20th Mar 2024, 10:39 AM – Senate National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment Bill 2023 - Second Reading - First Nations people

The majority voted against an amendment to the usual second reading motion, which is "that the bill be read a second time" (parliamentary jargon for agreeing with the main idea of the bill). This means the original motion will remain unchanged. The amendment had been introduced by Victorian Senator Lidia Thorpe (Independent).

Amendment text

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

(a) a large proportion of First People applicants to the National Redress Scheme are likely to be Stolen Generations Survivors, and to be effective and safe it is imperative the scheme:

(i) ensures access and safety throughout the process as a priority,

(ii) be treated with the importance and integrity that survivors deserve, and

(iii) be delivered in a way that avoids all risks of re-traumatising survivors; and,

(b) fundamental to achieving these goals is ensuring appropriate support services receive proper, ongoing funding including:

(i) increasing resourcing to ensure proper, ongoing funding to Stolen Generations organisations and First Nations community-controlled healing services,

(ii) ensuring proper, ongoing funding for redress support services, to allow them to provide access to a suite of counselling services, including financial and legal,

(iii) improving access to culturally appropriate and trauma-informed professionals, services and interventions,

(iv) ensuring trauma-aware, healing-informed training for all individuals working across the design and implementation of the scheme, including external organisations and consultants, and

(v) for non-Indigenous organisations operating in the space, providing careful regulation and monitoring to ensure that they meet the quality, cultural and ethical standards required of the scheme's operations; and

(c) the above must be ensured across jurisdictions, including in remote and regional areas where English might not be the first language; and

(d) there is documented evidence that prisoners are more likely to have been victims of child sexual abuse compared with the general population; and

(e) the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights has pointed out that restrictions to redress for those with certain serious criminal convictions could be in breach of the entitlement of survivors to claim redress, limit the right to an effective remedy, and be in breach of notions of equality and non-discrimination.