Sarah Witty (Melbourne, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in strong support of the Treasury Laws Amendment (The Survivors Law) Bill 2026. I want to begin by acknowledging the survivors, advocates and families whose work, courage and persistence brought this legislation to this parliament, because laws like this do not appear out of nowhere. They are built by people who refuse to stay silent after systems failed them; people who carry trauma into courtrooms, into media interviews and into meetings with governments and members of parliament; and people who keep pushing for justice through exhaustion, grief and disappointment. This bill exists because survivors demanded that we do better.

At its heart, this legislation is built on a very simple principle: people who commit child sexual abuse should not be able to hide their money while survivors are left carrying the cost of that harm done to them. Yet, for too long, that is exactly what has happened. A survivor could fight through the legal system, relive the worst experiences of their life, secure a compensation order through the courts and still walk away without justice being delivered in practice, because offenders could shield assets through super arrangements and bankruptcy structures while survivors were left unpaid. That is not justice. That is cruelty built into the system. This bill closes that loophole, and it matters deeply that we do that.

Child sexual abuse leaves lifelong impacts that shape how people move through the world. It affects mental health, physical health, relationships, education, employment, financial security, safety and trust. For many survivors, the abuse may have happened in childhood but the consequences follow them into adulthood every single day. Too often, those impacts become material as well as emotional. Some survivors struggle to stay in stable housing. Some find it difficult to maintain constant employment. Some carry interrupted education pathways. Some live with long-term health costs. Some spend years rebuilding a sense of stability after violence and abuse shattered it. That reality matters when we talk about compensation because compensation is not abstract. It's often connected to survival, to rebuilding, to counselling, to housing, to health care and to creating some form of safety after profound harm. When compensation orders go unpaid, survivors are forced to absorb another layer of injustice.

This bill recognises that. It recognises that accountability must mean something real. This government has made clear that accountability for child sexual abuse cannot end at conviction alone. Justice must mean something in practice. That is why these reforms matter so much. A compensation order should not become meaningless simply because an offender has found a way to hide assets behind technical financial protections.

Under these reforms, where a court ordered compensation debt remains unpaid after 12 months, survivors will be able, through a court order, to seek access to certain super contributions made by the offender. The bill also ensures that compensation debt can survive bankruptcy proceedings, because bankruptcy should not become a hiding place for people who have committed crimes against children. Financial manoeuvring cannot outweigh moral responsibility, and I think people across this country instinctively understand that. They understand that there is something fundamentally broken when survivors are struggling to build their lives while offenders continue protecting retirement savings behind legal loopholes.

This legislation says clearly that our legal and financial systems should never operate in a way that shields perpetrators from accountability. I think what makes this issue especially confronting is that survivors are so often asked to carry that burden of proving, explaining and reliving what happened to them, while the people who caused that harm spend years protected by systems that were never designed with survivors in mind. That imbalance matters, because justice is not only about what happens in a courtroom; it is about what happens afterwards—whether someone can rebuild, whether they can access stability, whether they feel the system stood with them or abandoned them once the headlines faded.

This bill says survivors should not be left carrying that burden alone. In my electorate of Melbourne, our community speaks openly and honestly about child abuse, institutional failure and the lifelong impacts trauma leaves behind. In a city full of advocates, frontline workers, legal services, support organisations, and survivors who have spent years pushing for change, when representing the people of Melbourne I hear passionately from people working in this space about what recovery really looks like. It's not linear, it's not quick and it does not happen simply because somebody survives.

I've spoken with people in my electorate who've spent years trying to rebuild a sense of normality after abuse; people navigating housing insecurity; people trying to stay connected to work while carrying trauma; people trying to trust systems again after being failed repeatedly. One thing comes through clearly, every single time: survivors should not have to spend their lives fighting systems that are meant to support them. But, too often, they do. They fight to be believed. They fight to access services. They fight through courts. They fight through administrative processes. They fight to rebuild financially. And then, sometimes, even after all of that, they are still denied the compensation they were legally awarded. That compounds the harm. It tells the survivors that, even after they'd found the courage to speak, even after they'd endured the courtroom, even after the court had ruled in their favour, the system still could not deliver justice. This is unacceptable.

This bill is an important step towards changing that, and, while the legislation deals with highly technical areas of super and bankruptcy law, its purpose is deeply human. At the centre of this bill are people—people who were harmed as children; people whose lives were permanently shaped by abuse; people who have already carried far more than anyone should ever have to carry.

Sometimes, in this place, we speak about legislation in highly procedural terms: schedules, mechanisms, frameworks and technical amendments. But behind every part of this bill is a survivor who deserves better. That matters, because systems can sometimes become so focused on processes that they lose sight of people. This bill pulls that focus back where it belongs: on survivors, on accountability and on making sure that justice has meaning in the real world.

I can only imagine how difficult it must be for survivors of sexual abuse to be forced into silence, sometimes by fear and sometimes by shame; sometimes because they were children who did not yet have the words for what happened to them; sometimes because systems around them failed to listen when they did speak. The courage it takes to come forward years or decades later cannot be overstated. To tell your story publicly; to enter legal proceedings; to re-live deeply traumatic experiences—that takes extraordinary strength. When survivors do that, the least we can do, as a parliament, is to ensure that the system does not fail them again, at that final hurdle.

That is why these reforms matter. They are practical reforms, targeted reforms, carefully designed reforms. But they are also moral reforms, because this bill draws a line. It says clearly, without apology, that, if you commit crimes against children, you should not get to hide your assets while survivors are left carrying the financial consequences of your abuse. That is the line this parliament is drawing today.

It also wants to acknowledge something else that matters in this conversation. For many survivors, the hardest part is not only the abuse itself; it is what happens afterwards: not being believed; being ignored; being told to move on; being left to navigate broken systems alone. And that failure can deepen trauma for years.

When institutions protect themselves instead of children, the damage does not stop when the abuse stops; it ripples outward, through entire lives, into relationships, into education, into employment, into housing, into mental health and into a person's ability to feel safe in the world. That is why accountability matters so deeply, because accountability is not about revenge; it's about recognition—recognition that harm was done; recognition that survivors deserve protection; recognition that justice should not stop halfway; and recognition that systems must never make survivors carry the burden while perpetrators protect their wealth and wait out legal obligations. This bill responds directly to that injustice. It creates a pathway for survivors to pursue compensation that courts have already determined they are owed, and it closes a loophole that should never have existed in the first place.

I also welcome the review mechanisms included in this legislation, because this bill should not be viewed as the final word on this issue; it should be viewed as a foundation—a significant foundation, a necessary foundation. We must continue listening to survivors and advocates to better understand where barriers still remain, we must continue assessing whether systems are delivering meaningful outcomes, and we must continue improving laws where gaps still exist, because survivors have already spent too long carrying the burden of institutional failure.

This parliament cannot afford complacency in response to that, and I think there is something important about the unity we have seen around this bill. Some issues rise above political pointscoring. The protection of children is one of them. The pursuit of justice for survivors should be one of them, and making sure perpetrators cannot exploit loopholes in financial systems should be one of them. This parliament is at its best when it listens carefully to lived experiences and responds with seriousness and purpose. That is what this legislation represents.

There is a line that has stayed with me while reading through this legislation and listening to survivors speaking about it: for many survivors, the trauma did not end when the abuse ended. That is the reality this bill confronts. It confronts the fact that abuse creates consequences that ripple through entire lives, that justice delayed or denied compounds the harm, and that systems built without survivors at the centre can unintentionally protect the wrong people. This bill shifts that balance. It says clearly that accountability should follow perpetrators, not burden survivors forever. Ultimately, this legislation is about fairness, dignity and responsibility. It is about ensuring that our financial and legal systems reflect our values—values that say child sexual abuse is among the gravest harms imaginable, values that say survivors deserve meaningful redress, not symbolic gestures, and values that say perpetrators should not be protected by loopholes while survivors carry the lifelong consequences of abuse.

The Albanese Labor government is choosing to act, choosing to close this loophole, choosing to strengthen accountability and choosing to listen to survivors who have spent years demanding change. That matters because, every time a system is improved, every time a loophole is closed and every time survivors are met with seriousness instead of indifference, we send a message about what kind of country we want to be—a country where justice means something in practice, a country where survivors are heard and a country where people who commit these crimes cannot hide behind structures that shield them from accountability. This bill says something powerful about whose side this parliament is on—not on the side of loopholes, not on the side of technicalities and not on the side of people trying to hide wealth while survivors rebuild their lives piece by piece. This parliament stands with survivors, and today, with this bill, we do just that. I commend the bill to the House.

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