Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government has finally responded to the select committee report. The Joint Select Committee on oversight of the implementation of redress related recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse—a committee on which I was a very active participant—made 29 recommendations, and I want to highlight some of the important recommendations. Recommendation 1 is:

The committee recommends that any amendment to the scheme proceed on the principle of 'do no further harm' to the survivor, be subject to proper consultation with key survivor groups, and appropriately incorporate feedback from those consultations.

The government agrees with this recommendation. I certainly hope the government takes this to heart, because, at the moment, the implementation of the scheme is in fact causing distress to a lot of people. Although, I will acknowledge that there have been improvements in the application of the scheme, there are still some major issues—which I will go to in a second. Very strongly, the feedback is that it is still causing a great deal of distress to people. So there are still quite a lot of actions that need to be taken.

Recommendation 2 relates to institutions that haven't opted in yet. We all know that there are a number of institutions that have not opted in. The government agrees that the Commonwealth, states and territories need to maintain pressure on these institutions. This is getting absolutely critical, because June 2020—this year, in only a few months time—is the cut-off time for opting in for these institutions.

The next recommendation related to using a particular mechanism that could be used to apply pressure, and that relates to the powers under the Charities Act 2013 to penalise all relevant institutions that fail to join the scheme, including the suspension of all tax concessions for, and charitable status of, an institution that hasn't joined in. The government only notes this recommendation. It's absolutely essential that these institutions actually do opt in and that the government uses everything it can to cause these institutions to opt in.

That takes me to the next recommendation, recommendation 4, which talks about the funder of last resort. We had a significant debate in this chamber about the funder of last resort, and certainly the Greens made the point that we don't think the current provisions are adequate. This was highlighted to me last week when I was at a meeting with some First Nations people in Western Australia, my home state. One of the institutions there does not have a body that can be held accountable, from what I understood from our discussion. This brings up very strongly what happens to those 600 people, as I understand it, who went through that institution. Who is going to make sure that they get access to redress without having to go through the courts? This is why we were pursuing this issue so strongly. The government only notes this recommendation. It needs to take this very seriously. We know the deadline of June 2020 for institutions to opt in is coming up. The federal government and the state and territory governments need to be really seriously considering what they're going to do about the funding of last resort. There are many recommendations here—I know I'm going to run out of time—on which the government says, 'Oh, yeah, we have to go back to the states and territories.' I'm so sick of hearing that complaint in here. We expect some leadership from the Commonwealth on many of these absolutely critical issues.

In terms of the old thorny recommendation about the maximum payment, where the government only went with $150,000 rather than $200,000, we made a number of recommendations in the committee about that. The government only notes those recommendations. I strongly urge it to take that back to the states and territories, because, if there's one thing I hear constantly from survivors, it is that they feel diddled because the scheme did not go with the $200,000 recommendation.

Some of the other key recommendations relate to indexing and the fact that that's taken into account. People again feel diddled. Then, of course, we have the issue around non-sexual abuse, and the government notes that particular recommendation. That's one that's a really significant issue for people, because they have no redress if they had violence but not sexual abuse.

Wendy Askew (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Your time has expired, Senator Siewert.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.