Michael Keenan (Stirling, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice, Customs and Border Protection) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As is well known to all members in this chamber, in January this year six commissioners were appointed to work together as the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. I wish to state at the outset of debate on the Royal Commissions Amendment Bill 2013, which amends the Royal Commissions Act to accommodate some of the needs of this commission, that the coalition supports this bill that makes those changes and we support the important work that the commission has been set up to deal with. We in the opposition are of the belief that whenever abuse has occurred it must be tackled vigorously, openly and transparently. But what will be clear to all members who have taken an interest in this royal commission is that the task that has been set before the commissioners really is enormous. The existing Royal Commissions Act, which dates back to 1902, does not have sufficient flexibility within it to be able to accommodate the needs of this royal commission.

This bill makes two important amendments that will assist the work of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The difficulties that the commissioners will face in pursuing their mandate have been brought home to me. We are all very familiar with these issues and instinctively have a very strong response to them, but sometimes when you talk to an individual or you see something it really brings home to you how difficult their task is going to be. In my case it was an interview that I saw with one of my predecessors as member for Stirling, Ian Cameron, who was talking about what the announcement of the royal commission meant to him. He outlined in the interview that he had been a victim of abuse within an institution. He was explaining in that interview about the dark shadow that this abuse had cast over his whole life, and not just his life but the life of his family as well, and how incredibly difficult it was for him to talk to people, even those who were close to him for many decades. Finally he did get a chance to give evidence, at another inquiry into abuse, which was actually being run by one of the institutions, but he was unable to do so because it was so difficult for him to recount what had happened to him. Ultimately his son gave the evidence on his behalf. You can imagine how difficult that must have been not only for him but for his family. These are the sorts of issues that the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse faces. I am pleased that this bill deals with some of those issues, in particular the amendment it makes to allow the commission to hear evidence in private.

The coalition strongly supports this royal commission into the evil of child sexual abuse wherever it has occurred within the context of institutions. We believe it is very important for the commission not to be constrained in pursuing its inquiries in relation to all institutions, both public and private, where there is a reason to believe that child sexual abuse might have taken place.

The letters patent that have been written by the Governor-General to Justice McClellan, who chairs the commission, allow a very broad scope for the commission to pursue its work. There is clearly going to be an enormous volume of information for the six commissioners to deal with. I will go through the commissioners because I think it is important to understand that they are a very distinguished group of Australians. The chair is Justice Peter McClellan, who since 2005 has held one of the most senior judicial positions in New South Wales, the Chief Judge at Common Law of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. The other five commissioners are Mr Bob Atkinson, a former Queensland police commissioner, Justice Jennifer Coate, a Family Court judge and former Victorian coroner, Mr Robert Fitzgerald, a productivity commissioner, Professor Helen Millroy, who is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist, and former senator for Western Australia, Mr Andrew Murray, who is well known and regarded in this place.

According to the commission's website, the commissioners have been appointed for three years and have been asked to begin their inquiry as soon as possible. They will prepare an interim report by no later than 30 June 2014. In the interim report the commissioners will also identify when their final report will be completed. The final reporting date has been set initially for the end of 2015, but this will be subject to advice from the commissioners in their interim report.

In a media statement issued on 16 January this year, Justice McClellan acknowledged the size and complexity of the task before the commission. He noted the need for amendments, some of which are contained in this bill, to allow authorised member hearings. Referring to those amendments, Justice McClellan stated:

Each of us has different backgrounds, professional experience, qualifications and expertise. We live in different regions of Australia. To assist the Commission in its work we understand that the government proposes to amend the Royal Commissions Act to provide that the Commissioners need not all sit when conducting a formal hearing. If that legislative change is made the Commission will utilise this capacity in an endeavour to gain a complete understanding of the problems in various parts of Australia in the most efficient manner possible. Even with this legislative change our task is complex and will take significant time.

In relation to the size of the task ahead there are some telling statistics that are available publicly that show the scope and the nature of the work that the commission will have to undertake. There have already been almost 12,000 visits to the commission's website since the middle of January, and there have been almost 500 calls to the 1800 number since 14 January, which is an average call volume of 25 calls a day. The hearing has not yet commenced and the commission is still in the process of hiring staff and training them to deal with what will be very difficult calls. So, at the moment, those almost 500 calls have been dealt with via an answering machine, which clearly means that there is going to be an enormous backlog for staff to deal with once they are hired and trained. This just reminds the House of the enormous work that the commission will be required to undertake.

The amendments to the Royal Commissions Act contained within this bill are going to do two very important things. The first will enable the chair of the royal commission to authorise one or more members to hold a hearing or take evidence. There are six commissioners and the present act would require that all of them sit in on any hearing that the commission were to undertake. The amendment in this bill very sensibly will allow them to conduct an authorised member hearing, which means only one member will need to be present for a particular hearing. So, presumably, the commission will use this to hold hearings at the same time in different parts of Australia to help it deal with the scope and complexity of its task.

The amendment will give the chair commissioner the authority to distribute the hearing workload where appropriate. This measure will apply to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and it will allow one or more of the six royal commissioners to conduct hearings. As I said, part of the reasoning for appointing those six commissioners to oversee the royal commission into child sexual abuse is the high volume of evidence that they are likely to be required to inquire into. The royal commission will clearly move as fast as it can to cover what is a vast amount of evidence and deal with people's personal accounts and therefore to report back about how we might craft necessary reforms. The amendment in the first part of this bill will make it possible to have the multimember hearings.

Part 2 of the bill details how the royal commission might respond to taking what is very sensitive and very personal evidence of people in private sessions. I outlined at the start of my comments how important this is. It would be so difficult for people to recount some of the events that the commission will need to deal with in relation to the abuse that these people would have suffered in institutions. You can imagine if you have been forced to go in and give that evidence in front of a royal commission how incredibly intimidating and difficult that would be even in normal circumstances. In this case, I think the bill crafts a sensible response to allow people to give evidence in a private session. We agree that it is important for those who are affected by child sexual abuse within the institutional context to be able to share their experiences in an appropriate way, recognising that many of the participants, in fact most of the participants, will be very traumatised. Of course, they will have particular support needs. Part 2 of this bill makes what I think are sensible amendments to the Royal Commissions Act to accommodate what will be the special requirements of participants in giving their evidence.

On behalf of the opposition, I would like to thank the six commissioners who have undertaken to be part of this very important work. It will be an extremely arduous and very emotionally demanding task. They will be engaged in it for several years. The time frame of reporting back by 2015 might not be possible, given the scope of the evidence that the commissioners will be forced to deal with. Clearly, they are going to be required to deal with many of the terrible things that have happened to people and their suffering as a result. Victims must be allowed to heal and perpetrators must be brought to justice.

I think this bill makes two sensible amendments to the Royal Commissions Act, which dates back to well over a century, to allow commissioners to deal with the volume of information that they are going to receive and also the nature of that information in a way that protects the dignity of victims and that recognises the difficulty which they will have in giving evidence in such a context. I commend the people who are prepared to come forward and share their experiences, because it must be such an incredibly difficult thing for them to do. I am glad that the parliament has taken these steps to enable them to do that in a private way that does meet the needs of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As previous speakers on the Royal Commissions Amendment Bill 2013 have noted, child sexual abuse is one of the hardest topics to speak about, particularly for those of us in this place who are parents. An account by Patricia Feenan titled Holy Hell gives some sense of the scale of the trauma. Ms Feenan writes about the abuse which occurred to her son Daniel which was perpetrated by their local parish priest, Father Fletcher. She writes:

Father Fletcher visited our family a lot and we were very active in his church. John—

her husband—

did his accounts and I did everything from sewing the buttons onto his black shirts to taking communion to the elderly.

He took a particular interest in Daniel, recruiting him as an altar server. People were always drawn to Daniel. He had a sweet nature, an angelic face and shining eyes.

And then she writes about how, when Daniel was 14, his behaviour started to change. He started binge drinking. He was arrested for drunk driving. Then one day the two of them argued when he was drunk. He walked out and she followed. She found him on a trailer beside the tractor with a noose around his neck. As Patricia screamed, Daniel jumped. She supported his weight until somebody else came, and then, wanting to help him, called Father Fletcher. Father Fletcher told Patricia to send Daniel over to see him, saying he could spend the night there. Of course, Daniel returned more distressed than ever.

Eventually, they found out that it was Father Fletcher who had been perpetrating the abuse on Daniel, and then, finally, when asked why he did not go to the police earlier, Daniel said: 'Because it started when I was 12.' Apparently, the abuse that Daniel suffered was so distressing that an employee of the Director of Public Prosecutions asked to be taken off the case. Patricia talked about weeping bitter tears when hearing what had happened to Daniel, about the harm that had been perpetrated on him and the pain and the indignity that he had suffered.

Other victims eventually came forward when the case went to trial in 2004, one because Fletcher asked the family for a character reference. When Fletcher finally suffered a stroke and died in 2006, his funeral was attended by 34 priests. Patricia's story is a reminder of how horrendous these crimes are that the royal commission will be investigating.

To give another account, Albert John Abel, a perpetrator of child sexual abuse, was sentenced to three years imprisonment after attacking a 12-year-old boy in the Charlton Boys Home in Glebe. He was working at the boys' home run by the Anglican Church and had begun abusing his victim in 1959 and continued over subsequent years.

There were some insights provided into how child sexual abuse can occur in institutions through the 'Forgotten Australians' exhibition, known as Inside: Life in Children's Homes and Institutions, which ran at the National Museum of Australia. I was fortunate to be taken through that exhibition by Hugh McGowan, one of the forgotten Australians. He ended up in institutional care after being born to a single mother in Scotland. She gave him up to a boys' home in Glasgow. He said one day the children were asked if they wanted to go to Australia. Hugh was 12 at the time and he initially agreed, but then he changed his mind and told the man known as the 'cottage father' in Glasgow that he did not want to go. He says he still remembers the reply: 'Too bad; you're going.' Hugh told me that there was a lack of warmth. There was tough physical labour, corporal punishment and sometimes even sexual abuse, though he himself was fortunate to escape that. And he said that the worst of it was that, even at the harshest of times, there was never a father to gently put his arms around you.

There were videos in that exhibition of young children at Bindoon in Western Australia doing dangerous jobs like blacksmithing and tiling. A hand-drawn map of the layout of Bentleigh Children's Home in Victoria showed red crosses where terrified children would hide to avoid abuse. An official sign from another home told visitors that they were not to hold the babies.

Ryszard Szablicki says that, some time after he left the Melbourne orphanage where he grew up: 'I heard people standing singing around a cake that had candles stuck in it. I did not even know what was going on.' He did not know what a birthday cake and birthday candles were because, as another boy said of the institutions, only 'intermittent humanity was provided'.

As then Prime Minister Rudd said in 2009 when he offered a national apology to the forgotten Australians:

… whatever I might say today, the truth is, I cannot give you back your childhood.

…   …   …

But what I can do with you is to celebrate the spirit that has lived within you over the decades.

This inquiry, which also follows on from the 2004 Senate inquiry into the forgotten Australians and the 1999 Forde inquiry into institutionalised abuse, will provide an opportunity for victims of institutionalised sexual abuse to tell their stories.

The royal commission will have an extraordinarily tough job ahead of it. But I am confident that the commissioners who have been chosen will do a first-rate job. It will be led by Justice Peter McClellan, who chaired the Sydney water inquiry and worked on the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia. Other commissioners include: Bob Atkinson, the former Queensland police commissioner; Justice Jennifer Coate, who has served as a magistrate and County Court judge in Victoria, including for five years as President of the Children's Court; Robert Fitzgerald, who has served as a commissioner for the Productivity Commission and has expertise on commerce, law, public policy and community services; Professor Helen Milroy, a consultant psychiatrist with experience in child and adolescent health; and former Western Australian senator Andrew Murray, who brings tremendous experience as a member of these key Senate inquiries into children's experiences in institutional care.

The bill has two main purposes. The first is to enable the president or chair to authorise one or more members to hold a hearing, and that will allow for more efficient distribution of work between commissioners where it is appropriate to do that. These will be authorised member hearings. Evidence taken of this kind will form part of evidence for the inquiry as a whole and it will allow the inquiry to take more evidence than would otherwise be possible.

The second main purpose of the bill is to introduce measures that will facilitate people directly or indirectly affected by child sexual abuse and related matters in institutional contexts to present their account to a commissioner in a setting that is less formal. The bill refers to this as a 'private session'. It is important that those affected by child sexual abuse can share their experiences in appropriate ways, recognising the trauma and the special support needs that are required. This is of a piece with courts having changed the way in which victims of sexual assault can give evidence. Recognising the trauma that sexual assault entails, to give evidence in a regular court is still a horrendous process that victims of sexual assault must go through but that process is better now than it was in decades gone by, thanks to changes that have been made in the judicial process. I regard the changes that this bill will make to the Royal Commissions Act as being of a similar nature.

In closing, it is difficult to speak of child sexual abuse without acknowledging the issues around suicide. In the context of those who might be listening to this debate, and recognising the trauma that is entailed in this, I thought it would be appropriate to acknowledge the work done by Lifeline Canberra, and particularly the work that has been done by their marketing manager, Matt Heffernan, in putting together this weekend's Lifeline Canberra Bookfair. Lifeline Canberra has been operating in the ACT since 1971 and the book fair is their major fundraising drive. This weekend, the jewel in their sales will be a first edition of Keynes's The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which I am sure the Treasurer will be greatly attracted to. Lifeline is also supported by a range of generous sponsors: The Good Guys in Canberra, FM104.7, FM106.3, Leader Security, Canberra Cavalry, SERVICE ONE Members Banking and Tidy Temple Yoga. They meet significant needs—Mr Heffernan informs me the number of calls to Lifeline Canberra is up 58 per cent over the past year—and so it is important that they receive strong community support.

Like many other members, I am wearing a Lifeline badge today, recognising the national body's 50th anniversary today. It is possible that, as we have a substantial community conversation about institutional child sexual abuse, that will prompt further calls on social service agencies over the course of the coming years. I am sure Lifeline will be ready to step in on that, but we too need to be ready to support it. I commend the bill to the House.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 12 November last year, the Prime Minister announced the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The announcement did not come out of thin air; it came, in part, as the conclusion of a long-running campaign by victims, by their advocates and by many others within the community to have such a national royal commission held. As result of that, it was welcomed by victims, advocates, MPs and, I must say, even many church organisations. I welcome the establishment of a royal commission. I have believed for some time that this was the appropriate course of action for the Australian government to take. I do not rush quickly to the call for royal commissions. They have great investigative powers which, when combined with the constant scrutiny of the mass media, can alter the course of public opinion—and even personal reputation—well in advance of any findings and recommendations being recorded, and certainly well in advance of any prosecutorial process being concluded or even commenced. I believe that royal commissions should only be used when it is clear that both policing and judicial determination have failed or are inadequate to the task. In relation to the question of institutional responses to child sexual abuse, I believe that this is such a case. Our children have had their trust betrayed. We have heard stories of child abusers being moved from place to place to avoid having their crimes dealt with. We have heard revelations of adults who have averted their eyes from this evil. This royal commission process will, I hope, be a healing process. But I specifically hope that its recommendations will help ensure that it never happens again.

Child abuse is always wrong. It is heartbreaking for the victims and for their families. It is always deeply distressing. Many people in my community have told me of their distress on hearing of these terrible stories of abuse and of damaged souls and broken faith. When we know that this tragedy exists, we want to see action taken. We all want to do everything we can to ensure that we do not see it in the future—that we do not see institutions fail to respond if there are allegations of child abuse in their midst. I hope that this royal commission can guide us to that place. This is not because there is some grand conspiracy between police, courts and church organisations—I simply do not believe that to be the case. But what is clear, and in some instances admitted, is that church organisations actively sought to cover up their offences. I know this from firsthand experience in the school that I attended, in the region that I now represent. Regrettably, Cardinal Pell attempted to explain this in an interview with the Weekend Australian last year, when he said:

"It wasn't just the Catholic Church that hoped (an abusive priest) would amend their conduct and give them a home somewhere else," he said.

"Back in those days, they were entitled to think of pedophilia as simply a sin that you would repent of. They didn't realise that in the worst cases it was an addiction, a raging addiction."

The problem with this view is that sexual abuse of children is not just a sin, whether it is a raging addiction or otherwise—it is a crime. It was then and it is now. And any decent moral code would also see the cover-up of child abuse as sinful as it is a crime. Above and beyond that, it is the crime of conspiracy.

My church, the Catholic Church, has been at the centre of the storm. I do not believe that it is the only institution in the country that has behaved in this way. Therefore, a royal commission should not be confined to the affairs of any one religious institution in any one state. Some have suggested that calls for a broad based inquiry are the result of a latent anti-Catholicism. I am sure there are some people in the community who harbour this sort of bigotry, but I do not believe that it is religious prejudice that motivates the majority.

I know of many Catholics who share my view. There are many, like my father, who made great sacrifices to send their children to a school and to a church, believing that in doing so they were honouring God's work and raising their children in their faith. Words cannot describe the complete betrayal they felt on learning that those they had trusted with their children—the parish priest, the principal and others—had been engaged in serial offences.

Many senior church people I have spoken to make the point that these events occurred in the past and the church has changed its way. This misses the point. As each new incident is uncovered it continues to damage the reputation of all churches and church-run institutions. It feeds the popular belief that a conspiracy continues right up until this day. A royal commission is the only way for the truth to be known and for the church to truly demonstrate that it has purged itself not only of the past culture of cover-ups but also of the perpetrators. Confession is a very Catholic thing.

It is important to note that this royal commission is not a prosecutorial process. Justice Peter McClellan, in setting out the purpose and the processes, made a public statement of the Royal Commission. He said:

It is important to understand that the Commission is not a prosecuting body. Our investigative processes will be utilised to receive and consider what we expect will be accounts by individuals who tell of their experience when living within or when they were associated with an institution. The Commission will be concerned to examine these individual accounts to determine how the circumstances arose, the relevant management practices of the institution in which they occurred and the response which the institution has made to any complaint of sexual abuse by an individual. Because the Commission is not a prosecuting body it will establish links with the appropriate authorities in each State and Territory to whom a matter may be referred with the expectation that where appropriate prosecutorial proceedings may commence. It is also important to understand that the Commission is not charged with determining whether any person may be entitled to compensation for any injury which they may have suffered.

This is a commission that has been set up to let some sunlight in on some very sorry practices. The bill before the House will assist the commission and commissioners in conducting this inquiry. It will authorise the chair of a royal commission constituted by more than one member to authorise one or more members to hold hearings, to have general application to royal commissions. It will also authorise the chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to authorise members to hold private sessions, to facilitate people affected by child sexual abuse, in an institutional context, to present their accounts to the commission in an informal setting and not under oath.

Given the subject matter of these proceedings, these are entirely sensible amendments to the Royal Commissions Act. The royal commission will inquire into how institutions with a responsibility for children have managed and responded to allegations of child sexual abuse and related matters. I cannot think of a more difficult area of inquiry for a person to sit on—to gather evidence, to advocate on behalf of victims or the commission or to assist in gathering evidence and reporting on this. We know from experiences in other countries and jurisdictions that these inquiries can go on for many years. The Prime Minister made the point, in announcing the commission, that it will take as long as it takes to ensure that we find out what has gone on and provide some justice to the victims of these terrible crimes.

I am very proud to be standing here addressing the legislation before the House. I am very proud to be an MP in a government that has had the courage to take this issue on and to ensure, to the extent that an injustice has gone on in the past, that this generation is not a part of a continued cover-up. I commend the legislation to the House.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Throsby for his contribution. I also speak in favour of the Royal Commissions Amendment Bill 2013. As touched on by previous speakers, from both sides of the House, this is a logical amendment to an important piece of legislation supported by both sides of the chamber. Not always in this chamber is there bipartisan support but on this we speak with one voice, as a responsible parliament.

In January this year our Prime Minister recommended to the Governor-General that letters patent be issued appointing six commissioners to work together as the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. It is to be chaired by Justice Peter McClellan. He will be ably assisted by Mr Andrew Murray, Mr Robert Fitzgerald, Justice Jennifer Coate, Professor Helen Milroy and someone I am particularly proud of mentioning—a Queenslander—Mr Bob Atkinson, whom I have had much to do with over the years in his capacity as commissioner for police. He is a longstanding, very well-respected police officer who served the Queensland community with great dignity and effectiveness in his capacity as a detective, where he dealt with some of the most horrific criminal cases in Queensland, and now he will serve all of Australia in this royal commission.

The aim of this bill is to amend the Royal Commissions Act 1902 to assist the work of the royal commission. The amendments will allow one or more of the six royal commissioners to conduct hearings, which means—because of the geography of Australia—we will not need to have people travelling all the time to Sydney. It is my understanding that the royal commission will be based here. It is obviously an important part of the nation, but there are people scattered all around Australia who will give evidence in front of one or two commissioners, as appropriate.

The Royal Commissions Act currently only permits hearings to be conducted by all members of a multimember commission or by a quorum. So this current model is not sufficient in addressing the challenges at hand and changes need to be implemented. These amendments will assist the commission to distribute its hearing work efficiently, where this is appropriate. As I said, coming from one of the most decentralised states—Queensland—I know that it will be appropriate for the commissioners to travel throughout Australia.

The other purpose of the bill is to allow the commissioners to receive information from those affected by child abuse at less formal, private sessions, therefore providing a more comfortable environment for the victims of child abuse. Anyone who has worked in this area—whether dealing with the evidence given by children or evidence given by adults who were abused as children—knows that often a less formal or adversarial judicial environment can be more conducive to the facts coming out.

All governments must take very seriously the responsibility to protect children from child abuse and to respond to family violence. I know I have said previously that I see all of our children as distilled hope. The nation's potential is represented in our children. The Gillard Labor government has a proud track record of helping the vulnerable and working to deliver reforms that will help future generations. As I said in my introductory remarks, at this time in the 43rd parliament there is strong bipartisan support for the proposed endeavours in this piece of legislation.

This government has always taken on the big challenges in our society—for example, putting a price on carbon. The Clean Energy Future plan is all about preserving the planet and this nation for our children, for our grandchildren and for our great-grandchildren. I know that this tough political decision engenders all sorts of responses from members of the public, be they outbursts in parliament or standing up at demonstrations and saying horrible things about members of parliament. However, the reason the Gillard Labor government took that decision is that it is the right thing to do for our children and for our grandchildren. Likewise the National Disability Insurance Scheme is a tough piece of legislation but it is the right thing for the future.

The decision I am most proud of is obviously the Gonski education reforms. Deputy Speaker Grierson, I know your background is in education and you know the joy that comes from seeing people's circumstances change due to education. It is in the DNA of the Labor Party obviously to invest in education, to make sure that education gives people an opportunity. These tough reforms are not a backward step. These decisions will shape this country and the globe for years to come.

My wife has worked in child protection over 23 years—hopefully she is not listening to this. She started on 3 January 1990 as a very young child protection worker. I have known her for 21 years. In that time she has dealt with some horrific cases, some horrible, horrible cases. Obviously no-one phones the Child Protection Service to say, 'Everything's going well here.' The contact is only ever about families in crisis. My wife tells people of the lifelong scars suffered by those who experience physical and emotional abuse in the family home. I have heard a lot in this job but nothing like the stories she has heard and been involved in. Sadly she is still surprised by what people will do and the depths that people will plumb.

Being a child protection worker is obviously very difficult work, being involved with families and passions, paedophiles and all sorts of abuse. Sadly, two of her colleagues were in a car accident on the weekend when going off to work. The two women, who worked for the Department of Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services, were killed when their four-wheel drive collided with a minibus at Barratta Creek near Townsville. I was speaking about this to the member for Herbert, Ewen Jones. I am going to do what I can and join with him, in another bipartisan effort, to have a raffle or something to raise funds in Townsville. I will make a donation and Ewen Jones will make a donation. He was an auctioneer in another life, so he is a very good fundraiser to support the families of these two women who, in going about their difficult work, sadly passed away.

Obviously, child abuse cannot be tolerated under any circumstances. Whether it is from violence in the family or from violence in an institution, in either case, it is not acceptable. All children deserve a safe and happy childhood. By establishing a royal commission into institutional child abuse we can bring attention to the injustices which have occurred in places where the most vulnerable in our society should have been cared for and protected. Child sexual abuse and other related unlawful or improper treatment of children has a long-term cost to individuals and, as we have sadly seen, also to the economy and to society as a whole. I want all of our children to grow up in a safe environment and to put trust in the institutions that step in when parents fail, so that a safe atmosphere is provided.

The amendments in the Royal Commissions Amendment Bill will bring occurrences of institutional child abuse out into the open, occurrences which over time have been ignored and rejected. For many people, telling their stories of child sexual abuse will be very traumatic. These private sessions will mean that people affected by this crime can voluntarily participate in the royal commission in a less formal setting so that their voices can be heard. So often when meeting people who have suffered abuse we see that it is important they be given a voice because they were silenced as a child. We want the victims of these horrid circumstances to be able to come forth and tell their story without fear of rejection or judgment, and these amendments facilitate that. Obviously, we cannot know at this time how many people will wish to participate in the royal commission; although, since January, we have seen significant media interest, and people have contacted my office to ask about the process. That gives an indication as to how many people in our community have been affected, sadly, by child abuse.

We know it will be difficult, but this government is prepared to step up to the challenge and do everything that we can against these acts of violence and, more importantly, to prevent any abuse happening in the future. The government cannot undo the pain and suffering that has occurred in the past; but we can listen, we can bear witness and we, as a nation, can respond.

When the royal commission has completed its work, we can act to prevent these crimes and injustices from happening again. Like most crimes, eternal vigilance is the best defence, and the royal commission is a part of that process. The royal commission is as much about assisting victims of past abuse to be heard as it is about investigating systemic failures that can be prevented in the future. We cannot remain silent on these shocking crimes of sexual child abuse. I welcome the bill. I hope it will have a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of those who have suffered the traumatic experience of child abuse in institutional circumstances. I commend the bill to the house.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the contribution of all members to the debate on the Royal Commissions Amendment Bill 2013. The measures in the Royal Commissions Amendment Bill 2013 will assist the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to undertake its important inquiry and to facilitate participation in the commission by those who wish to tell their story. The changes proposed have been designed to ensure that the royal commission can work quickly to deliver recommendations that will make real improvements and hear from a wide range of people. To achieve these aims, we need to give the commission as much flexibility as we can in the manner of its operation.

Making sure that the royal commission can directly hear the personal stories of people affected by child sexual abuse in institutional contexts will be very important in assisting the commission to understand past failings and to develop recommendations so that past failures are not repeated. The private session measures in the bill will facilitate voluntary participation in the royal commission by people affected by child sexual abuse in institutions. Participants will not need to tell their story on oath or affirmation. They will have the same protections as a witness appearing at a formal hearing of the commission. The commission will also be able to authorise support persons to accompany the person giving information at a private session. The commission will be able to use information it has received in a private session in a report, but the bill will require that identifying information about individuals is not published. In short, the private sessions are designed to ensure the commission can use material from a wide range of sources to deepen their understanding of the failures that have taken place and how these might be prevented in the future.

The measures in this bill will assist the commission by giving it more flexibility, with options to receive information and evidence for the inquiry. The work ahead of the royal commission is significant, and it will be a matter for the commission to determine how best to proceed to gather information across Australia. As the member for Moreton noted in his speech, this royal commission has a very large task ahead of it. Thousands of Australians have a direct interest in this inquiry and they are spread right across our country. It is important that the commission have flexibility and make the best use of the resources provided to it. The bill will also permit the chair of the current royal commission and chairs of future royal commissions to authorise one or more members to hold a hearing and take evidence on oath or affirmation. Under the current act, the hearing must be conducted by at least a quorum of commissioners.

I would like to take this opportunity to alert the House to the fact that there are some technical amendments to this bill which are currently underdeveloped. They will be provided to the opposition in advance of their introduction in the Senate.

The government acknowledges the support of state and territory governments for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. All states have now issued letters patent or commissions in terms complementary with the letters patent establishing the Commonwealth royal commission. This makes a joint royal commission with those jurisdictions, which gives the royal commission broad powers under laws governing both the state and Commonwealth inquiries.

When the royal commission delivers its recommendations, all Australian governments will need to work together to make sure that all that can be done by governments is done to prevent the crime of child sexual abuse in institutional contexts and to improve institutional responses. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.