Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Services) | Link to this | Hansard source

The federal government is gravely concerned about the Christian Brothers Oceania Province's 22 June 2026 announcement that it would seek creditor and court approval for a creditors scheme of arrangement and a moratorium on all current and future civil proceedings in connection with child sexual abuse claims. This is causing great distress across the community of survivors of child sexual abuse.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse caused hundreds of institutions, including the Catholic Church, to confront their shocking history of abuse. The misconduct and tactics that were used by institutions to avoid liability were laid bare. Among the royal commission's 409 recommendations was the establishment of the National Redress Scheme. The Redress Scheme has, since 2018, received 80,000 applications and disbursed over $2 billion in redress payments to survivors. Thousands have received apologies or counselling that have changed their lives. That acknowledgement has changed their lives.

There are several hundred pending claims against the Christian brothers in the Redress Scheme, and I expect there may be more before the lodgement date closes for applications. The Christian Brothers application to the New South Wales Supreme Court has injected even greater uncertainty into the lives of survivors, already forever altered by the conduct of members of the order. This situation has been brought about by the Christian Brothers view that it is confronting financial challenges and that these challenges will impact the order's capacity to meet future compensation payments.

I want to take the opportunity to note recent media reports, particularly those in the Australian Financial Review, which said:

Edmund Rice Education was created in 2007 and now operates dozens of schools affiliated with the Christian Brothers. … The split created a new organisation with the bulk of the Christian Brothers assets. Edmund Rice Education had more than $345 million in cash in its account at the end of December 2024.

And second:

In total, land deemed by EREA to be worth $891 million was transferred to it by the Christian Brothers between 2013 and 2017. The land has not been revalued in the accounts since its transfer, notes proxy adviser Dean Paatsch. Assuming a moderate 7 per cent rate of price growth, he estimates the present value of the transferred land at some $2 billion.

Growing up, I was taught that there was one church and one God, not multiple corporate entities that transfer assets for purposes that are yet to be made clear. It is, of course, entirely up to the court to interpret the legal validity of the application made by the Christian Brothers. I speak on behalf of the federal government in particular for the Redress Scheme, which I have responsibility to administer, but most importantly for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse. The impact on victim-survivors of this application is manifold. They ask again: who can they trust? Of course, such an arrangement will have financial impacts on victim-survivors. The scheme's operating expenses are met by taxpayers, who also step in as a funder of last resort for compensation payments, so the financial impacts obviously go beyond the victim-survivors themselves.

Taxpayers should not have to step in to compensate victims of crime when the institution responsible is readily identifiable and has substantial wealth, but the feeling that no-one may be held to account for this abuse, that is perhaps even worse than the financial impacts. The idea that no-one will be held to account for child sexual abuse when it's identifiable where it happened and who was responsible, I think, is devastating for victims and survivors.

I was very pleased to see the President of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, quoted in the Financial Review on 23 June. He said that the abuse occurred in institutions now operated by Edmund Rice Education Australia, an organisation that was split out of the Christian Brothers. He said of that:

It is the great hope of the Conference that the Christian Brothers find a way to support the provision of care for victims of abuse that occurred in institutions conducted by the Christian Brothers.

My department, the Department of Social Services, filed submissions in the Supreme Court of New South Wales on 30 June 2026, and the department and the government were represented at a hearing held this morning, on 2 July. We will remain engaged as the matter works its way through the court. I know that no compensation can undo the harm and the hurt that so many victims and survivors of child sexual abuse experienced, but that compensation is the absolute minimum that they should expect and that is owed to them.

Question agreed to.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 11:56