Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week we celebrate National Survivors' Day, a day where we recognise and acknowledge the courage and journey of survivors of sexual abuse and institutional sexual abuse. The 2017 royal commission into child sexual abuse, which heard from nearly 7,000 survivors, exposed the breadth of this criminality in Australia and its pervasiveness in institutions many of us were raised to trust and even revere. In response to the royal commission's findings the federal parliament legislated the National Redress Scheme. The scheme had the simple intention of providing financial and emotional support to victims of sexual abuse, many of whom never reached their full potential because of their experiences in the earliest and often most vulnerable parts of their lives.

Like all significant government projects, the implementation of the National Redress Scheme has not been perfect, but that's not to say it hasn't made a difference. As of November the National Redress Scheme has recognised the claims of more than 13,000 survivors and paid more than $1 billion in compensation. Yet, as is so often the case, a challenge persists in getting the resources to where they are most needed. In August the Joint Standing Committee on Implementation of the National Redress Scheme heard of the significant difficulties in raising awareness in remote Indigenous communities in my home state of Western Australia, where it is arguably needed most urgently. This committee, of which I am proud to serve as the deputy chair and of which I was the chair in the former parliament, will continue to probe these areas of concern until the scheme reaches its full potential. Survivors deserve nothing less.

I would also like to use this week to take the opportunity to thank Tuart Place, a small organisation based in Fremantle Western Australia. It wasn't so long ago that Tuart Place was threatened with eviction from its home on High Street, Fremantle. But Tuart Place won the fight to stay there in an quaint old building on one of Fremantle's main streets. We thank them for the great work they do for many survivors, and we hope they will continue to be able to do that great into the future.