David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise on behalf of the Greens to support the Treasury Laws Amendment (The Survivors Law) Bill 2026. At the outset, I want to acknowledge that this bill comes about as a result of years, in some cases decades, of advocacy by survivors and their families and supporters over many years. This bill slightly rebalances the legal system in favour of survivors, victims and their families. And I don't just say that in a shallow way. The strength and the courage that survivors have shown to continue to confront the injustices in our legal system to say that legal works, legal protections—systems that are designed to protect the wealth of perpetrators and prevent survivors from having access to that wealth—need reform and need change.

I also want to commend the work of the Assistant Treasurer and the minister's office. This is an example of when the government does it right—sitting down over time, consulting with survivors, working through law reform, and answering some really difficult questions about how you balance certain rights, such as the rights to protect superannuation and to protect some of those core social safety nets in our system but not do so at the expense of fundamental questions of justice. Often, I rise in this chamber to critique the government about how and why they have gone through a process, but I want to emphasise that this shows that, when politics can put the narrow, political fight on the bottom shelf for a while and focus on law reform that will make a measurable difference to people who desperately need it, we can do it right. What this bill does is give survivors a pathway to enforce what courts have already said they are owed.

What we have seen time and time again is where perpetrators, particularly of child sexual abuse, come from positions of power and wealth and privilege in our society, and they prey upon the powerless in our society. Children by definition are powerless in that situation. But we can't ignore the fact that so often those perpetrators come from positions of power and wealth and privilege. Often, they have led a life that has meant they've accrued significant assets. Their appalling behaviour, their criminal conduct, has destroyed the lives of children and thrown people's lives into chaos for decades. We have seen time and time again, when those same perpetrators are finally held to account and forced into a criminal court, they've often compelled and required their victims to give evidence, to be tested in a criminal court proceeding. Finally, when there's a sense of justice when a conviction is recorded and a perpetrator is put behind bars, they find that, when efforts are made to enforce civil claims against the same perpetrator for the damage and the violence that has been inflicted on survivors, those same perpetrators use legal structures to hide their assets and protect them from survivors.

One of the things that has been apparent when I have been working with survivors—I've spent over a decade and a half in this space—is quite often perpetrators place their assets inside their superannuation. Superannuation assets are protected from civil claims and from enforcement against damages. Survivors have seen this double injustice—the violence, the insult, the crimes against them as a child. They finally see the criminal justice system give them a glimmer of justice in having a conviction recorded, and then when they seek to get civil recovery to make up a small portion of the loss they've suffered as a result of the abuse they find the legal system has allowed this structure in place for the perpetrators to hide their assets inside superannuation, and it can't be accessed in the civil courts.

Superannuation is protected for good reason. It is effectively a social safety net for people when they retire; we understand that. But those protections were never meant to give convicted child abusers a place to park their assets beyond the reach of victims—or, I don't think it was ever intended to do that. Victims with unpaid, court ordered compensation will, when this legislation passes—and I hope it passes unanimously, I think it will—allow those survivors to apply to access a perpetrator's superannuation, where they've hidden their assets to avoid having to pay proper compensation. It applies only where there has been a criminal conviction for child sexual abuse, and we think there is scope for expanding that in the future to other crimes of violence—personal violence and sexual violence. Compensation must also have been unpaid for more than 12 months before the mechanisms in this bill can be used to seek access to superannuation. Importantly, this legislation allows victims to apply to the Australian Taxation Office to identify what superannuation a perpetrator holds, and to help them decide whether or not to pursue a court order. It applies to both future compensation orders and existing unfulfilled historical orders provided they remain legally enforceable.

The Greens have always said that justice for survivors can't stop at a conviction. It doesn't stop with police. It doesn't stop with courts. It doesn't stop with jail. Real accountability means perpetrators need to be held to account, and that includes preventing the justice system or the finance system allowing them to hide their assets from survivors. The bill also amends the Bankruptcy Act so that compensation debts owed to survivors can survive a perpetrator's bankruptcy, because we have been told that perpetrators are using bankruptcy in order to avoid having to pay court ordered compensation to survivors of child sexual abuse. Again, this bill applies to both future and current bankruptcies so that, if people have already been denied a benefit, they have a chance under this legislation. Part of the urgency in passing this today is to ensure offenders don't unscrupulously use bankruptcy again to avoid this law when seeing it about to come into place. Bankruptcy should be a last resort for people in genuine financial hardship and should not be allowed to be a legal manoeuvre to extinguish what someone owes the people that they abused. Closing that loophole is long overdue.

I note that there are safeguards and that there is a review mechanism proposed, but I also know from when we have been speaking with survivors, consulting with the government and talking with legal reform groups that there is still unfinished business here. There are other offences that the Greens and survivors believe this legislation should be extended to. There are possibly unforeseen technical difficulties in the way some of the bankruptcy provisions are proposed. There's also a question as to whether or not there needs to be further action taken once this legislation is in place, because the truth of the matter is that those with money, power and privilege always try to find novel ways and novel schemes to avoid paying compensation for which they are morally and legally liable. I think there are also some questions as to whether or not the retrospective provisions in this bill go back far enough to provide the kinds of protections and redress that survivors have told my office will be necessary for a full measure of justice. So I move the second reading amendment standing in my name in order to hopefully obtain that review. I move:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate:

(a) notes that the Government has committed to undertake a review of this measure no more than 3 years following its commencement and that such a review will examine:

(i) whether the objects of the Act have been achieved,

(ii) the extent to which survivors' legitimate interests have been met,

(iii) whether the provisions of the Act adequately capture offences relating to historical child sexual abuse and, if not, whether the provisions of the Act should be amended to capture additional offences within the definition of 'specified child abuse offence',

(iv) the benefits and detriments of extending the Act to also cover cases in which only civil findings of child sexual abuse have been made,

(v) the benefits and detriments of extending the provisions of the Act, or undertaking other actions, to capture a broader range of offences related to sexual assault and family and domestic violence,

(vi) whether further actions are required to prevent perpetrators from using novel schemes and forms of financial restructuring to defeat legitimate compensation claims by survivors,

(vii) whether the retrospective provisions adequately address historical compensation orders and whether gaps remain that perpetuate ongoing injustice, and

(viii) any other matters relevant to the operation of the Act; and

(b) is of the opinion that the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs is the preferred body to undertake this review, and that the review should be completed no later than 12 months after its commencement and a final report should be tabled in the Senate as soon as practicable after completion of the review".

I want to give credit to the minister's team and the minister himself on the spirit in which this legislation has come before the parliament, the way it was consulted on, with survivors at the heart, and the agreement to the second reading amendment to ensure that the review is done openly and with the appropriate depth that I, the Greens and survivors believe will be needed to ensure that justice is done going forward.