Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to add my voice to those who have already honoured the bravery of the survivors of sexual abuse and the profound impact their stories have had on our national history and shared future. In particular, I'd like to acknowledge my colleague Senator Siewert for being a powerful voice, through the royal commission, in listening and understanding and working with a journey of healing with the survivors of sexual abuse.

The royal commission took over four years and more than 2½ thousand referrals to reach its conclusion. The stories exposed the shocking, systematic abuse of children at the hands of powerful institutions, institutions like the church, schools, foster homes and orphanages, sporting clubs and many others. They are institutions that committed acts of unspeakable cruelty, where perpetrators were given safe harbour for the rape of young children and were allowed to continue this shocking behaviour with impunity.

I say to the survivors: I can't imagine your pain; the hurt; the tears of shame; or the kids alone at night, crying themselves to sleep, not believed, wondering what they did wrong to bring this on themselves. I say to you, the survivors: thank you for your bravery, for sharing your stories, because now many of these powerful institutions have had their day of reckoning. They were exposed throughout the royal commission of caring more about their own reputations and protecting their own colleagues than they cared for the children who were under their protection, with the resistance, the lack of remorse and the lack of empathy eventually giving way to a national call for action to stop this from ever happening again. They were only held to account because of your bravery, your courage—the courage of survivors—and your determination to see justice being done.

On behalf of the Greens, on behalf of all of my colleagues, I want to thank those of you who have reached into your traumatic pasts to share your stories. You have contributed to some of the changes already made, and you will be instrumental in ensuring reforms that are yet to come. I cannot imagine your pain or the courage needed to share your stories, but, please, take pride in the fact that you have truly helped to shape the course of history in this country. You've created this moment, a moment of national determination that nothing like what you have endured at the hands of the powerful will ever happen again to future generations. We salute your bravery. I'm certain that many survivors have still kept that trauma to themselves, to be shared only with closest loved ones, some taking this secret to the grave. For many of you, putting down your past on paper, speaking your lives into the commission's transcripts of evidence, would have been too much to bear. You must carry that pain around with you every day.

I had the great privilege of being in the Great Hall only a few weeks ago, and it was clear that that pain was still palpable. It was raw. It was on the surface. Many of you are being asked to trust another institution to deliver justice when you've been let down so badly, for so many years, by other powerful organisations. On behalf of my colleagues, I pledge to do everything we can in this chamber to stop this from ever happening again. There is no more solemn duty than to ensure that children can thrive in a caring, loving and supportive environment, free from even the slightest sign of physical and mental trauma. All children should be safe. We owe them nothing less.

This royal commission was also due to the bravery of others—people who were prepared to speak truth to power, who were prepared to sacrifice their own advancement to speak on behalf of the voiceless. Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox, who was the whistleblower who saw it as his responsibility not to stay quiet and not to let this suffering continue, should be honoured. He chose to publicly expose the church's covering up of evidence about paedophile priests and how police investigations were methodically silenced. We thank him. It was Prime Minister Julia Gillard who responded to Mr Fox's evidence, using the powers that only executive governments have to launch a royal commission. It was a call that the Greens had made on a number of occasions, and we wholeheartedly endorsed this move by the former Prime Minister. We saw only a few weeks ago how grateful the many survivors were for Ms Gillard to be there in the room and to have allowed the course of history to change forever.

That is our duty: to care for people; to ensure that justice is done; to make right the wrongs of the past; to acknowledge that we can never undo the suffering, the pain, the trauma or the hurt but we can change the future that young children are born into. That is the test of whether this apology will have force, whether this apology is one that moves beyond an acknowledgement of the past and, indeed, allows us to change our future. Our solemn pledge is to do everything that we can do to make sure that these sins are never repeated.