Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Labor is pleased to support the Royal Commissions Amendment (Private Sessions) Bill 2019. In 2013 this parliament amended the Royal Commissions Act 1902 to allow the chair of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to authorise a fellow commissioner to hold a private session to receive information from victims and others affected by child sexual abuse. A traditional royal commission hearing setting will not generally serve as the best way to facilitate participation in the royal commission by those people affected by child sexual abuse. For many, telling their story will be deeply personal and traumatic. The use of private sessions made it possible for as many as 8,000 victims of child sexual abuse to tell their stories to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Such a regime is likely to prove equally valuable to victims of elder abuse and to people with disability who have been subjected to abuse.

This bill will enable other royal commissions to hold private sessions where a regulation is made under the Royal Commissions Act authorising it to do so. In effect this would extend the private sessions regime that applied to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to other royal commissions in appropriate circumstances, including the disability and aged-care royal commissions. I commend the bill to the Senate.