Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I've been thinking a lot about this speech—effectively, ever since the apology was given two years ago. It's for this simple reason: when the Prime Minister and then Leader of the Opposition spoke, they both kept using the words, 'I believe you.'

I was reflecting on the significance of the first people who said that. It's so important for those words 'I believe you' to be said and so reassuring for kids who've gone through all sorts of hell. But we also need to remember that for many, many years no-one was saying that and that the first few people who made that comment were extraordinarily brave and that sometimes we haven't recognised them either. So the apology and everything about it quite rightly is about the individuals who have been the targets of institutional abuse.

One of the natures of abuse is that it is always a person who is a figure of trust. It is always a person who is a figure of authority. So when the allegation is first made by someone who was themselves in a situation of being powerless the person they talk to first often has a whole lot at stake as well.

My final year at school was at the very beginning of when different allegations started to emerge about a number of the Christian Brothers. As I first started to hear the allegations—I'd gone through eight years at the same school, and I'd had no idea as to some of the things that had gone on—no matter how many speeches we make of 'I believe you' the instinctive reaction was, 'That can't be true.' That's your starting point when you hear about a person who had been in a position of trust.

I want to pay tribute to one teacher, by the name of Merv McCormack, who was our year master at school, who I think it's fair to say was arguably the first person for many kids who said, 'I believe you.' His career at that point was on a huge upward trajectory. While he still had a good career, I think it's fair to say that he took a hit for saying three words. Those three words were: I believe you.

It was a few years later that stories about some of the problems that had been within that order emerged. Certainly it was not everybody in that order, and I don't think anyone would take the words that way. But some people within that order had been involved in actions that were the opposite of the reason that a whole lot of other young men had decided to devote their lives to what they believed was a good, noble cause started by a bloke called Edmund Ignatius Rice.

The courage of the first person who said, 'I believe you,' needs to be noted, needs to be remembered and needs to be the challenge for us, because one day it's just as likely to be one of us. As easy as the speeches are now—and they're not easy in an emotional sense—here's the challenge: there will be times that we don't expect, when somebody who we have trusted, who is in a position of authority, has behaved appallingly and in an abusive way behind closed doors. If they weren't in a position of authority, they never would have been in that privileged circumstance of trust. I hope we all have the courage of Merv McCormack, because those words 'I believe you' are powerful in a speech but often really hard for people to say.

No matter how powerless the person who first hears about it might feel, they're a whole lot more powerful than the kid who is reporting to them. They're a lot more powerful than the person who's now an adult who's been holding this information back their entire life.

I've rarely mentioned my school in the time I've been here. In fact, I think it's the first time I have done so. It was a good school for me, a great place. The brothers who were there and the order were all good, as far as my interactions were concerned. But some people had a horrific experience. But it is the case that, around the country, there were people who said, 'I believe you, even though you're the kid, even though you're talking about someone who might be my boss.' That is what teachers at different points would have had to have gone through. I just hope we all have that strength. If we don't, then the apology was, in fact, an event for a day.

The apology won't end occasions where abuse occurs, but it has to end occasions where abuse is covered up. It has to be the end of occasions where the reaction is to say: 'That couldn't possibly be true.' I think that part of the argument, which we sometimes get ourselves into when we're react to child abuse, makes it harder for some kids to report it. Sometimes we get into an argument where we say: 'That person is a monster.' The challenge here is that sometimes people have a series of personas, public versus private, that are radically different, and thinking that we know someone and that something couldn't possibly be true doesn't take you anywhere.

To all those teachers, those parents, those family friends, those admin workers, those counsellors and those members of organisations around the country who have reacted with the words 'I believe you', I simply say: you have been part of the saving of the nation. These sort of crimes are the worst blemishes the nation ever has to consider. I hope that the apology we're remembering today goes some way to helping the victims themselves, the targets—the survivors, which is the term. I also hope that we do remember that group that we probably haven't thought enough about: the first people who said 'I believe you'. A lot of them lost their jobs. A lot of them lost their careers. But all of them protected the country.

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