6PR Perth – Redress, AWU
E&OE
Subjects: Redress, AWU
GARETH PARKER:
First today, the victims of abuse in institutional care will, we hope, soon have access to a national scheme of redress. Perhaps nothing can ever truly compensate someone for the consequences of gross breaches of trust that happened at places that were supposed to nurture and support vulnerable Australians, but today the Social Services Minister Christian Porter will introduce a bill to Parliament that seeks to set up this scheme that offers compensation, but just as importantly, I would suggest, recognition.
Christian Porter, good morning.
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Good morning to you, Gareth.
GARETH PARKER:
This bill is being introduced today. Can you tell us some of its features?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Well, the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse in institutions across Australia identified that potentially there were 60,000 survivors of abuse, and of course, Gareth, this abuse occurred in institutions where it was the institution who was charged with the care of the child. So it’s difficult to imagine more horrendous sets of offending circumstances, and these 60,000 Australians, some of them have been able to engage in litigation with churches and charities or receive some form of redress through state government schemes, but it’s been irregular and inconsistent.
We’ve taken a national leadership position and created a scheme that can potentially reach all of those identified or estimated 60,000 survivors. It starts obviously with a scheme that the Commonwealth applies to survivors in its own institutions and the ACT and the Northern Territory, but the idea is the architecture of the scheme has been designed with the states and territories and in consultation with the churches and charities so that they can opt in.
So people would be able to start applications next year and the applications would start being assessed on 1 July next year, and the idea would be that it would be a low process, non-legal style of redress scheme, and that a person applying in Bunbury would potentially, in the same circumstances, have the same type of result as a person applying on the other side of the country, so that you consistently recognise and offer some alleviation to these people that suffered so much as kids.
GARETH PARKER:
Christian, what redress will be available for applicants?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
So there are three things that we’re doing. There’ll be payments which are made as the acknowledgement of the wrong to offer some alleviation, and they could be up to $150,000. It’s not all, of course, about the monetary payments, and no monetary payment is going to undo the wrongs that were done, so there’s also a very heavy emphasis on counselling and psychological support. And then thirdly, another very important part of the scheme is that the survivor can, in accepting redress, choose to receive a personal apology and response from the institution in whose hands they suffered the wrong. So these were the three things that the royal commission recommended are critical to trying to bring some form of finality for what has been, in many cases, decades of suffering after abuse experienced when you were a child.
GARETH PARKER:
You’re right that it’s not all about the money, but how was that maximum figure of $150,000 determined and what will go into how much compensation money may be available for a victim?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Yeah. So, the royal commission made a recommendation of a cap at around $200,000, and I’ve been through over a year now of negotiations with states and territories and churches and charities. Obviously, the two competing issues there, well, we wanted to make it as generous as possible, but not at such a level that we would have major institutions or state or territory governments saying it’s just too much of a financial impost so that they would be excluded from joining.
So we had to reach that sort of quite agonising compromise: what is a fair and reasonable amount given the type of process is very non-legal, very low evidence thresholds; what’s the right amount given the nature of the process, the suffering that was done; but also an amount that is going to maximise our ability to have the Catholic Church opt in, the Anglican Church opt in, the Salvation Army, Victoria, New South Wales. And it was after many months of negotiation, if I can describe it that way, that we reached that figure.
And in every individual instance, we’ll look at exactly what happened. Applications will involve information provided, obviously, by the survivor. We’ll have independent assessors who are experienced, who will be applying a quite detailed matrix which guides them in the way that they look at the severity of the abuse that happened in every individual case. So many people will receive the maximum, many people will receive average amounts lower than that, but the idea is to try and be utterly consistent in the way that we assess what are obviously very individual and terrible circumstances.
GARETH PARKER:
What will be the rights of people who have already accessed the West Australian Government redress scheme, which from memory I think had about $45,000 as its upper limit? Is there any interrelation between the two schemes?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Yeah, so if Western Australia decides to opt into this scheme – and I very much hope that they will do the right thing and do that – or if the Catholic Church opts into the scheme, there’ll be instances where one or either organisation – a church or a state government – has made a payment previously. Where that payment is relevant to the facts that are the substance of the application, if this process assesses, say, for instance, someone is receiving a redress payment of $120,000 who previously received $80,000 in a private settlement with the church, then they will receive $40,000 as a top up. So the first amount is taken into account, and that I think is a fair system in that it’s a system that recognises that some churches and charities and state governments have gone down the first steps of a path to do the right thing, not always perfectly.
We’ve learned a lot more about what happened based on the several years now of the royal commission taking evidence. You know, I was part of that redress scheme’s design in WA and we – the WA Government at the time – effectively assumed all responsibility. So that wasn’t a scheme in which churches or charities contributed to, and it was a scheme where we simply said that a basic amount of recognition needed to be provided. But I think even since that has occurred, what the royal commission has uncovered is the astonishing depth and breadth and horror, frankly, of what occurred across Australia in an infinite variety of institutional settings.
The greatest payments will often be applied to institutional settings which people described as closed institutional settings, where these poor kids, because of the fact that they were orphaned, were in a setting institutionally where there was no ability to ring anyone up, like there would be on a three-day camp, and say come and get me, this is terrible. I mean, these kids were stuck there often for many, many years and during the worst of circumstances, and that’s the type of acknowledgement and alleviation that this scheme is meant to provide.
GARETH PARKER:
Just quickly, how confident are you that all of those major institutions that have overseen this abuse in the past, as well as other state governments, will join this scheme?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
I’m very confident that the major institutions and the major jurisdictions in Australia will do what is I think the morally correct thing and opt into the scheme. I think in every jurisdiction, whether that’s Western Australia or Victoria or New South Wales, the population of those states have got to put their view and make it known that this is the right thing to do and apply pressure. I think the jurisdictions want to do the right thing. I think that they’re largely satisfied with the design of the scheme.
The churches and charities, they absolutely must opt into this scheme. I mean, in large part there was a huge responsibility on the part of those organisations for the running of the institutions in which these horrific things occurred, and they are critical to the scheme. I’ve had very good ongoing negotiations and discussions and consultations with the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church and many others. I think that their in-principle commitment to the scheme is very strong, but we’re rapidly approaching that time where the survivors of abuse in their own institutions are going to want to hear from their organisations that they’re committing to this scheme and that those survivors have got a certain path going forward.
GARETH PARKER:
Okay. Onto other matters, officials from your department were asked at Estimates last night about the drug testing for welfare trials that we’ve previously spoken about on the program. The evidence seems to be that in Mandurah, where one of these trials is planned to occur, that the expectation is that no more than 15 welfare recipients might be diverted into drug treatment programs. Does that make this whole proposal a waste of time?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
No, and the reason why is that the number of tests in a place like Mandurah, we estimate, would be around about 750. Those are estimates, of course, but they’re based on behavioural insights of economic experts and the like. But we think from 750 tests you might receive 80 people testing positive at first instance, and perhaps about 15 at second instance, and it’s at the second instance that people are compelled into treatment.
So the outcome I think is a preferable outcome for those 15 people to get the treatment they need, but one of the major points that we’ve always been very clear about is that the concept behind drug testing welfare recipients in a geographical place like Mandurah is first and foremost to change peoples’ behaviour. We want people not to take drugs, not to use ice or marijuana during those critical months where they’re searching for employment. And we think that if employment is obtained by people who have restrained their behaviour during that period, the likelihood statistically, from a range of very reliable sources, of them continuing to take drugs any further drops off very significantly.
So one, it’s a behavioural change, and two, where people are unable or unwilling to change their behaviour, we’re identifying them, income-managing those 80, compelling treatment for those remaining 15, and you try and have victories at every single level.
GARETH PARKER:
Just finally, yesterday we spoke to your colleague Michael Keenan on the program who said that unions needed to obey the rule of law. He was talking about the AWU raids by the AFP. That whole situation appears to have blown up spectacularly in the Government’s face over the past 12 to 15 hours. Your other West Australian colleague, Michaelia Cash, is still being grilled in Estimates about that. One of her staffers has been forced to resign for tipping off journalists about the raid. This has become a huge own goal, hasn’t it?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Well, I’m not going to say to you anything other than the fact that what that staffer in the Minister’s office did was anything other than serious and seriously wrong. I mean, it is obviously, from the Government’s perspective, a terrible outcome to have attention diverted to what this staff member has done, rather than the fact that there was a legitimate investigation undertaken which involved warrants approved by a magistrate on the basis that there was credible evidence that documents were about to be destroyed.
I mean, you know, that central issue here is and will remain, but no one’s going to pretend that what the staff member in Michaelia Cash’s office did wasn’t serious and seriously wrong. The point I think, with respect to Michaelia Cash as a minister, is that she appears to have been very significantly misled by that staff member and she simply did not know that this had occurred, and it never should have occurred.
GARETH PARKER:
Alright. Well, we’ll talk more about that with Michael Pachi in a moment. Christian Porter, thanks for your time this morning.
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Thank you, Gareth.
(ENDS)