you could see it in the faces of the people that participated in those apologies. You could also see resilience, pride and an absolute understanding that their stories, their experiences and their reality—their lives—were finally being acknowledged by all people in this country. They are extraordinarily powerful moments and things to do.

I thank the survivors for sharing their stories. I thank the tremendous staff of the royal commission, who assisted and supported survivors in what must have been an incredibly difficult process that I know many people thought long and hard about. I thank former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, former Attorney-General Nicola Roxon and the member for Jagajaga, as well as members of the government, for their tireless work in making redress a reality. All members from both sides of the House spoke with heart on this bill. The bill is the final product of many and will mean so much to many. We will continue to have discussions of the concerns we have outlined about this bill, but for now I commend this bill to the House, particularly on behalf of the many thousands of people who made submissions and gave testimony both in private and in public. It is their strength, their honesty and, above all, their bravery to share their stories that has lifted a lid on an incredibly ugly part of the Australian narrative. To them I dedicate the words that I say today.

Mr CLARE (Blaxland) (16:44): We tell our kids that monsters don't exist, but that's a lie—they do exist. We have always known it. We have just chosen to ignore it or pretended that they're not there hiding in the darkness and in places that most people never see. But we can't do that anymore because the royal commission has dragged some of these vampires out into the sunlight.

Stan was 12 when one of these monsters arrived at the Christian Brothers orphanage in 1953. His name was Brother Benton. A couple of weeks after he arrived he started raping Stan. Sometimes he raped him three times a week. That lasted for two years. Just try to imagine that. Just try for a minute to imagine the trauma that that little boy suffered for all that time and that as a man he still suffers to this day.

It took Stan 59 years to tell anyone what had happened to him. A few years ago he told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. He never told the other boys at the orphanage what was happening to him. He never knew what was happening to them as well, but now he does. The same thing was happening to them. Two of them have since committed suicide.

There are thousands and thousands of stories like this—children raped and tortured by monsters in shepherd's clothing. No amount of money can compensate you for that. It can't repair the damage that they did to Stan. What could? But that's not a reason not to do it. Getting the governments, the churches and the organisations that allowed this to happen to pay for what they have done—to pay for what happened under their roofs—is the very least that we can do. And that's what the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018 and related bill do. They set up a redress scheme, a compensation scheme, for people like Stan. It is the key recommendation of the royal commission.

These bills don't do everything that the royal commission recommended, and I'm disappointed by that. The amount that you can claim is less than what the royal commission recommended. The amount of time you have to accept an offer is also less than what the royal commission recommended. It also doesn't implement the royal commission's recommendation that people like Stan have lifelong access to counselling services. The legislation is not perfect and it's not the way that we would have done it, but I'm not going to use my time in this debate picking apart what we are about to vote on. We can't amend it here without unravelling the agreements that the government has already struck with the states, and I don't want to do that. I don't think anybody wants to do that. We all want this scheme to start as soon as possible.

Instead, let me thank the people who have got us this far. I want to thank Justice McClellan and the six other royal commissioners for the time, dedication and professionalism that they took to this task. I want to thank them for the recommendations that they have given us and, most importantly, for making sure that so many people so silent for so long were finally heard—heard and believed. I want to thank Stan and the more than 75,000 other people who mustered the courage to tell their story. The royal commission would have failed without them.

I want to thank the member for Jagajaga, Jenny Macklin. I know a lot of people in this debate have mentioned Jenny and the work that she has done. It is impossible to thank her enough. And I want to thank Julia Gillard. I feel very sure in saying that there wouldn't have been a royal commission without either of them. Without Jenny or Julia we wouldn't be here today setting up this scheme.

And I want to thank someone who hasn't been mentioned in this debate so far but really should be. Her name is Joanne McCarthy. Joanne is a journalist at the Newcastle Herald. She's no ordinary journalist. She is a Gold Walkley winner. She won that award for the more than 1,000 stories she wrote that exposed what happened in the Maitland-Newcastle diocese over so many years. She's everything that any young journalist would hope to be. She's fearless and unrelenting. She earned the trust of people like Stan, who had no reason to ever trust anyone ever again, and she inspired a Prime Minister to act. On her last night as Prime Minister, the last letter that Julia Gillard wrote was to Joanne McCarthy and it was to thank her for everything that she'd done. I was there the night that Joanne McCarthy won her gold Walkley and I remember what she said to the audience. She said: 'It just shows you don't need an army, you just need people believing that something had to be done …' Joanne McCarthy is one of those people.

Twenty-six years ago, another extraordinary woman named Joanna Penglase put an ad in 21 local papers across Sydney. She was doing a thesis at university and was reaching out to other people like her who'd grown up in homes and institutions and orphanages and asked them to ring her and tell her their story. A lot of people rang. One of the people that picked up the phone and rang Joanna was a middle-aged mum from Georges Hall in my electorate. Her name is Leonie Sheedy. Leonie called Joanna and it was a phone call that changed both their lives. Joanna still remembers the phone call. Leonie said to her 'How come nobody's talking about this? How come we never hear about it? Why isn't it known?' It's known now and that's due, in large part, to the work of Joanna and Leonie because they set up an organisation called CLAN—Care Leavers Australasia Network—an organisation dedicated to fighting for people like Stan, fighting for recognition, fighting for justice, fighting for an apology, fighting for compensation. Just to give you an idea about what these two women have achieved over that time, in 2003 they fought for and got the Senate to conduct an inquiry into children in institutional care. In 2010, they fought for and they got an apology from the Prime Minister of Australia at the time, Kevin Rudd, the then Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull and the Australian parliament.

Leonie is still fighting today. If you look carefully at the TV footage of the royal commission over the last five years or so, you'd often see Leonie out the front of the royal commission, not inside of it, with other members of CLAN emblazoned in their blue and gold outfits, making sure that everybody inside the royal commission knew that their job was to make sure that justice was done. And she's still fighting today to get South Australia and Western Australia to sign up to this scheme that we're legislating right here. She's still fighting to make sure that all the churches and all the organisations responsible for what happened sign up to this scheme as well, and to make sure that in the future this legislation is fairer and better than it is now and as good as it should be. There's only one Leonie Sheedy—anybody who knows Leonie Sheedy knows that. Like my good friend in this place, Richard Marles, we're privileged to call her our friend.

A few weeks ago, Leonie's office in Bankstown was robbed. The robbers stole eight laptop computers, some money and a bunch of other stuff. Leonie put out a tweet telling the world what had happened, that the CLAN office had just been robbed. Soon after that, she got a call from Channel 10. They wanted to know what had happened. And that night on the news, they did a big story about a robber in the middle of the night coming in and stealing all of this equipment from people who had dedicated their lives to looking after people who'd grown up and been neglected, abused and who had suffered so much in Australia's orphanages. A few days after that story appeared on the Channel 10 news, the eight laptops were back. When Leonie's team turned up at work, they found eight laptops in a gym bag near the garbage bins just out the front of the office. I like to think that the person who robbed the office saw that story on Channel 10 that night and realised who he'd robbed, an organisation that does so much good for people who've already been robbed of so much. Maybe he grew up in an orphanage as well. Maybe he's got a similar story to Stan or Leonie or Joanna or so many others—I don't know.

But I do know this: this legislation is long overdue. It won't help every person who grew up in institutions, neglected and abused. It won't heal wounds that can't heal. It's too late for too many people who died waiting for something like this to happen, but at least it's here now. To you, Leonie: I know it's not good enough, but at least we're here, and we wouldn't be here without you. All those thousands of people like Stan, so wronged as children, so haunted for so long by monsters that we told them didn't exist, are fortunate that a little girl, left alone in a cold, damp orphanage in Geelong, who suffered so much, grew up to be so strong and never forgot and never gave up.

Ms HUSAR (Lindsay) (16:56): Finally we are taking a fundamental step towards justice for the victims of child sexual abuse. These are abhorrent crimes committed on defenceless children like Stan, who we just heard about from the member for Blaxland. I'm saddened, though, that it has taken us this long. The time to act is long overdue. If we consider that children are our most vulnerable members of our communities, we as adults should be taking every measure to ensure that our kids grow up safe and secure, regardless of who's looking after them.

Labor has always been supportive of this national redress scheme for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. The sexual abuse of children is a terrible crime, and we are committed to providing survivors with the genuine opportunity to access justice for the crimes that were committed against them as defenceless little children. It has taken far too long for this government to get this far in the redress scheme, and it is sorely overdue.

I'd like to thank the member for Jagajaga, Jenny Macklin, for her leadership and her advocacy—in fact, not just on this but on many of the things that she's done in this place that have made a real difference in peoples' lives.

On 12 November 2012, the then Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, announced the decision to establish the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. I, along with many on this side of the House, will be forever grateful for that decision. Whilst it will always be a blight on our nation's character to hear the stories of those children who suffered, their stories deserve to be aired, to have the daylight shone on them and grown-ups to be held to account. She stated:

The allegations that have come to light recently about child sexual abuse have been heartbreaking …

… These are insidious, evil acts to which no child should be subject. The individuals concerned deserve the most thorough of investigations into the wrongs that have been committed …

… They deserve to have their voices heard and their claims investigated.

Prime Minister Gillard believed that a royal commission was the best way to do this. It was the Gillard Labor government that created the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in 2013. This is the exact kind of thing that a royal commission ought to be used for.

The royal commission gave the victims of child sexual abuse hope that they could have a future in which they can move on from the past where they were wronged. The royal commission held 56 public hearings over 444 days across a five-year period. Well over 1,600 individuals contacted the Royal Commission, with evidence coming from more than 1,300 witnesses. The commissioners, six in all, held almost 8,000 private sessions to listen to the personal accounts of survivors. More than 1,000 survivors provided a written account of their experience. More than 680 people worked for the royal commission during its life, and I'd like to thank everybody involved, the commissioners and their staff, for their careful and considered work over their five-year period. Those figures, those numbers, are simply staggering.

I'd like to thank also the thousands of courageous survivors who shared their stories with the royal commission. They stood up and they told their story, which took great courage and determination. I thank them all. And I thank all those people involved, because hearing those stories would not have been easy.

Institutional child sexual abuse has been occurring for generations, across many decades, and has affected the lives of far too many people. Survivors of child sexual abuse have been waiting their whole lives for someone to take accountability for what was done. To provide redress for the horrific crimes that were perpetrated against them is only one part of the story. We know how important it is for more than 60,000 victims to access the redress scheme. We understand, though, that no amount of money can make up for the pain and the trauma they have experienced. However, redress is an important step along the road to healing.

In 2015 the royal commission made an interim recommendations that a national redress scheme be operational by July last year, with Labor being the first major party to support the national redress scheme. Sadly, the Liberals did not commit to the redress scheme until 2016. The commissioners outlined a very clear vision for what a national redress scheme should be in their final report on civil litigation and redress in 2015. The commissioners called for justice for victims. They said:

A process for redress must provide equal access and equal treatment for survivors—regardless of the location, operator, type, continued existence or assets of the institution in which they were abused—if it is to be regarded by survivors as being capable of delivering—

some kind of justice, however overdue. We understand they did not make these recommendations lightly. Labor believes that these recommendations should be implemented faithfully as much as is possible. For too long, society has turned a blind eye to the survivors' daily struggle, and this is to our collective and immense shame.

We recognise that establishing a national redress scheme is a complex task. This redress scheme will be managed by the Secretary of the Department of Social Services as the scheme operator. The elements of redress under this scheme are the monetary payment, access to counselling and psychological services, and the opportunity to receive an apology from a representative of the institution responsible for the abuse. To be eligible to receive redress, applicants must have suffered sexual address as a child that is within the scope of the scheme before the scheme's start date.

We do, however, have a number of concerns with the legislation as it is drafted, and it is critical that these issues be addressed urgently. As a result of these concerns, we have referred these bills to a Senate inquiry so the community can be consulted on the points of difference in these bills and the earlier Commonwealth legislation. As the proposed state date of the scheme is 1 July, this inquiry is due to report before the Senate next sits, as the inquiry should not delay the commencement of the scheme at all.

The commissioners recommended that the appropriate level of monetary payments under a redress should be a minimum payment of $10,000, a maximum of $200,000 for the most severe cases, and an average payment of $65,000. This bill places an upper limit of $150,000 on the amount of redress that will be payable to a survivor. This cap is not what the royal commission, after five years, had recommended.

This bill gives the applicants only six months to make a decision, while the royal commission has recommended a year, after five years of work. We cannot see a policy rationale for rushing the decision of survivors and victims. We need to make sure that survivors have sufficient time to decide whether or not to accept an offer of redress. Accepting an offer will mean signing a deed of release and waiving their civil rights against the responsible institution, and this is not a decision that we should ask people to take lightly, especially the victims and the survivors. Applicants who accept an offer of redress will also receive financial advice.

We are very concerned that the counselling provided to survivors through the redress scheme will not be adequate. The royal commission recommended that recipients of redress be able to access counselling for the rest of their lives. Imagine having an abhorrent sex crime committed against you as a child and then being told that you have a time limit in which you should get over it. The bill only provides access to counselling services for the length of the scheme or a payment to the amount of $5,000. These arrangements are inadequate and need to be addressed. We need to make sure that there are enough services to support the survivors who are considering making an application for redress and that they are accessible no matter where the survivor lives or what language the survivor speaks.

Furthermore, the bill limits eligibility for the redress scheme for people who are living outside Australia or not Australian citizens. We are very concerned that people who were abused as child migrants in immigration detention will not be able to access redress if they have returned to their country of birth. We call on the government to confirm that provision will be made for these groups of survivors to access the national Redress Scheme, because what kind of a cruel lot are they to determine that a sex crime against a child migrant be treated any differently to that of a non-migrant child? To me, that sounds like blatant discrimination. You're either admitting there was a wrong and you are committed to fixing it, or you are not; you cannot pick and choose. The children didn't have a choice and this government shouldn't either. It is critical that the national Redress Scheme provides survivors with a genuine opportunity to access justice and that it takes into account and caters for the unique needs of this group.

The Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee conducted an inquiry into the two bills that were before the Senate to establish the Commonwealth Redress Scheme for Survivors of Institutional Child Sexual Abuse, and their report was delivered earlier this year. Additional comments were made by Labor Party senators, including recommendations that the bill be amended to restore the maximum cap to $200,000 and to specify that survivors be given a year to decide whether to accept the offer of redress, and that survivors of institutional child sex abuse be eligible for redress, including those who do not live in Australia and those with criminal convictions, as recommended by the royal commission.

This last recommendation points to another area of concern that we have with this bill. The government has sought to place restrictions on accessing the redress scheme for survivors who themselves have a criminal history. I believe, and Labor believes, that this is deeply unfair. This rule ignores strong evidence that shows that people with a history of childhood abuse and trauma are more likely to be incarcerated later in life. Where does this government get off? As a child, if you lived through having a trusted adult who perpetrated horrific crimes against you, would you somehow grow up into a nice, normal, well-rounded individual without any issues? We know that this is simply not the case, as the member for Barton already pointed out. The statistics that back this up are well-known and well published, but, more than that, it is common sense.

This government's version of redress says that those victims who have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of five years or more have to have special permission from the scheme operator to access the scheme. We believe that this policy should be changed. The royal commission has made clear that sexual abuse of children is not just a problem from the past; it has a hangover that goes well into generation after generation. It has devastating, life-long consequences, including interactions with the justice system.

It is now, though, encouraging to see that Victoria, New South Wales, the ACT, the Northern Territory and Queensland have publicly announced that they will participate in the national Redress Scheme. We call on the states and territories, churches, charities and other institutions and ask them to now opt into the Redress Scheme.

Whilst we look back and thank the victims of these crime for their courage in telling their stories, we must also look to the future, something I believe the survivors would strongly agree with. We must never allow the abuse of children to be covered up or for people to hide in places of plain sight. Changes are needed in the culture, the structure and the governance practices of many institutions. Our task is to now bring about change so that every Australian child can enjoy a safe childhood free of abuse. Survivors now, though, need justice and they need redress, and we need to ensure the safety of our children for future generations.

It is incumbent on all in this parliament to work together on further improvement to ensure we get the best possible redress scheme for survivors whilst ensuring that we learn from the past and change practices for the future. The Commonwealth must work with the states and institutes to complete the national redress. For too long, the survivors of institutional child sexual abuse weren't believed, for too long they've waited for justice, and we must do everything we can to ensure that what has happened in the past is never allowed to happen again. I dedicate my words here today to the future generations, and during my time here I commit to doing all I can to ensure that this isn't repeated. I again thank those who bravely and courageously opened old wounds, opened boxes of buried memories, and told their stories.

Ms OWENS (Parramatta) (17:09): I started reading the report into institutional child sexual abuse, and I wouldn't recommend that people read it in full; it's an incredibly harrowing read, and most of us would stop quite early in the piece. But the thing you do notice, when you live in Parramatta, is the number of times the word Parramatta appears, perhaps more than any other place name in the report.

There is a group of women in our community who know absolutely why that is the case. And I think it's an indication of how long the whole issue of institutional child sexual abuse has been swept under the rug that most of us in Parramatta don't know that those Parramatta girls are still among us in Parramatta and that they were the victims of one of the most horrendous cases of institutional child abuse in the country. It was, of course, at what we now know as the Parramatta Girls Home that these women, as children, were incarcerated in one of the worst institutions when it came to sexual, physical and mental abuse of children.

Those women have been fighting for over a decade to preserve the site of their childhood torture as a site of conscience—a place that documents the reality of our history, a place of commitment to our children, a public statement that it will never happen again. Through the work of those women, and Bonnie Durack in particular, an application for national heritage listing was submitted in 2011, and they saw it come to pass in 2017. They've been coming together as the Memory Project since 2012, looking for recognition of their story and the story of all the women and girls involved, in the establishment of a site of conscience around the very place where they were imprisoned as children, the Parramatta Girls Home. They launched in 2012, and the Memory Project has enabled the Parramatta girls to supplant isolation, shame and silence with shared memory, creativity and social gathering. They have a simple message for us: agency for them is crucial to the activation of this institutional precinct as a site of conscience. That means first and foremost that those who experienced injustice—its former occupants—are empowered to determine how we remember the past and how to use it to build a better present and future. In the last couple of years we have seen state government plans to sell off the very ground on which these buildings stand. These women fought so hard to stop that, and now, with the heritage listing and a change in the government's plans for the immediate precinct, they are at least on their way to having this location recognised as a national site of conscience, as I, as their representative, believe it should be.

The Parramatta Girls Home, as it's now known, has an extraordinary history. It traces the history of the incarceration of women and girls for almost 200 years. It was originally opened in 1841 as the Roman Catholic Orphan School. Children of the female convicts who were taken from their parents almost at birth would stand on the balcony looking down into the courtyard where the women were, trying to work out who their mum was. So, right from an early time, the building has a history of incarceration. In 1887 it became the Industrial School for Girls, then in 1925 the Parramatta Girls Training School, then in 1961 the Parramatta Girls Home. It was closed in 1974 and then became the Girls Childrens Home until 1983. So it's essentially been a place for the incarceration of girls since 1841. It has an extraordinary history. There were violent riots in 1887, 1890, 1898, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945, 1946, 1953, 1954 and 1961.

It was a place of appalling stories. If you ever sit down and talk to some of the women and girls who are prepared to share their stories, you know that dreadful stories came from this place. There was rape, there was the turning of blind eyes and there was usually no consequences for the rapist. At best, they were suspended, but there was punishment for the child who objected. There was punishment for the person who told the truth. They weren't allowed to talk to each other for more than 10 minutes a day. There was no speaking unless spoken to with the staff. There was no privacy: they were always watched, including by male staff, including in the showers and on the toilets. They weren't allowed to turn their backs while in the showers. They were made to sleep on their side with their faces to the door; they weren't allowed to turn over in bed. They were punished with food deprivation, beatings, scrubbing of concrete floors for hours and being put in isolation cells for up to 21 days without a bed, a bucket or a chair. Sometimes in those cells they were stripped of all clothing and repeatedly raped, in many cases by two of the superintendents. In some cases they were punched in the stomach to bring on a miscarriage if found to be pregnant. They had invasive medical procedures. They were strip-searched by male staff and sexually abused by other children.

It was known as the 'home for wayward girls' when I first moved to Parramatta about 15 or 16 years ago. It's an astonishingly beautiful building with beautiful balconies, and it was known as the 'home for wayward girls'. It's worth just dwelling on that for a minute, because the children who were put in these homes were put there because they were at risk. A neglected child was defined as one who was destitute or had no visible means of support; who was ill-treated; whose parents weren't exercising proper care or were unfit to do so; who, without lawful excuse, did not attend school regularly; or were falling into bad associations and exposed to moral danger.

The vast majority of children who went into the Parramatta Girls Home in all its iterations were in fact children who were there for welfare reasons, because they weren't cared for by the people who should have been caring for them. Many of them had already been sexually abused or physically abused by family members, and they found themselves in a place, once again, where they were essentially imprisoned until the day they turned 18. There's a giant sandstone fence around that compound. They were in that place and they didn't go outside; they stayed there until the day they turned 18, when they were dumped at a place we used to know as the People's Palace in Sydney. Essentially, they were left there with just the clothes on their back at the age of 18. They had no experience of the world, they had a history of being physically, sexually and mentally abused and they were required to fend for themselves. There was no state support.

It's worth noting too that many of the stolen generation, the Indigenous community who were taken from their parents, were put here as well. In the Bringing them home report the inquiry noted that the definition and interpretation of the key terms of the Child Welfare Act adversely affected Indigenous families. It said:

'Neglect' was defined to include destitution and poverty …

A large of the stolen generation in New South Wales ended up in the Parramatta Girls Home and experienced the same punitive conditions that I described earlier.

The impact on these children was quite severe, as you would imagine. These were children who didn't know love, they didn't know friendship, they were unable to even develop relationships within the Girls Home because of the rule that they couldn't speak to each other for more than 10 minutes a day. They suffered incredible abuse, and when they were released they received no support. Several witnesses gave evidence that they became homeless and turned to prostitution on release. They had no money; they had no clothes, only what they wore; they had no skills because they hadn't been educated. The state claimed at the time that they were too old for education, but actually they arrived at the Parramatta Girls Home as young as the age of eight. But they received no education.

One witness said she went in an innocent girl and left a dangerous and uncontrollable criminal. She had only learnt two things: how to use her sexuality to live and that if she was good to men she'd be rewarded. She was homeless and worked as prostitute in Kings Cross to support herself. With no education these children struggled to adapt to life outside the institution, and many still face psychological issues today. I'm not going to name the incredibly brave witnesses who gave evidence to the royal commission—they are in the report; I'm going to refer to them as witness 1, witness 2 et cetera. Witness 1 has ongoing psychological trauma, including problems with her sex life and her bowels. The smell of faeces affects her, and she dreads using any toilet that's not her own. She has flashbacks, she's never had counselling for fear that it would drag up worse memories and she believes the sadness will never go away. Witness 2 is still burdened by the fear of Parramatta girls. She doesn't trust men, and her experiences have severely affected her self-worth. She vomits when she thinks about the abuse and feels she's been left with a legacy that will never go away.

Witness 3 feels like she's been in prison since she left Parramatta girls. She does not trust anyone and has nightmares about Superintendent Gordon. Witness 4 has suicidal thoughts because she could not talk about her experiences. She believes that people do not want to know about what happened. She fears people and does not go out. Witness 5 has been claustrophobic since Parramatta girls and fears closed doors. She's a nervy person who watches everything and walks close to walls so that people cannot approach her from behind. The sound of keys rattling reminds her of Superintendent Gordon. Witness 6 has had ongoing problems with sex. Talking about sexual positions with her husband makes her feel ill. Locked doors trigger bad memories. She won't go to venues like clubs if she cannot see a way out. She's now in her 60s and the impact of abuse still takes over her life. Another has suffered depression throughout her life and has needed medication for it. Yet another has nightmares that are only cured by heavy medication. She's been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Another suffers from traumatic flashbacks and has depression. With no self-confidence or self-esteem, she does not trust anyone and does not take criticism well. Medical tests make her anxious and she does not like being examined by male doctors. Yet another was committed to a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide. She has self-mutilated to relieve the pain.

I could go on, because there are many more stories of what childhood sexual abuse has left these survivors with. I know many of them in my electorate of Parramatta. I organised a bus—a big bus, actually—to drive a whole group of them down for the apology. I picked them up at the Parramatta Girls Home and dropped them off there later that night. But there were some who even then couldn't come. They wanted to come; they couldn't face it. And there will be many even now, when this redress scheme unfolds, who will need time to come to terms with what it means for them. I would ask the government to consider the time frame they've put on this—that is, that the bill gives applicants six months to make their decision. The royal commission recommended a year. I would go further than that, having known so many of these women for so long, in that the decision that these women make should take place in the survivor's time frame, not that of the government. It should take place in their time frame.

Labor has a number of concerns about the redress scheme. It's been our policy since 2015. I would say one slightly partisan thing, which is I'm really sorry that it's taken this long. We've known it should be done and we've ignored these children—now women—for far too long. We shouldn't have ignored them since 2015 but we did. But we have a number of concerns about the redress scheme as it stands. We're going to support it because it's really important that it starts, but I want to make the following points.

The first is that the decision should be made in the survivor's time frame, as I've just said. The bill places an upper limit of $150,000 on the amount of redress, when the royal commission recommended $200,000. The bill also limits eligibility to people living in Australia who are Australian citizens. We know, of course, that child migrants were in institutions as well and that abuse of children has occurred in immigration detention. We're concerned that these people will not be able to access redress if they have returned to their country of birth. We're also concerned that the money for counselling provided to survivors will not be adequate—it's only $5,000. Some of these people will require counselling every week, or more than that, for the rest of their life, the damage is so great. The government's also sought to place restrictions on survivors who have a criminal history. I believe that is deeply unfair. We know from the research that childhood sexual abuse leads to criminal behaviour in many cases, so there will be people who are in prison who otherwise wouldn't have been there—the child who was neglected by their parents, who went in as an innocent 10-year-old and came out a criminal. We know that this is the case because the evidence tells us. It is deeply unfair, and we on this side believe that that should be changed.

We know this is a complex task. We're encouraged that some of the states have now come in. We're encouraged that some of the institutions have come in. Of course, there always needs to be a source of last resort, because so many of the institutions are no longer in existence. We need to make sure that people whose childhood torturers no longer exist still have appropriate redress. There are a number of things that we on this side are concerned about, but we will support this bill, the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018, because we believe it's timely. The scheme needs to start, and we'll support it.

Ms O'TOOLE (Herbert) (17:24): I am proud to stand in this place today to support the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018, even though I will raise some areas of concern. I am in awe of the people who came forward and gave evidence during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which was a legacy of the Gillard Labor government. Their courage has been nothing short of exceptional, especially when giving evidence was harrowing and very distressing as one is required to relive horrendous experiences. I also have huge respect for the commissioners who sat and listened to extremely distressing evidence from hurt and damaged people for over 444 days, and I thank them for their tireless commitment over five years so that we could see justice done.

I'm going to start my speech with the details of a woman who I have known for nearly 40 years. Sadly, she has passed on now. I will not reveal her identity out of respect for her privacy. Can you imagine growing up in a neglectful family and being taken away by children services on a number of occasions for varying periods of time and put into an institution, separated from your siblings because the boys went to boys' homes and the girls went to girls' homes? Can you imagine not being given the opportunity for an education that you so desperately craved? Can you imagine the only reason that your mother takes you from the home at age 14 is to put you to work and to take your income? Can you imagine, as you get older, being so fearful of going into an aged care facility due to what you remember from being in an institution? Can you imagine what it must be like to carry the secret of sexual abuse to your deathbed for nearly 86 years, because you could not tell a soul? Can you imagine lying on your deathbed and finally telling someone that you were sexually abused as a child in an institution, a place where you were meant to be protected? I cannot imagine living with that secret for nearly 86 years.

Maybe it was because you did not think anyone would care, because you did not think you would be believed, because you were ashamed or because of all of those reasons. I am sure that there are many people out there who have similar experiences and still have not told a soul. I say to those people: I believe you, this parliament believes you and, thanks to the royal commission, others will believe you as well. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has opened the door for people who have lived with this trauma to speak out because, at last, they will be believed. The commission held 57 public hearings, as I said, over 444 days; heard evidence from 1,300 witnesses and also held almost 8,000 private sessions where the commissioners listened to harrowing personal accounts.

It was Labor who was the first to announce support for a national redress scheme when the royal commission released its interim report in 2015. The LNP government did not commit to the redress scheme until 2016. The commissioners outlined a clear vision for a national redress scheme in the final report, Redress and civil litigation, in 2015 and the recommendations were not made lightly. It is for this reason that Labor believes that these recommendations should be implemented faithfully and as much as is humanly possible. Labor thanks the thousands of courageous survivors who shared their stories with the royal commission, as it is because of their bravery that we are discussing a national redress scheme in this place today. Survivors of child sexual abuse have been waiting their whole lives for redress for the horrific crimes that were perpetrated against them as children. For too long now, society has turned a blind eye to their daily struggle and that is nothing short of an immense shame.

However, Labor has a number of concerns with the legislation as it is currently drafted. Labor believes that it is critical that the national redress scheme provides survivors with a genuine opportunity to access justice and that it takes into account and caters for the unique needs of individual survivors. We have referred these bills to a Senate inquiry so that the community can be consulted on the points of difference in these bills and the earlier Commonwealth legislation. In light of the proposed start date of 1 July 2018, this inquiry is due to report before the Senate next sits so that the inquiry should not delay the commencement of the scheme. As a gesture of good faith in our ongoing discussions with the government to resolve Labor's concerns and to acknowledge our longstanding commitment to the establishment of a national redress scheme, Labor will support the bills in this House.

These bills establish a redress scheme that will be managed by the Secretary of the Department of Social Services as the scheme operator. The scheme will provide three elements of redress, with applicants able to receive all or just some of the elements. The elements of redress under the scheme are: a monetary payment, access to counselling and psychological services, and the opportunity to receive an apology from a representative of the institution responsible for the abuse. Those applicants who accept an offer will be required to sign a deed of release, waiving their civil rights against the responsible institution. Applicants will be provided with access to support services and legal services throughout their interactions with the redress scheme, and they will also receive financial advice. To be eligible to receive redress, applicants must have suffered sexual abuse as a child within the scope of the scheme and before the scheme start date.

Labor is concerned about a number of elements of the proposed scheme. Labor believes that we need to make sure that there are enough support services for all survivors who are considering making an application for redress, regardless of where they live or what language they speak, and that attention must be paid to cultural competency.

It is imperative that survivors have sufficient time to decide whether or not to accept an offer of redress. This bill gives applicants only six months to make this decision; however, the royal commission recommended a year. It is important that survivors have sufficient time to consider their decision because they are permitted only one application to the scheme and, for many, this will be an emotional and overwhelming process that should not be rushed.

This bill places an upper limit of $150,000 on the amount of redress that would be payable to any one survivor, but the royal commission recommended a maximum payment of $200,000, a minimum payment of $10,000 and an average payment of $65,000. Accepting an offer will also mean that the survivor will sign away any rights to pursue a claim for compensation through litigation, and that is why the amount of redress under the scheme is critical and it is absolutely essential that sufficient time be allowed to make a decision.

The bill also limits eligibility to the redress scheme to people who are living in Australia or who are Australian citizens. We know that horrific abuse has occurred in institutions that cared for child migrants, and we also know that abuse of children has occurred in immigration detention. We are rightly concerned that these people will not be able to access redress if they have returned to their country of birth. Labor calls on the government to confirm that provision will be made for these groups of survivors to access national redress.

Labor is very concerned that counselling provided to survivors through the redress scheme will not be adequate. The royal commission recommended that recipients of redress be able to access counselling for the rest of their life, but this bill only provides access to state-provided services for the length of the scheme or a payment of up to $5,000 to be put towards counselling. These arrangements are woefully inadequate, and Labor calls on the government to give assurances that this will be addressed. Having worked in the mental health sector for 15 years, I can assure you that, when people have been traumatised to the extent of what these people have suffered, that is simply not enough money or time.

Survivors often consider that the government is responsible for their abuse, and they do not wish to use state or institution-run services. This must be taken into account.

Survivors who are granted redress late in the life of the scheme could also be disadvantaged because they will not be able to access services for the same length of time as survivors who are granted redress early in the life of the scheme. This must also be taken into account in future reviews. The $5,000 payment will not provide adequate access to psychological counselling, as I mentioned, because, at the average rate of $150 an hour for counselling, this equates to a mere 33.3 hours of counselling, and that is simply not sufficient and needs urgent attention.

The government seeks to place restrictions on survivors who themselves have a criminal history from accessing the redress scheme. This is deeply unfair. I have worked in an area where I have come across people who have been incarcerated with significant mental health issues and who had been abused as children. They have found themselves in circumstances that are completely unacceptable as they have gone into their teenage years and into adulthood and those have led them to incarceration. Why should they be punished for something that happened to them as children? It's just not fair.

The bill requires that those who have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment for five years or more have special permission from the scheme operator to access the scheme. This rule ignores strong evidence, as I have said, showing that people with a history of childhood abuse and trauma are more likely to be incarcerated later in life. The first Senate inquiry was inundated with evidence from a variety of witnesses and submitters that this rule is cruel and is likely to increase recidivism.

Labor believes that this policy should be changed. Labor recognises that establishing a national redress scheme is a complex task, and it is very encouraging to see that Victoria, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, the Northern Territory and Queensland have publicly announced that had they will participate in the scheme. We understand that other jurisdictions are working with the government, and we would want to see universal sign-up to the scheme as soon as humanly possible.

For justice to be truly done, the redress scheme must be national. Labor calls on all states and territories, churches, charities and other institutions to opt into the scheme. We must work together to right the wrongs of years gone by and ensure that these events can and will never be repeated. It is incumbent on all of us in this parliament to work together on further improvement to ensure is that we get the best possible redress scheme for survivors.

I want to make it clear today that a Shorten Labor government will seek to work with the states towards addressing the issues of concern that we have identified. Once we've got the agreement in place—once all states, churches and other institutions have signed up to an agreement—I believe that there may be an opportunity in the future for us to build on this start and do more. I would certainly hope that those people in the situation of living with the dreadful secret that the woman who I mentioned earlier in my speech lived with for 86 years, and felt she could only mention on her deathbed, never, ever happens to another person.

Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (17:37): I'm very pleased today to rise to speak on the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018 because it gives me an opportunity to speak a little about the bill itself and a little about some of its shortcomings. As the member for Herbert very clearly laid out, while Labor supports the bill and the redress scheme, we think it doesn't go quite far enough in some respects. It also gives me the opportunity of putting on the record in this place the incredible bravery of the people who have participated in the royal commission and my deep gratitude and thanks to so many of those who were involved.

Of course, that starts with our former Prime Minister, my colleague Julia Gillard, for launching the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and the work that was done by Julia when she was Prime Minister, and by Jenny Macklin, who was the minister responsible at the time, in preparing the groundwork for this royal commission.

The royal commission was conducted in an absolutely exemplary way by those who were entrusted with its running. The work rate was extraordinary: 42,041 calls handled, 25,964 emails and letters received, 8,013 private sessions held and 2,575 referrals, including referrals to the police. The workload was extraordinary, and I do just want to place on the record, once again, how grateful the nation is to the Hon. Justice Peter McClelland AM, who led the royal commission, and to his fellow commissioners: the Hon. Justice Jennifer Coate; Bob Atkinson AO APM; Robert Fitzgerald AM; Helen Milroy; and Andrew Murray, who, of course, is a former colleague of many of us here.

I also want to thank Gail Furness SC, who was the senior counsel assisting the royal commission, as well as all other counsel assisting and the extraordinary staff that worked throughout the operations of the royal commission. I have heard story after story from people who interacted with the royal commission about the compassion, the decency, the thoroughness, the sense of responsibility and the respect that the staff of the royal commission gave to all of those who came forward to tell their stories.

But it is to those people who came forward to tell their stories that my deepest gratitude goes, because I think we really need to acknowledge in this place the extraordinary bravery that goes with survivors stepping forward to give evidence. Some of these people had been lifelong campaigners for the royal commission or something like it, to see a formal response to the abuse they suffered as children. Some who stepped forward had, as the member for Herbert said, kept their stories to themselves for decades—for a whole lifetime, essentially. Both of those approaches take their toll: being a public campaigner takes its toll, and keeping a secret takes its toll. Coming forward to share experiences, for many, was reliving those experiences, and it's a very, very difficult thing to do. So we thank them as a nation, because their bravery means, I hope, that, as the member for Herbert said, no other child has to suffer in the way that these children suffered.

One of the things that were extraordinary about the revelations from the royal commission was how phenomenally widespread this child sexual abuse was and how commonly it occurred in institutions in our suburbs—not in a different place, not in a distant place and not in a distant time but in amongst us and until recently, and indeed, no doubt, still now. In my electorate, there was the Charlton Boys Home in Glebe, which was an institution in which terrible abuse took place. Carl Beauchamp wrote a book about the abuse that he and other boys suffered in the home. The book was called Come Home You Little Bastards, and I launched that book in 2016. Carl spoke about his experience and the experience of his brother and many other boys in this home.

Carl was sent to Charlton Boys Home at the age of 13, having already been sexually assaulted in Yasmar remand home. Carl tells the story of his family, and his family was so very typical of so many families in the inner city at the time when he grew up. He talks about growing up in Redfern and Waterloo and living in Erskineville with his parents—his mother in particular. These boys did nothing wrong. They had the misfortune of being born to parents who couldn't care for them or didn't care for them appropriately. Carl tells the story about the superintendent at the home who was so very violent to the boys, physically and sexually assaulting them, including violent beatings that involved all sorts of injuries—broken bones and compound fractures—freezing showers in the middle of winter, and boys standing there naked being inspected by the staff and having their genitals inspected and fondled. Carl writes about being sent on a camping trip in his Christmas 'holiday', if you could call it that, where he was raped by a man who also raped other boys on that trip.

Essentially, this Charlton Boys Home was run as a paedophile ring. These boys were lent out to paedophiles known to the directors of the home, and when they returned, if they complained, they were brutally punished for complaining. When they reported these crimes, including by demonstrating bleeding, they were not believed and they were further punished. Carl writes about being sexually assaulted on multiple occasions by a man that the home gave him to for weekends at a time. He was one of many boys staying at the home at one time, and he details the abuse that took place at this man's hands. The boys were sent to work in local businesses, often for no money. Carl was sent to work in a pie factory in Kensington where, again, he was sexually assaulted by the owner. Carl wrote in his book about 20 other boys from the home also claiming to have been sexually assaulted or raped by the owner. This wasn't an accident. It wasn't a one off; it was repeated methodical, organised paedophilia with the cover of an institution. And it happened with no recourse and no protection for these little children and a feeling of impunity or invincibility amongst those who were doing the abuse. That is the extraordinary thing about this.

Carl writes about a little boy, Alan, who was six years of age. He was raped by a part-time officer in a tin shed at the back of the home. When little 6-year-old Alan told the home superintendent about the crime, he was abused as a liar and punished for reporting it. What followed were years of sustained humiliation and abuse because of his report, as well as the continued sexual assault. You wonder why children didn't come forward earlier when they saw what happened to the kids who did come forward? It's no wonder. It's a wonder that anybody's ever been brave enough to complain.

I want to pay tribute to Carl and to all of those who came forward through the course of the royal commission: those who made their stories public beforehand when demanding the royal commission, and those who were brave enough to come forward subsequently. I also want to say this one thing about Carl: he's gone on to have the most beautiful life and marriage. He's a father of four, grandfather—last time I checked—of 12 and great grandfather of 17, and he's still married to his first love, Beryl. To find it possible in your heart to find love and stability, to value family and to go on to have a good life after this terrible start just shows the phenomenal strength of Carl. But not everybody made it through. Part of the reason for this Redress Scheme is to acknowledge the lifelong and ongoing damage that so many have faced, and for us to admit to ourselves that not everyone made it. Too many people never made it.

Throughout my electorate there are these landmarks of abuse, such as the former Bidura, the former children's court and remand centre on Glebe Point Road. Even more recently, in one of the music institutes in my electorate, around the corner from where my office was, abuse was taking place. This is living memory. These people who were abused are still young. This isn't ancient history. So many institutions and so many people have been affected right throughout our nation.

Also, I want to take the time I have remaining to say that this this royal commission and the Redress Scheme would not have come about without so many years of hard work and committed lobbying by so many people in our community. Pamella Vernon is a woman who was formerly in my electorate—a former long-time constituent. She's Vice-President of the organisation Alliance for Forgotten Australians. Pamella lobbied me for many years before the royal commission was announced. She grew up in the Central Methodist Mission Dalmar Children's Home, and she has been advocating for forgotten Australians for over 45 years. She can tell you the stories of her family and the affect that what happened to them as children has had on them, and it would break your heart. The Alliance for Forgotten Australians work tirelessly supporting survivors and lobbying for a national redress scheme, and they continue to hold governments to account to demand that governments and institutions that haven't signed up do so.

Many in this chamber and in the Senate know very well of the work of CLAN, the Care Levers Australasia Network, and the phenomenal work of Leonie Sheedy and all of those who have worked with Leonie over the years. We know of the support that CLAN has given survivors of child sexual abuse, helping them come forward, helping them tell their stories and helping them give their evidence, as well as dealing with their retraumatisation after they have given their evidence to the royal commission, despite the fine work of the royal commission. CLAN has been there through all of it. I am delighted to have been asked to be one of their parliamentary patrons. Their resolve and strength is continually inspiring. I visited their National Orphanage Museum, which provides an incredible, permanent monument to the experiences of the 'clannies'. It is a room full of the most poignant reminders through the artefacts that care leavers have given to the museum—artefacts that bear witness to their lives. It was very moving to visit that museum, and I certainly would urge other members of parliament to take the opportunity, if they can.

Finally, as pointed out by CLAN, the abuse that children suffered in institutions was not just sexual abuse; it was also physical abuse and emotional abuse. Over 25 years in Victoria, hundreds of children in orphanages and babies homes, wards of the state, were used in vaccine experiments and studies by doctors, in conjunction with CSL. It was unconscionable behaviour. There have been examinations in the past in this place that detail some of this behaviour. Another constituent of mine, Stephanie, has helped to keep this issue alive and at the forefront of our minds to make sure that the behaviour involved in these despicable acts of using young children, without any ability to consent, without the consent of any parent, continues to be remembered by this parliament and by our Australian community. I think it's vital that the work that Stephanie is doing to remind people of the use of these babies, including wards of the state, for vaccine experiments continues to be examined and that we, as a parliament, investigate the long-term effects. I want to thank the late Anthony Foster and his wife, Christine, who did so much work in bringing these issues to light and taking on the might of the Catholic Church.

Many of my colleagues have detailed the ways in which we differ from the government on this bill. We would like to see changes but, of course, we won't stand in the way of the bill itself, because too many survivors have been waiting too long for the redress that this scheme offers.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): I thank the honourable member for Sydney for her moving and touching contribution. The constituents that you represent will take heart from the fact that their story will be recorded and so enshrined in the Hansard from this point forward.

Ms RYAN (Lalor—Opposition Whip) (17:52): I'm pleased to rise on what is a very sober evening to join the long line of colleagues in this place in speaking on the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018. I'm pleased to follow the member for Sydney after her heartfelt contribution. Like the member for Sydney, I would like to pay tribute to Julia Gillard, the former member for Lalor and our former Prime Minister; the member for Jagajaga, whose tears in this place last week spoke for all of us; and the member for Maribyrnong, whose speech I found inspiring and comforting. I also want to pay tribute to all the speakers on this side of the House. There will have been 22 Labor members speak on what is an incredibly important bill. I would also like to thank the member for Swan, the member for Gilmore, the member for Mackellar and the member for Fisher from the benches opposite, whose contributions brought many of us to tears, and also the member for Indi, who, as an Independent, stood in this place to speak of the unspeakable.

Over the last several years, we have shone a light on the unspeakable—the organised sexual abuse of children by trusted institutions, by trusted adults. Through long campaigns this light has been shone. Through our storytellers in film and television and through the royal commission, we've had our eyes opened to the horror as they relayed the circumstances through fiction or, more sadly, through the telling by the individuals who suffered. We have found it hard to watch. We have found it hard to hear. It has been unthinkable. As is our human way, we've tried to understand the motivations, tried to make sense of what makes no sense. We are left knowing only that sexual abuse of children is unfathomable and that monsters exist. What we've learned is that it was organised and more endemic that any of us could have imagined. We're left struggling to understand the monsters among us, left feeling completely inadequate in our response to the victims.

Like many in this place I've read transcripts of the royal commission. I've had the privilege of sitting with the bravest of victims, survivors, and struggled to hear their story. In the words of former Prime Minister Gillard:

The allegations that have come to light recently about child sexual abuse have been heartbreaking. These are insidious, evil acts to which no child should be subject.

Indeed, Julia. I would add: no human response is adequate, no monetary redress is adequate, but they now know they are believed. They now know we will no longer look away. We will look clearly at their lived experiences and share the horror that adults could do these things. It is abominable that trusted institutions could hide what they knew is abominable. That survivors wait for redress, wait for justice, even after a royal commission, is abominable. I pay tribute to the courage of the survivors, to their resilience, to their determination to be heard.

When we think about redress and justice, we need to ponder our own lives. We lived beside the victims as they suffered at the hands of those whom we were taught to respect. In our classrooms sat children who were being and had been dehumanised and subjected to vile abuse. We went about our days oblivious to their pain, to their struggle and to their recovery. Because of the royal commission I have since had the privilege of conveying my admiration personally to one such victim, to sit and quietly listen, and silently be appalled. I think the member for Maribyrnong's words captured what I now know:

Only she will ever know how dark the days were, just how deep the memories run, but it is the same trauma, the same betrayal and the same violation of sacred trust that fills the pages of the royal commission's final report. Thousands of our fellow Australians had their childhoods stolen and their faith in people shattered.

They deserve now the best possible systemic redress, as they suffered systemic abuse. This has been a painful process, unique for every survivor, and they have walked it alone, because nobody can really walk it with them, just as they walked years of abuse alone. They've had to go to dark places in their memories to share their pain with us. They've done so trusting that once the abuse of trust and abuse of their child bodies was exposed, others would not have to suffer the same. The scars will cover our nation: crimes that were ignored, people whose stories were ignored and perpetrators who were sheltered. The way we legislate redress is, therefore, critical. It is another test of trust for us as a society and for us as legislators. I speak for my friend therefore when I say that there was an expectation that, once the survivors lay before us the truth of their lives, we would respect it. The royal commission recommendation should therefore be honoured to the letter.

I am disappointed, as others have been, that this bill fails in some of this regard—that, rather than the recommended sum, a reduced sum has been included; that someone's life, crippled by the brutality of experiences that may have resulted in incarceration and further punishment, could be devalued by exclusion from redress; that dollar limits be put on psychological support for survivors. We asked them to remember; we owe them support, as the royal commission recommended, throughout their life to help them cope with the crime and the memory of it. I am disappointed that justice is still pending in the courts for some of those accused. I'm disappointed that this parliament, the survivors and their families are to be held to a deadline of 1 July and asked to compromise. Wise heads on this side urge us to make that compromise, and we will, so that redress is not further delayed.

I will finish with this. We now must be ever-vigilant in our institutions, in our families and in our neighbourhoods. There are monsters and they will do unspeakable things to innocents. They will seek out opportunities, they will seek out like creatures and they will do untold damage. They will do this while holding powerful, trusted positions, if we allow them to. They will prey on the innocent because of our naivety, because of our own fear to confront, to look closely at the horror. This chapter must not close. We must remember and we must be vigilant.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): I thank the honourable member for her, again, touching contribution. The question is that the bill now be read a second time. I give the call to the honourable member for the Hunter.

Mr FITZGIBBON (Hunter) (18:00): In 1976, I was still a student at Maitland Marist Brothers, as it was then known. One day that year, year 7 student Patrick Garnham was summonsed over the loudspeakers to report to the principal's office. Brother Nestor was not inviting Patrick in for a chat. It was, of course, about something more sinister than I could have ever imagined as a year 9 student. Another year 9 student that year was David O'Hearn, later Father O'Hearn, who spent some time serving my own local Cessnock Catholic parish. O'Hearn was later found guilty of 44 child sex offences. The ages of the victims ranged from nine to 13. Outrageously, rather than offering contrition, O'Hearn fought his charges all the way to the High Court. For a number of years Father Vince Ryan was my local parish priest. He was later jailed for 14 years for numerous atrocities involving young boys.

On the Anglican side of the Christian divide, Father Peter Rushton turned out to be a serial child sex abuser throughout his 40-year career in service to his church. I would often converse with Peter Rushton at official local events. He was always quite pious in his language. Of course, I was totally oblivious to his real and evil character. Rushton, we later learned, would cut the backs of his victims with a knife, drawing the blood of Christ, while anally raping them.

The now infamous St Alban's Home for Boys, where young boys were basically prostituted out by clergymen, was in my hometown from around 1964. The home was always a bit mysterious to me as a young boy. I do, though, remember feeling sympathy for the mainly Indigenous boys who called it their home. But I could not have imagined or comprehended at that age the evil that took place inside that building. The question becomes: how could we have been so blind to this institutionalised evil?

We all like to think it could never happen again, and to that I say, maybe. The answer can be found in culture and in indoctrination. We were raised not to question the church or its methods. We were told that everything that happened, happened for a reason—it was the will of God. The disintegration of this unchallenged edifice eventually came because of the courage of so many victims, some of whom I know. Today we say we believe them and that we weep with them. We thank them for their courage, because it may have saved another generation from the same fate they suffered. We also thank those who helped them, who helped the victims to tell their stories, to secure justice and, hopefully, to find some closure—journalists like the Newcastle Herald's Joanne McCarthy, who relentlessly pursued the perpetrators, no doubt under enormous pressure to back off, and those like local detective Peter Fox, who paid a heavy personal price for his energetic, determined and robust pursuit of offending clergymen and those who protected them, and there were many.

This bill will not heal the emotional or physical wounds. It's far too late for that, but we do hope it helps. The bill is not perfect—far from it. I do acknowledge how difficult it is to navigate so many challenges, such as the agreement of the states and no doubt plenty of advice from lawyers about the minefields which lie ahead. We all remember that we were told by the lawyers that the Commonwealth shouldn't apologise to the stolen generation, since it would open up all sorts of legal problems for the Commonwealth. Of course, we now know that not to be true. I'm particularly disappointed that those who have been imprisoned for more than five years have been excluded from this redress scheme. I say that because it's more than possible—in fact, very likely—that many of them were victims themselves and possibly their experiences led them to offend in the first place.

I shared my own stories about my school and my local parish for an obvious reason. It's to acknowledge that the Hunter region, very tragically, has been the epicentre of all these crimes that were committed over such a long period of time. That is something of which we are not proud of at all; but we are all very proud of the victims, the way they came forward and those who supported them in their determination to find justice not only for themselves but for many others. I vividly recall calling the then Catholic bishop of Maitland-Newcastle just the day before then Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced she'd be establishing a royal commission. I called him out of courtesy to inform him that later that day I would be issuing a statement calling upon a royal commission. I told him that the situation was now overwhelming and had to be properly and fully acted upon. To his credit, the bishop made no attempt to dissuade me.

Let us never again allow religion to be used as a shield against evil. Let the church and let faith continue to play a positive role and let it continue to do its good things—and it does do good things—but let us never allow it again to shield evil. Let us never again be so naive, ignorant or, worse, complacent. What occurred over many decades, and probably for centuries, is a reflection on all of us. We did not know, but we should have known. That's the truth of it. We should have known. Let us never make that mistake again. Let us be forever mindful that there will always be evil amongst us.

Tonight, indeed, young children will be sexually and physically abused in their own homes around our modern, wealthy nation state. That is a reality we continue to face. It is in no small part up to us here in the national parliament to stop the extent to which that continues to occur. We bear a heavy responsibility and we should exercise our power very, very wisely and very, very diligently. For me, our key tool is education. It is the great circuit-breaker. If we want equality of opportunity and if we want to stop abuse happening behind closed doors, we will not be successful without appropriate and smart investment in our education system. It's up to us. It's up to us to do everything we can to stop this evil continuing in our society, and it's up to us tonight to hope and pray that victims everywhere gain something from the bill which will no doubt pass the House in a little while.

Mr BROADBENT (McMillan) (18:09): While I'm not listed to speak on the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018, I have just listened to a number of addresses in this House. I identify with every one of them—but particularly that of the member for Hunter, who has just spoken and suggested that Hunter was the epicentre of this issue. I put to the member for Hunter that the area is no less guilty than any part of the rest of Australia. There's no epicentre for this. The epicentre for this issue was every situation in every room in every building in every institution and every household where it was perpetrated. That was the epicentre—no particular area; not the Hunter.

We all have experiences which I'm not prepared to describe here, or public interactions which I won't go into. People were sent from one parish to another or away to another country. And too many stood by.

The only thing I would say about this today is this. Even though the royal commission has struck into the heart of the issue and exposed this for what it is, it still hasn't scratched the surface of the horribleness of this across this nation and the amount of abuse that occurred, that is not declared, that is not open, that hasn't reached its fulfilment, that hasn't been exposed. There's no road to take to get to that. I'm not suggesting there is a road to take. But I just want to identify with all of those kids out there who have suffered and who have not told their story; who have not made a commitment; who have not said anything for the whole of their lives, and won't. But they'll go on and live with the struggle, knowing that they're a little different or feeling they're a little different, and working through the days that they do in the full knowledge that they have a future and an opportunity in this great south land. And they'll walk away from their past and they'll stick it in a box and they'll forget it and they'll go on.

So I just repeat, and say to the member for Hunter: no; your area was not the epicentre. The epicentre was for all of us to consider and address in our own areas. Thanks for letting me speak.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): I thank the member for McMillan. Can I just add, for those who are speaking and bringing their situations to the despatch box, that the House is appreciative of the comments that have gone before us.

Mr ZAPPIA (Makin) (18:12): The preface and executive summary of the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse clearly reveal the gravity of the matters that this legislation, the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018, seeks to address, and the extent of a problem that, for too long, too many people, too many government departments and too many sectors of society preferred to ignore. What was occurring was an inconvenient truth that society was not prepared to confront. As with the royal commission into banking, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse should have been initiated years earlier. The incidence of child sexual abuse, both within the home and throughout the community, was the subject of regular community conversation. Yet no authority was prepared to act—until the Gillard government did, in November 2012. The royal commission announcement at the time was met with widespread acclamation. Finally, society was responding and doing so with a royal commission. From what I've read of the report of the commission, the commission itself is to be commended—as are the 680 people who, I understand, over the years have worked with the commission—for its work, which appears to be thorough and frank.

Child abuse, regrettably, has been a historical fact of life across all continents, all cultures and all generations. Whether today's world is any better, I don't know. But I have little doubt that, as we debate this legislation, children, in Australia and overseas, continue to be exploited and abused.

I acknowledge and support the growing calls for a royal commission into abuse of people with a disability. They too have stories to tell and are pleading to be heard. The sexual abuse of innocent, vulnerable children would have to be amongst the most abhorrent acts of humanity. To violate children and to destroy their lives while they are in the care of those entrusted to protect them is beyond the comprehension of all decent people. Yet it happened, and it continues to happen all too often.

For the benefit of anyone following this debate, I want to quote excerpts of the commission's preface and executive summary, which I believe provides real context to their report. The preface says:

In 1997, Bringing them home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families outlined allegations of institutional sexual abuse of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

The reports of two later major national inquiries, Forgotten Australians: A report on Australians who experienced institutional or out-of-home care as children in 2004 and Protecting vulnerable children: A national challenge in 2005, recommended the establishment of a Royal Commission into the sexual assault of children and young people in institutions after those inquiries heard further allegations of institutional child sexual abuse. These recommendations were not taken up by government at the time.

      …      …      …

Over 16,000 individuals have contacted the Royal Commission and by the time we conclude our work we expect to have heard more than 8,000 personal stories in private sessions. Over 1,000 survivors have provided a written account of their experience …

We now know that countless thousands of children have been sexually abused in many institutions in Australia. In many institutions, multiple abusers have sexually abused children. We must accept that institutional child sexual abuse has been occurring for generations.

… For many, sexual abuse is a trauma they can never escape …

      …      …      …

However, notwithstanding the problems we have identified in institutions, the number of children who are sexually abused in familial or other circumstances far exceeds those who are abused in an institution.

The executive summary goes on to say:

The sexual abuse of a child is a terrible crime. It is the greatest of personal violations … It is one of the most traumatic and potentially damaging experiences and can have lifelong adverse consequences.

Tens of thousands of children have been sexually abused in many Australian institutions. We will never know the true number. Whatever the number, it is a national tragedy, perpetrated over generations within many of our most trusted institutions.

      …      …      …

Our criminal justice system has created many barriers to the successful prosecution of alleged perpetrators. Investigation processes were inadequate and criminal procedures were inappropriate. Our civil law placed impossible barriers on survivors bringing claims against individual abusers and institutions.

It is remarkable that in so many cases the perpetrator of abuse was a member of an organisation that professed to care for children.

I pause for a moment at that point to quote one of the statements from one of the victims who gave evidence to the commission. That person says:

What really gets me is how respected the staff … were in the community and how they used us for fund raising and to promote themselves as doing good works, when all the time we were treated as slaves, beaten and abused, used for their perverted desires. These were terrible years. No love or kindness, no safety or warmth. Always hungry and always frightened.

Just as remarkable was the failure of the leaders of those institutions to respond with compassion to the survivor.

I want to again quote from the introduction of the report. It says:

At the time of writing this report, we had analysed the experiences of 6,875 survivors as told to us in private sessions up until 31 May 2017.

I want to quote these statistics:

From those survivors, where the information was available, we learned that:

the majority of survivors (64.3 per cent) were male

more than half of survivors … were aged between 10 and 14 years when they were first sexually abused

female survivors generally reported being younger when they were first sexually abused than male survivors …

14.3 per cent of survivors were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

4.3 per cent of survivors … had disability at the time of the abuse

3.1 per cent of survivors were from culturally or linguistically diverse backgrounds

93.8 per cent of survivors … were abused by a male

83.8 per cent of survivors said they were abused by an adult

10.4 per cent of survivors were in prison at the time of their private session

the average duration of child sexual abuse experienced in institutions was 2.2 years

36.3 per cent of survivors said they were abused by multiple perpetrators.

…   …   …

More than one in three survivors (36.0 per cent) said they were sexually abused in pre-1990 out-of-home care—primarily in residential institutions, such as children's homes, missions or reformatories. Just under one-third … said they were abused in a school, and 14.5 per cent said they were abused while involved in religious activities, such as attending a church or seminary. More than one in five survivors … said they were sexually abused in more than one institution.

I quoted those extracts and statistics because they confirm what was widely perceived to be the case and to many people probably came as no surprise. Several issues arise from the commission's preface and introductory comments—in particular, the government's failure to act on previous inquiry recommendations. Now several royal commission recommendations are also being ignored by the government in respect to this legislation. That in itself is of concern. We have failed to respond to previous royal commission recommendations, and we now appear to be doing the same.

That, once abused, victims are scarred for life and can never free themselves of the trauma is also of real concern. I'll come back to that in a moment, as to the matter of a person who is currently in jail and the government's proposal that someone who is facing a sentence of more than five years should be treated differently. But what concerns me the most, perhaps, as to the royal commission's findings, is that most of the abuse still occurs within familial places, including in the victim's own home. My question is: what is being done about that? Again, I see very little.

It's also of concern that it's still very difficult for a victim to get justice. Indeed, the failure of civic and institutional leaders to protect their victims has been, and continues to be, of concern. For many institutional leaders, it seems that their priority was to protect the reputation of their institution. Law enforcement and judicial systems were also ill equipped to deal with allegations.

The case of St Ann's Special School in South Australia is a prime example of those failures. Brian Perkins was employed as a bus driver at St Ann's Special School between 1986 and 1991. At the time he was employed, he had a long history of sexual and other crime convictions. South Australian police received information about sexual offences against children at St Ann's school perpetrated by Perkins in 1991. It took 12 years to bring Perkins to justice and subsequently have him imprisoned.

Labor leader Bill Shorten has outlined Labor's response to this legislation, as has the member for Jagajaga—who, I might add, has been a key instigator of the process that has brought us to this point today, and I commend her for that. I therefore only comment on one particular matter relating to the government's response, and that is the matter relating to the qualified ability of victims who are serving more than five years in prison to access redress. These are people who, very likely, are imprisoned as a consequence of the abuse perpetrated upon them. To deny them redress will be a penalty additional to that applied and intended by the sentencing court at the time they were sentenced, and thereby it will add to the victimisation that they have already endured. It seems to me that it is perpetrating one injustice on top of another, and I would urge the government to reconsider that recommendation in particular.

Other members of the Labor opposition have expressed concerns with respect to a range of other recommendations where the government is deviating from the recommendations of the royal commission. I support each and every one of the comments in respect of those other recommendations and, in particular, the time frame being allowed with respect to the making of claims. To say to people who have endured the suffering that they have for most of their lives, 'We want you to act within a six-month period'—or whatever other time frame they are given—'otherwise you will lose whatever right you have,' again, is an injustice. It seems to me that it shouldn't be a matter of time frames. I thought that the member for Parramatta put it beautifully when she made the point that the time frame should rest entirely with the victims.

I close with these comments. We cannot change what has happened in the past. We cannot undo the grave offences that have been committed against so many people over so many years. And, as others have said, for so many, even this report and these recommendations are too late. However, I would hope that as a result of the royal commission's work, these findings will bring about a culture change throughout society; a culture change throughout government and non-government sectors; and a culture change in our law enforcement and judicial bodies. This is so that the commission's recommendations are not just words on paper in the 17 volumes that I understand is the total amount of the report they'll be presenting but that the commission's findings become a turning point in how society sees its responsibility for the protection of the most vulnerable amongst us. It is a change for those to come that we can do something about, and I hope that at the very least the commission's work will lead to that change so that in the future there will not be the level of abuse that we know has occurred to date.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mr Buchholz ): I thank the member for Makin for bringing such compassionate, salient points, delivered with heartfelt pathos to the parliament.

Ms BRODTMANN (Canberra) (18:27): I rise to speak on the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018.

I too commend the member for that incredibly powerful speech. The speeches on this issue have been powerful, because this does cut at the core of our morality and of our values, and also to our shame. I do commend the member. I commend the Leader of the Opposition and I commend colleagues, both those who are here currently and those who are no longer here, for the work that they've done in realising this royal commission and finally getting some redress for those who were affected over decades and decades—thousands and thousands of children right across this country. It's an absolute disgrace. It's a great blight on our nation and it is an absolute shame for our nation, and I thank my colleagues, both those who aren't with us any more and those who are with us now, for actually realising this royal commission.

I want to go over some of the areas of concern that Labor has with this bill and then discuss an issue that the Canberra community has been facing here for a number of years—for a number of decades—at Marist College in Canberra. In the areas of concern, we've actually outlined that Labor has been advocating for the recommendations of the royal commission to be implemented as written. We do have a number of concerns in terms of the residency requirement; the access to counselling and psychological care; the redress and the length of period that it's open for; the imprisonment issue—and that has been discussed at length by colleagues and also in the media; and the legal assistance that's provided in the redress scheme. Labor has a number of areas of concern and they have been prosecuted at length by my colleagues.

As I said, today I want to talk about Marist College. This is an issue that has rocked the Canberra community in recent years. The sexual abuse of students at Marist College was happening in the seventies, eighties and nineties and has affected many in the Canberra community, rocked the faith of many in the Canberra community and rocked the trust in institutions—the educational institution that is Marist and also the Catholic institution as a church. In the royal commission documents, there's a very lengthy case study, No. 13, of just what's happened with Marist College, one of many, many case studies. It is more than 100 pages long. The royal commission exposed that Maris College in Canberra was the most notorious Catholic school in Australia for child sexual abuse claims. It found that 63 claims of child sexual abuse were made against the school, but the true figure is believed to be much larger—well over 100. But who knows? The school was attended by a number of my friends. A piece was written last year in February, and I want to read this piece because it is incredibly powerful:

About 20 boys crammed into the small hotel room in Wellington and the mood was sombre.

Marist College Canberra's First XV had gathered to hold court. The 1978 rugby tour of New Zealand was going well, but they weren't there to talk about football.

The night before an incident had profoundly shaken the group.

One of the players had been called to a Marist brother's room on the pretence of treating an injury from that day's game.

The coach tried to sexually assault the boy. He fled, told his closest friend, and word had spread quickly through the touring party.

The boys, aged between 16 and 18, called a meeting. At its end they passed a resolution: the coach was to be banned from the change room, when the team returned to Canberra, the brother was to leave the school and the Marists were called on to guarantee that he would never teach again.

The shocking incident caused one 17-year-old to question a commitment. At school's end he had resolved to leave for Sydney, to train as a priest.

So he sought the counsel of another brother travelling with the group, a popular man who ran a movie club at the school.

When the boy confided his fears about the act of a man who professed to be a model of faith he got an unexpected response.

The brother's face darkened with fury: why would your vocation be affected by the actions of one man? The boy felt ashamed of his doubts.

…   …   …

Other reports emerged about sexual assaults at Marist Brothers in Canberra in the 1970s and 80s. Among the accused one name stood out …

This is a name that is very well known in Canberra: Brother Kostka.

In 1978, Brother Kostka had reacted with fury when confronted with the sins of his confrere because the questions of a child shone a light into his black conscience.

…   …   …

These shards of memory have been revived by the evidence given to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The breadth of the abuse is astounding, the damage to the standing of the Church permanent and the failure of its bishops unforgivable.

And one thing is clear. In 1978 a group of Catholic schoolboys was confronted with evil and called to make a moral decision.

They did so in the light of the best teachings of their faith. The vote had been unanimous. They demanded justice for their friend and that the threat to other boys be removed, forever.

That piece was penned by my husband, who was part of that rugby team that toured New Zealand and was part of that group who so bravely, as young men, stood up against the system to call out wrong, to call out evil, and were ignored. How many times have we heard of this instance being called out through these discussions? How many times did we hear similar stories right throughout the country, throughout the decades, of instances where people have called out this abominable behaviour, this abuse, and they've been ignored?

My husband was part of that group and he penned that piece. I know that his friends were also victims of sexual abuse at that school. I know that his friends of friends were also victims of sexual abuse at the school. The fact that it went on for so long and it was ignored for so long is a great shame for Marist College and for the Canberra community. There are so many young lives who were victims of this sexual abuse, here in our community and here in our nation's capital.

The royal commission, in regard to this particular report on Brothers Kostka Chute and Gregory Sutton, found that systemic issues included:

recognition by school staff of grooming behaviour

recognition by school staff of behaviour that may constitute or may lead to sexual abuse of children

responding to reports of suspicions of grooming and suspicions of sexual abuse of children, including in the context of religious organisations and religious-run schools …

It's just endless in terms of the lack of record keeping and the lack of monitoring and supervision. The issues included:

the need for mechanisms for handling complaints of sexual abuse from children

As was mentioned, it wasn't just one child. We are talking about a group of young boys here who had the courage and who had the moral compass to be able to stand up against that. There were so many systemic issues that were identified in the royal commission investigation into the sexual abuse allegations from Brothers Kostka and Gregory. There are not too many people who went to Marist, particularly in the seventies, who didn't know of someone who had sexually abused or who were themselves sexually abused. I know so many of the friends of my husband were.

I want to take this opportunity to thank and acknowledge the work that's been done and the courage and commitment that's been shown by Bravehearts ambassador Damian De Marco in calling this out. He was a 'favourite' of Brother Kostka's. I also thank John Ellis who took this issue—not necessarily from Marist—to court and set a legal precedent there. There are many, many others who have been incredibly brave in term of setting precedents and many others who have spoken out who have been ignored. I want to commend, acknowledge and thank them for their commitment and their courage. It must have been incredibly lonely for them for so long. They would have doubted themselves. We know that many of them just found it all too heard to bear and decided to end it. They would have doubted themselves, they would have doubted their sanity, they would have doubted their faith and they would have doubted their trust in the system. It must have been so incredibly lonely for them.

I do want to acknowledge all those hundreds, thousands of Australians who've been through this and acknowledge the fact that it would have been so lonely for you. There would have been so many nights and so many days, staring down so many demons for so many decades. I acknowledge you and I commend you for your courage and bravery and for hanging in there, particularly Damian De Marco here—who was, as I said, Brother Kostka's absolute 'favourite'—who has pursued this issue for so long. The fact that the royal commission documents showed that Marist College here in our Canberra was the most notorious Catholic school, in terms of Australia, for sexual abuse claims has really rocked the community. There are those 63 claims, as I said. There are people who suggest there are others—hundreds more, possibly, who knows? Many of them are friends of my husband and many of them are friends of friends of my husband.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank Marist College for the considerable effort they've put in, in terms of acknowledging what happened; apologising for the sexual abuse by staff in the past; acknowledging the many innocent victims, the survivors, their families and the current community of students, staff and parents; acknowledging that sexual and physical abuse occurred is a source of shame to us all and apologising that we failed in our response, both at the time and afterwards. They've had a number of liturgy services and other ceremonies to acknowledge this and try to at least come to some sort of resolution in terms of the fact that this has brought such shame on the community, on the Marist College community and the Catholic Church.

My late mother-in-law was a very committed Catholic. She was at one stage president of the Catholic Women's League. She was a devout Catholic, a devout woman and placed great store in her Catholic faith. All I can say is thank God the gorgeous Mary Rose Uhlmann was not alive when reports like this came out. She'd heard murmurings and she was cut to the core; she just could not believe that the Catholic Church could do this, that the Catholic educational institutions could do this to their beautiful young people. The findings of the royal commission would have completely rocked her to her core. I am just so glad in many ways that she wasn't here to hear this. She was a teacher in a number of Catholic schools here in Canberra, in the primary schools. She was a much-loved teacher at St John Vianney's and other schools. I'm so glad in so many ways that the beautiful and much-missed Mary Rose Uhlmann wasn't here to see the results of this appalling royal commission and these appalling decades of abuse.

In closing, I want to quote from Chris's article again because it is incredibly powerful and does give just one instance of young people actually being confronted with evil and making a moral decision:

In that room, on that day, those boys showed more moral courage and were better disciples than the princes of their Church. That is a triumph, and a tragedy.

Ms VAMVAKINOU (Calwell) (18:42): I'm very pleased to follow the member for Canberra and other colleagues in this place to speak on the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Bill 2018 and a cognate bill. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was highly significant to many constituents in my electorate. These individuals have struggled for decades to overcome the terrible memories, ongoing health problems, interrupted education and shattered trust resulting from institutional childhood abuse. One of those constituents is Wendy Dyckhoff.

I've mentioned Wendy in this place a few times before and I'm always pleased to acknowledge her again. Wendy herself was the victim of awful childhood abuse while growing up in a number of different institutions in Victoria. She's now a very hardworking advocate for the local forgotten Australians. She's a wonderful woman who always gives to us and to our community, despite her own personal grief and experiences. On behalf of those forgotten Australians in my electorate, almost all who suffered varying degrees of child sexual abuse, I acknowledge the important work that the royal commission has undertaken. I acknowledge how valuable the process has been by giving time, space and serious attention to the many horrific stories that these victims of abuse and their families have been able to tell.

I know that a forum with the status of a royal commission, in providing survivors with the chance to give their own account and, most importantly, be properly listened to and believed, has been of great healing benefit. Wendy and others have spoken to me in detail about the importance of this healing process. However, the healing process has not been completed and cannot be without the timely finalisation of an adequate national redress scheme. Sadly, for many, the healing can never be completed, including of course for those who have passed away, many much too early in their tragic lives. For others, however, it is vital that the work of the royal commission is given its full effect by paying heed to its recommendations. As the member for Jagajaga stated last week:

The Commissioners had spent five years considering their recommendations and they must not be ignored.

Those people who have already suffered such terrible betrayal of trust by those in positions of power are relying on us, the federal parliament, to ensure that they can now trust again. We have heard them and we will honour them.

A national redress scheme must be established as a vital step along the path to healing. No amount of money can make up for the pain and trauma experienced by survivors, nor can it bring back the years of lost education, replace lost health or rebuild shattered relationships. But it can make a difference to those who face real financial difficulty as they age, largely as a result of their past experiences. Wendy Dyckhoff has explained to me the high risk that ageing, forgotten Australians face of homelessness, serious health problems and lack of support networks as a result of having lost so many family links. In light of this, financial redress cannot be dismissed as insignificant and we must be as generous as possible.

Beyond that, redress is a vital process for our nation to acknowledge the hurt, distress and trauma that has been suffered. Along with redress payments, it's important that survivors have the opportunity to receive a direct personal response from the relevant institution and, of course, we need to ensure that survivors are able to receive appropriate and adequate support services, as well, including ongoing counselling.

I'm deeply concerned that the provisions of this bill will not be adequate in this regard. I'm also concerned about the limits that will be placed on those who have been sentenced to a term of imprisonment of five years or more. We know that the links between childhood abuse, severe childhood disadvantage generally and the likelihood of incarceration are well documented. In fact, the whole cycle of poverty, disadvantage and often a self-perpetuating relationship with the justice system are matters that warrant some serious attention, but that debate is for another time, and I acknowledge that.

I want to thank Wendy Dyckhoff and her fellow local activists for their passionate advocacy for the right to tell their stories. Wendy herself went back to school, at Kangan TAFE, to learn how to write well, specifically so that she could tell her story and encourage others to do the same. She offered enormous support and encouragement to all those she knew in making submissions to the royal commission and appearing before it. It is on Wendy's behalf, along with all the other forgotten Australians of Calwell who have put their faith in the royal commission and their hopes in a National Redress Scheme, that I urge the government to address Labor's concerns about this bill. So many people have invested their hopes in this outcome. It is important that we do not let them down. It is important that we get the redress scheme right.

Mr TEHAN (Wannon—Minister for Social Services) (18:47): I thank all members for their contributions on this bill. As I have said, this bill will establish a National Redress Scheme for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse. It will create a simple and supportive redress scheme. The establishment of the scheme is an acknowledgement by the Australian government and participating governments that sexual abuse suffered by children in institutional settings was wrong. It was a betrayal of trust that should never have happened. The scheme recognises the suffering survivors have experienced and accepts that these events occurred and that institutions must take responsibility for this abuse. I commend the governments of New South Wales, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory, Queensland, Tasmania, the Northern Territory and South Australia for signing up to the scheme and I acknowledge the consultative way that the Western Australian government has cooperated, and I look forward to their joining the scheme.

As I have told the House, the scheme will provide survivors with three elements of redress, comprising a monetary payment of up to $150,000, access to counselling or psychological services, and a direct personal response from the institutions responsible. The scheme will adopt a survivor-focused approach. Access to redress will be simple and support will be available throughout the application and acceptance process. The scheme is not intended to replace criminal law or common law avenues to seek justice; it is intended to provide a survivor with the means to access a sense of justice through monetary redress and through restorative supports. It is intended to be faster, simpler and less distressing for survivors and provide governments and institutions with the means to deliver justice to their survivors.

We consulted with a broad range of stakeholders in developing the scheme and this bill. The bill aligns with the views of the independent advisory council on redress, which included many survivor groups, as well as the views of other jurisdictions and nongovernment institutions. I've listened to members' speeches and want to make clear some elements of the scheme that they have raised. First, a maximum redress payment of $150,000 will be available under the national redress scheme, a position which is supported by states, territories and nongovernment institutions. This amount balances the need to provide a payment that provides a tangible means of recognising the wrongs suffered by survivors, while encouraging institutions to opt into the scheme. In addition, the average payment under the national scheme is expected to be around $11,000 higher than under that proposed by the royal commission.

Second, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse recommended that the scheme should adjust relevant prior payments for inflation. Relevant prior payments are payments made by a responsible institution in recognition of the harm caused by abuse for which the institution is responsible or in recognition of such abuse itself. The scheme will not deduct payments that were made to cover expenses of medical or dental treatment, or payments to cover any other expenses. The purpose of adjusting relevant prior payments for inflation is to recognise that some institutions have made efforts to do the right thing in the past, and to account for changes in the value of money over time. This is different to attempting to take into account any growth in the amount of the prior payment due to interest or investment. The scheme will calculate how much a prior payment would be worth in today's dollars if it were paid today, not how much the payment would be worth if it had been put into a bank account from when it was paid until today.

Third, the current legislation enables applications from child migrants who are now Australian citizens or permanent residents, or who will be at the time of application. With regard to the eligibility of survivors who do not live in Australia, only people who are Australian citizens or permanent residents will be able to apply for redress. This is in line with other government entitlements. Noncitizens and non-permanent residents will be ineligible in order to ensure the integrity of the scheme.

Fourth, through the development of the national bill with other jurisdictions, it became apparent that it would be difficult to ensure appropriate redress support services for all survivors in prison. As a result, the national bill states that people who are in jail will not be able to apply to the scheme while they remain in custody; however, they will be able to apply to the scheme when they are released. A person who has been released on parole or licence is not in jail. The national bill also allows the scheme operator discretion to accept an application from a person in jail if there are exceptional circumstances warranting the application. Such circumstances might include when a survivor is unlikely to be released from prison before the end of the scheme.

Finally, the scheme will provide access to counselling and psychological care to eligible survivors as one of the three components of redress. This will be in addition to Medicare funded services, which continue to be available to survivors, and the significant counselling and family support services funded by the government. Survivors will access counselling and psychological care in one of two ways: where a jurisdiction has elected to provide a lump sum payment, the survivor will receive a tiered lump sum payment of up to $5,000 based on the severity of the sexual abuse they have experienced; where a jurisdiction has elected to provide state based counselling services, survivors will be referred through a state or territory government to appropriate counselling services. Survivors will be able to access counselling in one of these two ways based on the jurisdiction they reside in at the time of submitting an application for redress. If an eligible survivor resides overseas, they will receive a lump sum payment.

The scheme paves the way for all governments and institutions to take responsibility and provide long-awaited redress to survivors who suffered sexual abuse as children while in their care. It is time to acknowledge the wrongs of the past and provide survivors the recognition they deserve. Survivors of abuse have had a long wait for this. It is time we in parliament delivered for them. We can do this by providing them redress by 1 July this year.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.

Mr TEHAN (Wannon—Minister for Social Services) (18:55): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Mr TEHAN (Wannon—Minister for Social Services) (18:56): by leave—I move:

That this bill be now read a third time.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a third time.

Mr FLETCHER (Bradfield—Minister for Urban Infrastructure and Cities) (18:57): I present the explanatory memorandum to this bill and I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

In October last year, the parliament passed a landmark package of reforms that will modernise broadcasting and content regulation and improve the sustainability of Australia's media industry. A number of additional measures were developed as part of that process and this bill—the Communications Legislation Amendment (Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund) Bill 2017—establishes the legislative framework for one of those measures.

The Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund will assist regional and small publishers to transition, compete and innovate more successfully in a changing media environment. These news providers are operating under acute and sustained pressure. The business models that have traditionally supported journalism, particularly those funded by advertising revenue, are being challenged, and the need to adapt successful subscriber and other revenue models is proving especially demanding for smaller publications.

The bill will amend the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 to establish the legislative framework for the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund. The fund will provide $16.7 million in grants each year from 2018-19 to 2020-21, via a competitive application process, to assist small and regional publishers adapt to the challenges of providing quality news content in a digital media environment.

The bill establishes the legislative authority for the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to administer the fund. It will require the ACMA to enter into an agreement with each funding recipient, specifying the terms and conditions of the grant, before making any payments, and will require the recipient to spend the funding on activities that relate to the newspaper, magazine or periodical or online content service.

The bill will also allow the Minister for Communications to establish a committee to provide advice to the ACMA in its administration of the innovation fund, including its assessment of applications for grants. It is expected that the committee will comprise members who have significant experience with news, journalism and other media-related content and will include, as a minimum, a representative from each of the Australian Press Council, the Walkley Foundation and Country Press Australia. The ACMA will be required to have regard to any advice provided by the committee in exercising its powers under the fund, although this will not limit the matters to which the ACMA may have regard.

The bill will require the ACMA to include in its annual report the details of the name of each recipient of one or more grants of financial assistance, the total amount of those grants, and any advice given during the financial year to the ACMA by the committee. This will ensure full transparency in relation to the oversight of the fund and the decisions made by the ACMA to provide grants to publishers.

This bill delivers a modern and flexible framework, vital for ensuring that the arrangements agreed to last year are put into place. The innovation fund complements the core components of the government's broadcasting and content reform package by fostering an adaptable and sustainable Australian media industry. Journalism that investigates and explains public policy and issues of public significance is critical for our democracy. But its provision is under challenge by a changing media environment. The innovation fund will assist Australian publishers, particularly smaller publishers and those operating in regional areas, to transition their businesses to the new operating environment, and continue to provide news content that informs and engages Australians across the country.

I commend the bill to the chamber.

Leave granted for second reading debate to continue immediately.

Ms ROWLAND (Greenway) (19:02): I rise to speak on the Communications Legislation Amendment (Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund) Bill. I start by pointing out that the media plays a critical role in our economy, our society and, more fundamentally, our democracy. The fourth estate performs many roles. It holds the government to account, and the bill now before us ostensibly supports the public interest function of the media. But the reality is this: this bill has come at great cost to media diversity in Australia, and it remains to be seen what it will actually achieve in return.

It is a fact that the former senator who is the architect of the deal for the fund that underpins the bill before the House has now left the federal parliament, and it would appear that his efforts in striking this deal did little to assist his campaign to enter politics in South Australia earlier this year. Nick Xenophon's track record as the leader of a minor party was indeed to make deals, but there is a wide gulf between making deals and achieving outcomes. Not long after deals were sealed to abolish the two out of three cross-media control last year, there was an ABC Rural news report on the low uptake of another one of the schemes devised by then senator Nick Xenophon and traded for his votes and those of his team in the parliament: the Seasonal Work Incentives Trial. The October 2017 piece by Brett Worthington stated:

Just 14 people have so far signed up to a new Federal Government program that allows unemployed people to earn an income and still receive their full welfare payment.

The federal Nick Xenophon Team … was the architect of the trial, which the Government adopted in return for the crossbenchers supporting last year's backpacker tax changes.

Mercifully, the figures appear to have improved. However, I do note quotes from the National Farmers Federation to the effect of that, while the program is improving, it is still a far cry from what was needed to fix agriculture's labour shortages. I do hope that the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund will enjoy more success. However, what we have learnt about this fund so far, unfortunately, does not augur well in many respects.

At the public hearing for the inquiry into this bill, departmental officials made it very clear that the department had next to nothing to do with informing or developing the terms of the fund—providing only some general advice in relation to overseas developments—as the government negotiated the terms with the crossbench. Labor's Senator Urquhart asked who the chief architects of the fund were and whether any other parties, including any media organisations, had a role in designing or drafting its terms. The department responded that they really couldn't say because the development and decision points were with the government. On the question of how many media organisations are eligible to access the fund—even just an estimate—the department answered that they really don't know, because much of the eligibility criteria for the fund was prefaced on data that the government simply didn't have. Similarly, on the question of what modelling the department had done to determine whether the amount in the fund is actually sufficient, the answer was none.

Finally, a question was put on how the government will judge whether the fund has been a success and what KPIs or outcomes the government hoped the fund would meet. A department official advanced, as helpfully as they could, that it would be 'assessed against the outcomes and objectives of the program', which at a high level is 'to encourage small and regional news publishers to develop and trial sustainable business models for the provision of public interest journalism', and that overall the success of any projects would need to be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

Of course, Labor has been sceptical about this so-called innovation fund since the night it was announced in the Senate at the eleventh hour during debate on the amendments to the Broadcasting Services Act last year. As noted in the digest to this bill prepared by the Parliamentary Library, Labor senators criticised Senator Xenophon for making a deal that would sell out Australian media diversity in return for what Labor argued was minimal funding for regional media. Labor Senator Don Farrell claimed that, if the fund were split evenly across the states and territories, it would amount to approximately $2 million a year, which he said, 'Frankly, is not very much money.'

Aside from the fact that Labor believes that decent broadband ought to be one of the biggest drivers of innovation in regional Australia—something that this government has failed to deliver on—Labor was not and is not convinced that this deal goes far enough to address the crisis facing public interest journalism in Australia or, indeed, the void left by the repeal of the two-out-of-three cross-media control rule. Overall, Labor regards the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund to be a short-term bandaid solution that may not achieve anything of substance and may even see a number of cadets left without jobs once the funding runs out. We do hope—and I put this on the record—as I said, that this fund actually achieves its intended outcomes. On that basis, Labor will not oppose this bill. That's because public interest journalism in Australia needs all the help it can get, particularly given the neglect and active undermining of public interest objectives by this government.

This bill amends the Broadcasting Services Act to establish the legislative authority for the ACMA to make a grant of financial assistance to a publisher of a newspaper, magazine or other periodical or a content service provider with grants limited to the financial year commencing 1 July this year and the following two financial years. The Broadcasting Services Act continues to be subject to the September 2000 ministerial direction, which decrees that internet services are not broadcasting services, yet a number of its schedules do regulate the internet to a limited degree. Now, with this bill, the Broadcasting Services Act is about to empower the ACMA to administer grants for the publishing industry.

It is somewhat ironic that the grants are not available to regional or Indigenous broadcasters, given that, with the repeal of the two-out-of-three rule, this government has decided that the boundaries between print and broadcast platforms don't matter so much anymore, that such distinctions predate the internet era. Indeed, there are some stakeholders, including, and I specifically note, the Indigenous Remote Communication Association and Commercial Radio Australia, who are disappointed that the terms of grant exclude them on the basis of technological platform, not to mention the disappointment of a number of actual publishers such as Guardian Australia, who have been excluded on ideological grounds. That said, there are a number of stakeholders in the public interest journalism sector who have welcomed the fund and who are hopeful of doing something useful with the financial assistance. We on this side of the House wish them well.

I want to talk about why policy for public interest can't be neglected or undermined. We on this side of the House firmly believe that the public interest must be prioritised and trust in our institutions restored. It goes without saying that we need a vibrant media sector to foster public interest objectives, but the public interest should neither be an afterthought to, or a casualty of, reform to proper commercial interests. At a time of great upheaval, government needs to promote the public interest just as it supports industry. Unfortunately, this government's record on media in this respect is all one way. We have the non-contestable grant of $30 million to Fox Sports, the deliberate and ideological exclusion of certain outlets from the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund and the questionable motivations of some behind the competitive neutrality inquiry into our national broadcasters. That has done little to engender trust in the parliament or the media. Indeed, it is most likely to have undermined it.

Where, I ask, is the public interest when a fund for public interest journalism deliberately excludes innovative new sources that we know this government doesn't agree with? And where is the public interest when it is broadly understood that funding cuts and inquiries into the ABC are payback and commentators warn the ABC to 'not bite the hand that feeds it'. While private media groups, equity interests, digital platforms and advertising companies answer to shareholders, the role of government is to act in the public interest at large. Labor supported a number of sensible changes to media law to support the commercial media sector last year, particularly given its key role in the Australian content ecosystem. But we remain deeply concerned that, in the last five years, this government has been effective in undermining public interest objectives in the media, both proactively and by neglect. Whether it be booting community TV off air prematurely, relegating Indigenous media as a function of Prime Minister and Cabinet rather than Communications, abolishing the two-out-of-three cross-media control rule, undermining our national broadcasters, threatening to lock up journalists simply for doing their jobs and standing idly by in the face of the loss of over 3,000 journalism jobs, there are many reasons to be concerned about the health of media diversity in our democracy.

Let's be clear: this regional and small publishers innovation fund exists only because of a deal between this government and the Nick Xenophon political party. This is the result of a heavily compromised trade-off at that the time. This fund did not come about because the Turnbull government is genuinely committed to promoting public interest journalism—far from it. It came about as a result of one of many backroom deals done to pave the way for this government's repeal of the two-out-of-three cross-media control rule. That's a rule that, until September last year, acted as a public interest safeguard by stopping any one voice in the media landscape from becoming too dominant and by promoting diversity and competition between different voices. The two-out-of-three rule ensured that no individual or company controlled more than two out of the three regulated media platforms—commercial television, commercial radio and associated newspapers—in the same licence area.

In a democracy like Australia, which has one of the highest levels of media concentration in the world, you would think that removing such a safeguard would be understood as being seriously misguided—but not for this government. You would think that senators from South Australia, the state which is only one point above the minimum floor for the number of media voices, would comprehend the importance of maintaining a rule that serves media diversity—but not then Senator Nick Xenophon. Last year, this government junked a safeguard that prevented Australia's already high levels of media concentration from getting worse. What a sad irony that a law which acted as a democratic safeguard in promoting media diversity was done away with via deal making conducted behind closed doors. Indeed, it was totally away from democratic scrutiny.

It begs this question: why all the deals? The fact is that, after trying for over a year to get the repeal of the two-out-of-three rule through parliament, the Turnbull government was not able to do so on merit. Why? It was because the repeal of this rule was contrary to the public interest. Instead of accepting this reality, this government started on a series of backdoor deals, including, as I mentioned, the uncontested grant of $30 million of taxpayer funds to Fox Sports. But that wasn't enough to get them over the line and more deals had to be done.

Next, the government sidled up to Senator Pauline Hanson, going so far as to use the ABC as a bargaining chip to secure support for its flawed media ownership changes. We know this from the announcement of the deal. Senator Hanson made it clear that she would be speaking to the Treasurer and going after the ABC's budget in 2018. Lo and behold, in this government's budget, which was handed down just recently, we saw a further $83.7 million in cuts to the ABC over three years. Many times over, this government has now broken its election promise, which it made in 2013 on the eve of that election, not to cut the ABC.

We know that both the Liberal Party and the National Party complain the ABC isn't doing it enough for rural and regional Australia. They even have a bill before parliament to amend the ABC Act on that front, yet they continue to cut its funding. As a result of the deal with One Nation, there are now three bills before the parliament to meddle with the ABC. There is a faux competitive neutrality inquiry and a further efficiency review to undermine our public broadcaster. But the attack on the ABC wasn't enough. The government still needed the senators in the then Nick Xenophon Party to get them over the line.

Then Senator Xenophon and his senators knew that if they did the deal with the government to scrap the two-out-of-three rule, they would be responsible for handing unprecedented media power into the hands of a privileged few. That was despite the fact that, as I said, Australia already has one of the most concentrated media markets in the world—yet the then Nick Xenophon Party did the deal. What is more, then Senator Xenophon knew that if they did the deal then they would be responsible for the unleashing of an unprecedented attack on our national broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, and yet they did the deal. What is more, then Senator Xenophon knew that if they did the deal to scrap the two-out-of-three rule they wouldn't even get the kind of journalism fund they wanted. This is the ultimate irony, I believe, among many. They did the deal and did not even get the fund they wanted.

Nick Xenophon knew that the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund was compromised, that it excluded publishers like Guardian Australia and, by his own admission, was ideologically motivated and therefore fundamentally flawed as a public interest intervention. Then, just weeks after supporting these changes in exchange for this deal, Nick Xenophon announced he was leaving the Australian Senate and federal politics altogether. Well, his departure ensures he won't be accountable for the consequences of the deal he signed up to. The government's repeal of the two-out-of-three rule permits media mergers, as I said, and it begs the question: why expend taxpayers' money on a fund for journalism cadetships and scholarships when there aren't enough jobs for existing journalists to go around, and where will all the new journalism cadets work when the media mergers, consolidations and job losses that follow the repeal of the two-out-of-three rule occur? And what have we seen since the repeal of that rule?

In the media sector we have seen yet more closures and job cuts. Close to home for me, the Blacktown Sun and its sister publications, including the Rouse Hill Courier—trusted sources of local news and information in my local area—closed in December of last year. Sadly, right on the heels of these local papers closing, the only dedicated national newspaper for young Australians, Crinkling News, also announced that it would cease. This innovative outfit ticked so many boxes—informing the child audience, developing literacy skills and promoting critical media thinking—yet it could not survive. Similarly, earlier this year, Fairfax Media announced it was halting distribution of key mastheads in Far North Queensland as it 'seeks further efficiencies amid declining print revenues'.

Over six months has passed since this government abolished the two-out-of-three cross-media control rule, and indeed it's nearly exactly a year since Australia's media executives descended on Canberra for a media summit to spruik the repeal out two-out-of-three rule, and how many cross-media mergers have there been as a result since then? In a round figure, zero. This milestone makes a mockery of the communications minister's alarmist urgings: 'The parliament must act on media reforms to protect Australian jobs' to 'give industry a fighting chance' and his dire predictions of the 'failure of Australian media organisations.' At one point the minister even said that Labor's opposition to the repeal of the two-out-of-three rule was 'crippling the industry' and 'limited the options for organisations like Ten'. Well, how wrong he was. The CBS acquisition of Ten occurred thanks to the two-out-of-three rule, was voted for overwhelmingly by Ten staff and has seen Ten go on what's been described as a 'frenetic new hiring spree' as well as commission what's been described as 'the largest number of new domestic shows it has ever done in one year'. Contrary to the minister's doom and gloom, CBS Studio's international president said, 'We're looking to grow Ten, we're looking to evolve Ten, we're looking to see Ten be successful in every way possible.'

As the recent joint venture for playout operations between Seven West Media and Nine Entertainment Co. indicates, with efficiencies inevitably come job cuts. Labor acknowledges other media merger plans may already be in train and may yet materialise, but, with recent history as our witness, Labor again condemns this government's repeal of the two-out-of-three rule, which paves the way for further job losses and consolidation in Australia's already highly concentrated media market. With the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund, Nick Xenophon revealed the price that he put on Australia's media diversity in exchange for his vote.

Labor won't oppose this bill, but we make clear that we regard the fund to be a short-term bandaid solution that does not fill the void left by the repeal of the two-out-of-three rule and is too little, too late for many media organisations. Labor senators noted the fund exposes the double standards of this government when it comes to using taxpayers' funds in support of the media. As I said, this government handed $30 million, uncontested, to Fox Sports, which happens to have a foreign based parent company, but has excluded Guardian Australia and others from this fund for precisely the same reason. I make it clear that, as I said, Labor will not oppose this bill. We will not oppose a mechanism to distribute a modest, short-term fund in the name of public interest journalism.

But I do want to point out, in leading up to this point, that this government's handling of this bill has been far from textbook. We saw, in April, that Mumbrella reported:

… the fund is likely to miss its July 1 launch as the necessary legislation hasn’t been passed in the house, leaving a key part of last year’s media reform deals undone.

I note that this government appears to have suggested to Mumbrella that it is Labor that was apparently holding up passage of the Regional and Small Publishers Innovation Fund. This ridiculous accusation was responded to by me and, as I said at the time, this bill isn't stuck anywhere but in the minister's triangle. The Turnbull government controls the Senate program. If they want to get the fund up and running, they should hurry up and bring the bill on for debate. Even Nick Xenophon admitted that the criteria for the fund was ideologically motivated, and it is proper that parliament scrutinise that aspect of the bill, particularly given the significant sum of taxpayers' money. I also note that, despite the minister's erroneous claims about Labor supposedly holding up this bill, the fact is that the press gallery journalists were briefed earlier this year, at a post-caucus media briefing, that Labor would be supporting this bill.

Labor will hold this government to account for undermining what precious little media diversity Australia enjoys. Taken together, this government's media ownership changes and plans to undermine our public broadcasters, the ABC and SBS, do represent a direct assault on media diversity in Australia, and this has implications for our democracy and our culture. This government still seems hell-bent on destroying diversity in the Australian broadcasting sector. To this end, I note that Labor strongly condemns this government's disastrous record on media diversity and public interest journalism, which includes: removal of a key media diversity safeguard which prevented even greater consolidation in Australia's already highly concentrated media sector with the repeal of the two-out-of-three cross-media control rule; budget cuts of around $500 million from the ABC and SBS, which are trusted sources of investigative journalism in Australia; pushing community television off the broadcast platform to an online delivery model without an adequate transition period; threatening journalists with criminal sanctions under the espionage and foreign interference bill of 2017 simply for doing their jobs; and policy inaction in the face of the loss of more than 3,000 journalism jobs in Australia over the past five years. We call on this government to stop actively undermining media diversity and public interest journalism in Australia and we call on this government to drop its destructive attack on the ABC and SBS.

In closing, at a time when too many Australians feel disengaged from their democracy and distrustful of their representatives, Labor wants to restore trust and faith in our institutions. We will fight for the ABC against this government's latest $84 million of cuts to ensure the ABC can continue to deliver on its charter for all Australians. We are committed to the independence of our public broadcasters and to maintaining them as comprehensive national broadcasters, catering for a diversity of interests in the Australian community. These are just some of the fundamental differences between the government, those on the other side of the House, and us on the issue of trust in our institutions. Labor's approach will be coherent, principled and evidence based. We will look to guide a transition in the sector where all players in the ecosystem do their bit: departments, regulators, industry, academia and not-for-profits included.

Debate interrupted.