Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whilst the coalition will ultimately support the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment Bill 2023, we will be moving an amendment in the consideration in detail stage to omit part 2 of schedule 1 from the bill. I will go into this in a little more detail, but part 2 of schedule 1 makes changes to the special assessment process to specific classes of serious offences and removes the existing restrictions that apply to those people on applying under the redress scheme from jail.

The National Redress Scheme, established under the former coalition government, continues to provide support to those who have suffered from institutionalised child sexual abuse. The scheme recognises the suffering survivors have experienced and accepts that these events occurred and that institutions must take responsibility for this abuse. The scheme is the most significant step in going part of the way to addressing the wrongs of the past and providing a just response to survivors. We also recognise that it's an important step, and has been an important step for many, towards healing. It also ensures governments and institutions take steps to safeguard against these crimes ever being repeated in the future. It's intended to provide a survivor with the means to access a sense of justice through financial redress and through other restorative supports. It is intended to be faster, simpler and less distressing for survivors and to provide governments and institutions with the means to deliver swift justice to those survivors.

When the scheme was established under the former coalition government, there were some limitations—in my view, quite rightly—for people who have committed the most serious of crimes. For example, if a person is convicted of an offence which receives a custodial sentence of five years or more in jail, the operator, as defined under the act, may determine that the person is entitled to redress if providing redress to the person would not bring the scheme into disrepute or adversely affect public confidence in the scheme. When making this determination, at present, the operator takes into account any relevant information, such as advice given by the relevant Attorney-General and the nature of the offence for which that person has received the custodial sentence of five years or more. The coalition does not see any need to change this current arrangement. The National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment Bill 2023 yet again shows Labor's tendency to be lenient on crime by benefiting or proposing to benefit individuals with serious criminal convictions by essentially offering a fast-track redress process. Under this government's bill before us today, those who receive a jail sentence of five years or more would be eligible to apply for redress without having to go through the existing special assessment process. Under Labor, and this bill proposed, only those sentenced to five years or more for offences such as unlawful killing, sexual offences or terrorism—all cases where it's deemed that the scheme's integrity would be questioned—would have to go through the special assessment process.

We have a proposal now from government to change the special assessment process for people who have been jailed for more than five years—and, let's be frank; in Australia, to be jailed for more than five years means we're talking, by definition, about extremely serious crimes. But they accept that for a certain class of crimes we shouldn't change that process—that certain class of crimes here being unlawful killing, sexual offences or terrorism. On one hand they accept that the special assessment process is important to be maintained for the integrity of the scheme—and for common decency, to be quite frank—for those classes of crimes, but let's open up the doors for everybody else. As I stated at the beginning, we will be moving amendments to give the government an opportunity to rethink that quite extraordinary decision. The reason it's quite extraordinary is if, as the government has accepted here, there are classes of serious offences that should require the existing processes, it doesn't necessarily preclude access to the scheme but it requires an additional assessment of that particular applicant, but there are a range of other offences here that will now not be subject to this special assessment process. The government is effectively saying a crime is not worthy of that. So unlawful killing, sexual offences or terrorism continue with the existing special assessment process, but for this list of crimes let's just open up the doors: extortion, distributing child abuse material, possession of child abuse material, accessing child abuse material, kidnapping, robbery, armed robbery, burglary, aggravated burglary, home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking, aggravated carjacking, arson and arson causing death. That's just a list—it's not exhaustive, and there are many more.

For crimes that ordinary Australians would consider to be extremely serious crimes the government is now saying 'Those people get access to the scheme, but as of right now we are going to suspend the special access process that puts integrity around this scheme for: extortion, distributing child abuse material, possession of child abuse material, accessing child abuse material, kidnapping, robbery, armed robbery, burglary, aggravated burglary, home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking, aggravated carjacking, arson and arson causing death.' One of the key criticisms of survivors is timely access to justice—and there are other changes in this bill that will seek to try to assist that timely access to justice—but when that is one of the primary criticisms of this very worthy scheme from survivors who, quite understandably, want swift justice, I think it's galling that there will be people serving custodial sentences for crimes in the list that I have just outlined who will be necessarily given preferential treatment over others on a 'first in, best dressed' basis. When we set up the scheme, we said, 'Actually, for people who have been convicted of very, very serious crimes, that shouldn't be the case.' So here, we've got it boiled down to, I suppose, what we consider to be a serious crime.

We know Labor's very lenient on crime. All you have to do is to look around at our state Labor governments and see the crime epidemic that's sweeping parts of our country and the inaction from Labor governments.

But I agree with the government that, under the bill, unlawful killing, sexual offences and terrorism are really serious offences, and that people who have been found guilty of those offences, who have been sentenced to a jail period of five years or greater, should be subject to the special assessment process. So I'm shocked—utterly shocked—that the minister and the government do not agree with me that these are similarly serious crimes: extortion, distributing child abuse material, possession of child abuse material, kidnapping, robbery, armed robbery, burglary, aggravated burglary, home invasion, aggravated home invasion, carjacking, arson and arson causing death. To go back to my earlier point, to be jailed for five years or more for one of these offences means we're talking about really egregious conduct—evil, evil crimes. Now we have the Labor party saying: 'Let's open up the scheme to these people, unfettered, and, in the process, slow down the applications for everybody else,' when one of the most serious criticisms of the scheme to date has been about timely access to justice, compensation and other restorative measures.

The government's bill also seeks to allow those in jail to apply for redress. So you've committed one of those offences—you've committed distribution of child abuse material, or extortion, kidnapping, burglary, carjacking or home invasion—and you're in jail, and now the government, under this bill, is proposing that you, in jail, should be able to apply for redress. We profoundly disagree. We think that the existing restrictions, which have worked well to date, maintain the integrity of and public confidence in this scheme. I see no compelling arguments for why people who have been found guilty of any of that litany of crimes should be getting access to the scheme equal to that of other, law-abiding, citizen-survivors, without the special process that currently exists. It baffles me that, of all the priorities, of all the things you could do to improve the scheme, this is one of the central components. I'll be very keen to hear from the minister an explanation as to why people who have been found guilty of perpetrating evil crimes against fellow citizens, fellow Australians, should somehow now be given swift access to this scheme and inevitably slow it down for everybody else.

What do we agree on? Currently, there are no mechanisms to hold a non-participant institution accountable once a determination is made, even if the institution later joins the scheme. So, in response to recommendation 3.1 of the second year review, this bill introduces a new assessment process to address potential disadvantages faced by survivors when an institution joins the scheme after their application progresses. The interim response from the former coalition government acknowledged the recommendation but emphasised that it represents a pretty fundamental change to the scheme's principles. The coalition committed to further considering this recommendation at the time, in consultation with states, territories, survivors, institutions and other important stakeholders, and I suspect would have come to the same conclusion. We believe this is a commonsense measure and we'll be supporting it.

With respect to the review of determinations: currently, the act does not allow applicants to submit further information when requesting a review of a decision. The review found this position limits procedural fairness, along with the risk of a redress offer being reduced to deter survivors from requesting a review. Addressing recommendation 5.1 of the second-year review, this bill will allow applicants to provide additional information when requesting a review while also providing a no-worse-off provision so that redress offers are not reduced on review—therefore removing that unfair downside risk for the applicant. At the time, while noting the relevant recommendation in its interim response—which addressed this issue in the second-year review—the former coalition government acknowledged the benefits of allowing survivors to provide further information and will therefore support this measure.

The protected information framework ensures sensitive information gathered by the scheme is handled in an appropriate way. The second-year review recommendation 3.14 recommended the government review the scope and content of the protected information provisions in the act with specific regard to the protection of information provided by applicants and its permitted use by the scheme operator and institutions of that information, including the appropriateness of protections provided to institutions. This bill sets out new circumstances in which protected information may be shared lawfully. Changes include: increased transparency to applicants regarding the onboarding of an institution to the scheme, where that institution was named in the person's application to the scheme; and allowing an institution to share protected information within a group for the purposes of internal investigations and disciplinary procedures.

The bill updates the protected information provisions to provide additional authorisations to support appropriate use and disclosure of protective information, including providing increased transparency to applicants about non-participating institutions. The bill also allows the operator to disclose relevant protected information to a public trustee to ascertain whether an applicant is subject to a financial management order; allows a person engaged by a participating institution to disclose protected information to another institution within the same participating group for the purposes of investigation and disciplinary procedures; and allows a person engaged by a participating institution to indicate to another institution within the same participating group that they have received a redress application. The coalition agrees to support these measures as well.

With respect to the funder of last resort: in response to the review, the previous act extended funder-of-last-resort arrangements. We understand that these amendments address drafting inconsistencies with the original funder-of-last-resort provisions and the expanded funder-of-last-resort provisions in the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment (Funders of Last Resort and Other Measures) Act 2021. The changes will ensure that a person's redress payment and an institution's redress liability are appropriately calculated, where the same institution is responsible under more than one funder-of-last-resort categories. In the end, it's a commonsense proposal from the government.

These are necessary amendments, in part, that came out of the two-year review of the National Redress Scheme. We won't quibble over minor things that we perhaps would do slightly differently in government. We think, broadly speaking, that the acceptance of the recommendations that emanated from that review are sensible. We do, however, reiterate the points I made at the beginning. We believe that there's no justification, at all—no justification at all—for expanding this scheme to serious criminals in an unfettered way.

Serious criminals who are simultaneously victims are entitled to access the scheme with appropriate safeguards, additional hurdles, quite rightly in place for the integrity of the scheme and of course with a prohibition against those who are currently in jail. We don't see any reason why that should change, and we equally don't understand why you would change the process to give more swift access to the scheme to people who are guilty of the sorts of evil, violent crimes that I described and who will necessarily slow down the applications of other law-abiding victim-survivors around the country. It's quite remarkable that you would create a set of amendments here to prioritise people who have been jailed for five years or more. Let's not forget that: jailed for five years or more. And every Australian out there who sits there shaking their head when they see some of the lenient sentences that our courts around the country give—to get five years in an Australian jail you have to had done something pretty bad.

So why on earth would the Labor Party be now seeking to give those criminals equal access to the scheme without explaining the inherent inconsistency in their approach? They do agree that, for serious criminals, the existing processes should remain in place. They deem serious criminals to be those guilty of unlawful killing, sexual offences or terrorism, and I'm here to tell the minister that, whether it's by accident or it's deliberate, there is a much broader range of crimes that ordinary everyday Australians would consider serious and that should not be excised from the additional requirements under the scheme.

The test here really is for the government and the minister to, when they're arguing for this particular change—and they'll have an opportunity when I move an amendment—remove this particular part from the bill. But it will be incumbent on them to explain why people guilty of the following crimes and jailed more than five years are not serious criminals: arson causing death, arson, aggravated carjacking, carjacking, aggravated home invasion, home invasion, burglary, aggravated burglary, robbery, armed robbery, kidnapping, accessing child abuse material, possession of child abuse material and distributing child abuse material. How on earth could the government now consider that criminals found guilty of that litany of crimes and jailed for more than five years should somehow be given equal access to this scheme as honest, decent, law-abiding victim-survivors?

Now, if this is a mistake, an error on behalf of the minister or an oversight, I look forward to the government's support for our amendment to keep the existing provisions in place, which mean that those serious criminals have to make an additional application before getting access to the scheme and that, if you're currently in jail and serving your debt to society for the crime that you have committed against a fellow citizen, you do not get access to the scheme. That can occur once you have done your time, and they are the current rules under the redress scheme. If the minister has just botched this, overlooked it and not understood what was put in front of her, then we would look forward to working with the government to support the amendment that I'll move in consideration in detail.

Otherwise, we support the bill and we won't stand in the way of the other worthy changes. Even if our amendment that we will move with respect to serious criminals is not supported by the government, we couldn't in good conscience stand in the way of the other worthy amendments emanating from the review that commenced under the former coalition government and would therefore not stand in the way of the bill. But we really appeal to the government to show some common sense here, at a time when there are communities around our country fearful of violent crime—crime that we have not seen in this country before. It is the sort of crime that we've seen on our TVs coming from the United States or parts of Europe but never considered in our own neighbourhoods in Australia.

At a time when we are seeing those crimes, it's quite extraordinary that the government are now saying that they will give equal access to this Redress Scheme to people who are guilty of those crimes—indeed, people who are still paying the price for those crimes in jail—and, in the process, slow down the applications of those decent, law-abiding victims-survivors who are trying to get swift access to justice under the scheme. So we appeal to whatever shred of common sense is left in this government to support our amendment. But, in any event, we will not stand in the way of this bill and the worthy other changes and refinements to the scheme that the bill represents.

Debate adjourned.

Ordered that the resumption of the debate be made an order of the day for a later hour.