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representatives vote 2021-02-04#6
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mackay staff
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2021-02-12 17:31:04
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Title
Bills — National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment (Technical Amendments) Bill 2020; Second Reading- National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment (Technical Amendments) Bill 2020 - Second Reading - Keep text unchanged
Description
<p class="speaker">Sharon Bird</p><p>The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable member for Barton has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the words proposed to be omitted stand part of the question.</p> <p class="speaker">Luke Gosling</p>- The majority voted in favour of a [motion](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2021-02-04.36.7) to keep the usual [second reading motion](https://peo.gov.au/understand-our-parliament/how-parliament-works/bills-and-laws/making-a-law-in-the-australian-parliament/) unchanged. The usual second reading motion is "*that the bill be read a second time,*" which is parliamentary jargon for agreeing with the main idea of the bill. This vote was put after the MP for Barton [Linda Burney](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/representatives/barton/linda_burney) (Labor) proposed an [amendment](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2021-02-03.21.2).
- ### Proposed amendment text
- > *That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:*
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- > *"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House:*
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- > *(1) notes the deficiencies in the bill as drafted; and*
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- > *(2) urges the Government to respond to calls from survivors to improve the National Redress Scheme and deliver quicker, fairer and better outcomes for recipients, as recommended by the Royal Commission".*
<p>I want to acknowledge again the member for Barton and the other contributors to this debate who have spoken on this very important issue. I rise to speak on the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment (Technical Amendments) Bill 2020. Back in 2014, more than six years ago now, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse travelled to the Northern Territory. They went to hear evidence from surviving Aboriginal people who had, as children, been housed at the Retta Dixon home in Darwin. These were mixed-race children that the government had forcibly taken, the Commonwealth had forcibly taken, from their families as part of the stolen generations and institutionalised between 1946, when the home opened, and 1980, when the home was shut down. The centre was run by AIM, formerly the Aborigines Inland Mission, now the Australian Indigenous Ministries—same acronym, AIM.</p><p>The royal commission heard horrific, appalling evidence of abuse by the adults employed by AIM to run the Retta Dixon home. These were adults who were charged with caring for these children that had been taken from their mothers. I outlined some of that evidence in previous speeches. What I want to say is how incredibly brave the witnesses, the survivors who came forward, were to detail what they had endured. It was unspeakably difficult for them to do that after decades of living with the shame and with the silence. I want to take a moment to pay tribute to the dozens and dozens of other victims who we did not hear from at the royal commission but who suffered all the same. They too were incredibly brave. They are survivors. It hardly needs saying, but I'll say it anyway: they did not deserve any of it. None of it was their fault. They were betrayed at every level by the adults around them and the church and the government systems that were supposed to support them. What happened to these children is unforgiveable.</p><p>It has been 40 years since Retta Dixon was shut down. It has been almost 80 years since it was opened. In that time, many former residents have died. They died waiting for an apology, an acknowledgement that what was done to them—the abuse—was wrong. They died waiting for redress. Seventy-one victims came to private settlement following a class action taken against AIM, but many others missed out. It has recently come to light that, AIM, the organisation that ran the Retta Dixon Home, to its credit, has tried to join the National Redress Scheme, but it has been barred from doing so by the Department of Social Services, which says the group doesn't have enough money to pay out potential claimants.</p><p>That's bad enough, but, on top of that, no funder of last resort has been identified for Retta Dixon Home survivors. That means that no state or territory government, nor the Commonwealth government, has stepped up to guarantee that any compensation payments ordered through the scheme be fulfilled. That means that those brave survivors have been left in administrative limbo. We have agreed that they deserve to be paid compensation, but there's no-one there to compensate them. How can this be happening? It is not right; it is clearly not right.</p><p>The federal government, the Commonwealth, administered the Northern Territory from 1911 to 1978, so the Commonwealth is responsible for what happened to these children during that time. It's really as simple as that. The Commonwealth must be the funder of last resort in the Northern Territory. The federal government has failed to properly manage the implementation of the National Redress Scheme, and survivors are not applying; they're missing out and facing even more distress as a result. The Commonwealth, the federal government, those opposite, have failed to step up and ensure that governments at all levels are funders of last resort when the offending institutions cannot pay or no longer exist. There are at least 10 Retta Dixon Home survivors who are now in this limbo, and that is just a handful of the people that we could help, that we should help. They are getting on in their years now and some of them are sick. We must urgently establish an early payment scheme for elderly and ill applicants to address issues with delays so that people do not die while they are waiting for this decision. This has already happened for far too many.</p><p>I have written to the Prime Minister about this and haven't had a response. I recently met with Eileen Cummings. Eileen is the chairperson of the NT Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation. She is a remarkable and tenacious woman. She was taken from her family as a young child and almost totally lost her Aboriginal identity. She lost her parents, her siblings, her cousins. She lost her connection to her country and all the associated learnings that go along with that. Eileen has worked tirelessly with other members of the stolen generations, giving them support and advice. She deeply understands intergenerational trauma and has done so much work to try to reduce that. Eileen was taken to Croker Island in the Northern Territory, not to the Retta Dixon Home that I have been speaking about. But of course she's very familiar with the Retta Dixon Home due to her work with NT Stolen Generations. Eileen took me out to the Retta Dixon site in Darwin the week before last. It's adjacent to Bagot Road—members would be familiar with it—a major arterial road that takes you from the airport into the city. To the untrained eye, it just looks like a vacant block. Sometimes I do roadsides from that block. I always stop at the stone and the plinth to remember all those young children who suffered so much. Thousands of Darwinites drive past the site of the home every day and most likely have no idea of the horrors that were perpetuated there. But we all have a responsibility to know, and I believe this is also part of the truth telling that we desperately need in our nation. Now that we know, we can't turn our backs on the people we've let down—and we have let them down terribly. It's beyond time to acknowledge that fact and to begin compensating as best we can.</p><p>As I said to the Prime Minister in my letter to him, facilitating the redress of the Retta Dixon survivors would, in the big scheme of things, be a small but incredibly significant and appropriate step towards acknowledging their hurt and suffering. It would be in line with the acknowledgement and substantive response afforded to other Australian victims of institutional child sexual abuse. These children suffered the same hurts, and they deserve the same compensation. Compensation offers both symbolic and monetary meaning for the victims. It may help them, their families and their communities to deal with the ongoing disadvantage that they're grappling with. It may help them, their families and their communities deal with the ramifications of intergenerational trauma. It may even offer them, at this late stage in their life, some sort of closure. Surely, Madam Deputy Speaker Bird, they deserve that?</p><p>So I'm asking, as the federal member representing Darwin, the place where these young children were taken and where many were abused, that they be respected and that the Commonwealth fulfil its obligation. Just imagine the hurt. Just think of being taken away from your mum and brought up by people who abuse you and those around you. Just imagine that for a second, and then imagine the effect on all the relationships you then have in your life. Imagine the strength of those people to survive. Why are they still waiting for the Prime Minister to just acknowledge their hurt and suffering and say, 'Yes, the Commonwealth took these children away; the Commonwealth is responsible to step in as a funder of last resort'—to simply accept that responsibility, show some leadership and get it done. <i>(Time expired)</i></p> <p class="speaker">Mark Dreyfus</p><p>The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was announced by Prime Minister Julia Gillard in November 2012 and established in January 2013. During the five-year course of the royal commission, it handled over 42,000 calls and almost 26,000 letters and emails, and it held just over 8,000 private sessions with survivors of child sexual abuse. The final report of the royal commission, comprising 17 volumes, was delivered to the Governor-General in December 2017. I'm proud of many of the things the Gillard government achieved, but I feel that the royal commission will be shown to be one of that government's more important initiatives, an initiative that should have lasting benefit for the Australian community because it revealed the most appalling of crimes—crimes that had been hidden for decades behind walls of secrecy and cover-up.</p><p>So it is of great concern to me that the great work carried out by that royal commission and the bravery of the thousands of survivors who came forward to give evidence to it are being betrayed by the Morrison government. Every day, more Australians are discovering that this Prime Minister runs a government that is heroic when it comes to announcements and hopeless when it comes to delivery. In the context of the Redress Scheme that the current bill deals with, this means that we have a government that is happy to make announcements about how it respects the findings and recommendations of the royal commission into child sexual abuse and about how the government supports justice for the survivors of those terrible crimes. However, when we look at the Redress Scheme this government set up and how it actually works, it's clear that survivors of child sexual abuse have been hung out to dry by a government that has every interest in self-promotion and not enough interest in delivering justice for the survivors of childhood sexual abuse.</p><p>While this situation is appalling, it is, sadly, unsurprising. Boastful announcements with hopeless follow-up is how the Morrison government operates, and a very clear link can be drawn with what the Morrison government has done with the banking royal commission, conducted by the eminent lawyer and former High Court judge Ken Hayne. To begin with, the then Treasurer Mr Morrison and his Liberal crew fought against that vitally necessary royal commission tooth and nail, voting against its establishment 26 times, desperate to stop the inquiry. The then Treasurer described it as 'hot air' and 'a stunt' and declared to his lasting shame that such an inquiry was 'nothing more than a populist whinge'. Subsequent reporting about what went on inside Mr Turnbull's government—that was before the current Prime Minister knifed Mr Turnbull to take his job—revealed that the current Prime Minister was the last to hold out in cabinet, trying to shield the big banks from scrutiny.</p><p>Looking back now, that isn't at all surprising. We can now see that cover-up is this Prime Minister's first instinct whenever there is a hint of crime, corruption or other wrongdoing by those with power. Of course, the reverse is true for the working poor—you only have to look at the cruel and unlawful robodebt fiasco to see how willing this Prime Minister is to pursue those who can't fight back. Whether it's sports rorts, dodgy land deals for Liberal donors or the use of forged documents by one of his ministers, Mr Morrison's approach to crime and corruption is always the same: deny, distract and cover up, and, above all, never take responsibility for anything.</p> <p class="speaker">Lucy Wicks</p><p>Order! The member for Isaacs will resume his seat. The assistant minister on a point of order?</p> <p class="speaker">Luke Howarth</p><p>The member's been here a long time, and three times he's referred to the Prime Minister by an incorrect title in the last two minutes alone.</p> <p class="speaker">Lucy Wicks</p><p>I thank the assistant minister. I would ask the member for Isaacs, who is well aware of the standing orders, to refer to the Prime Minister by his correct title.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>
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