ABC Radio National – Redress, Minister Cash
E&OE
Subjects: Redress, Minister Cash
SABRA LANE:
After years of lobbying and a historic royal commission into child sexual abuse, the Federal Government is today unveiling new details on how its compensation scheme for victims will work. It’ll enable payments of up to $150,000, with access to counselling and a direct response from the institutions involved if that’s what the victims want, but not every state is on board. Joining us now to discuss it is the Social Services Minister, Christian Porter. Minister, good morning and welcome to AM.
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Morning to you.
SABRA LANE:
We’ll get onto this scheme in a moment, but first the AWU and the pursuit of Bill Shorten’s past. Michaelia Cash repeatedly told Parliament yesterday that no-one in her office tipped off the media, yet last night a staffer admitted to just that, and then the Minister told Parliament that that’s what had happened. Should Minister Cash quit now for misleading Parliament?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Well, your summary of events last night I think is quite accurate, and of course as soon as Michaelia Cash, as the Minister, found out from her staffer what the staffer had done, she went into the Senate Estimates committee hearing and alerted that body as to what had happened. The staffer has done something very serious and very seriously wrong, and there may well be – as your introductory story noted – further investigations around that action. But equally, Michaelia Cash simply did not know what her staffer had done. And I have known Michaelia for decades in Western Australia, she’s well respected I think by both sides of politics here actually, and she is honest. If she says that she did not know that the staffer had done the very seriously wrong thing that the staffer did do, then she is to be believed.
SABRA LANE:
The Minister was first asked about this at 11 o’clock yesterday morning and told Parliament five times that neither she nor her office knew, and yet seven hours later it was then clarified that indeed someone in her office did know. Why should the public believe her, and under ministerial accountability under the Westminster tradition, why shouldn’t she go?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Well, I think there’s quite a few very interesting definitions of ministerial responsibility that seem to be floating around this morning, but the modern doctrine has never been divorced from the minister’s knowledge about the issue that’s been complained of. And look, I accept what you say, save that it’s very often the case – and I was a prosecutor for a very long time – that the worst form of deception is silence. So if an inquiry is made with your staff and they do not volunteer the information, or with your bureaucracy and the information is not volunteered to you as a minister until very late in the piece, that’s sometimes not something that is inside your power to prevent. And it seems here that what has happened is that Michaelia has undertaken reasonable inquiries of her staff, and because someone in the staff has done something very seriously wrong, they have not volunteered that fact until very late in the piece, and that obviously is highly undesirable, but that doesn’t detract from the fact that Michaelia, as the Minister, just didn’t know.
SABRA LANE:
Okay. On to the redress scheme, how many people do you expect will seek compensation?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
The estimates from the royal commission were that there’s probably about 60,000 survivors of horrendous acts of sexual abuse that occurred in institutional settings right across Australia over many decades, and for your listeners and for all those survivors out there, what the Commonwealth is doing is taking the front-running leadership position here. So the legislation that we’re introducing today will allow for the redress payments to flow to what is estimated to be about 1000 of those 60,000, which are those that were in Commonwealth or territorial institutions or government settings. But the architecture of the scheme that we are setting up by this legislation and have paid for to establish, in terms of its framework and its architecture and its administration, allows for all states and territories to opt in, and importantly, all charities, churches, and non-government institutions. So this is the foundational and critical step to having that broad national coverage that the royal commission recommended. So 1000 today that we would expect states, territories, churches, charities opt in so that we reach out to those 60,000 survivors.
SABRA LANE:
Not all states are going to opt in. South Australia has been very critical and reluctant. How confident are you that you’ll be able to get them all on board?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Well, I’m not quite yet willing to accept the proposition that not all states will opt in. You’re quite right, Sabra. I mean, South Australia has made some on-the-record comments saying that they’re disincline. They’re the only state who’s gone that far, and I don’t think even there the case is entirely lost. But I am very confident that we will have many and many large jurisdictions opt into the scheme. I’ve also been in intensive – and I mean intensive – consultation with churches and charities personally over the last 12 months, and again, I’m very confident that a great number and a great number of the large, non-government institutions will opt in.
I would say this, though, that this has gone on for a long time and the legislation’s been very complicated. The consultations have been ongoing, but we are rapidly approaching the time where there needs to be a bit of stump-up from churches and charities and states and territories, an in-principle notification publicly given that they’re going to opt into this scheme. We’re rapidly approaching that time.
SABRA LANE:
Alright. The bill outlines that people are eligible for compensation if the abuse occurred inside a participating state or territory. If a state or a territory don’t opt in, does that mean that those victims then aren’t going to be eligible for compensation, purely because of where they live?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Well, not eligible in the context of this scheme. I mean, some states – and South Australia, as we’ve noted, is one that has said that they’re disinclined – they have run a redress compensation scheme. Churches and charities have often run them privately on an institution by institution basis. This scheme is designed to give consistency and fulsome closure to all of the survivors, so it would be very unfortunate if any individual organisation, such as the Anglican or Catholic Church who are obviously very critical to this scheme, did not opt in. I believe that they will, but it would be most unfortunate. That doesn’t mean that the survivors from those institutions are completely without a course for redress, but not, we would argue, a best practice, consistent national course.
SABRA LANE:
Why is a victim not eligible for compensation if they’ve been convicted of any sexual offence or any serious crime, given that the royal commission heard plenty of evidence that people who are abused often then become abusers themselves?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
I’ll be frank with you, this was an agonising decision and a decision taken in deep consultation particularly with the state AGs from each of the jurisdictions. A view, which was almost unanimous in my recollection, was put that to give integrity and public confidence to the scheme, there had to be some limitations for applications from people who themselves had committed serious offences, but particularly sexual offences.
Now, no one disputes what the royal commission said, which is that many times people who were the victims and survivors of abuse of a child can often go on, because of those terrible circumstances to themselves, commit wrongs in their life. But a view was taken – and it was not an easy decision to make – a view was taken that having some boundaries and reasonable limitations to the applicants and the quality of their applications was necessary to have public faith and confidence in the scheme, and to get the necessary opt-in that we’d been talking about. So where state attorney-generals put to me – and I accepted – that that had to be part of the framework to get them potentially to opt in, I think that’s a powerful reason why that decision was made.
SABRA LANE:
The redress scheme will only give victims three months to consider whether to accept compensation or not. Why not 12 months, as the royal commission recommended?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Yeah, I mean, the royal commission had 74 recommendations that pertain directly to the framework of a redress scheme, and we accepted 63 fully and six partially. There were a few that we did not accept, that was one of them. We went for three months rather than a longer period. I guess, again to be frank, the royal commission is proposing a structure of a scheme in a court room; I’m designing the structure of the scheme in real-world conditions, and to try and keep administrative costs down and to make this scheme as procedurally simple and legally non-complicated as possible, we have taken some routes that weren’t particularly favoured by the royal commission.
SABRA LANE:
Okay, and quickly, you’re not offering counselling to family members either, despite the royal commission hearing lots of evidence that siblings and parents are also affected?
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Yes. Again, not a simple decision, but a decision designed to maximise the opt-in from churches, charities, states, territories, to give maximum coverage. There will be payments of up to $5000 which can be used on top of all of the access to essential Medicare and other services that are already existing. So there’s a very high concentration on counselling and focus on counselling for the survivors themselves, but we have drawn the line that the survivors are not into the family, which we thought would just give the scheme such an expansive remit that it would be difficult to see how everyone we wanted to opt in would actually opt into the scheme.
SABRA LANE:
Social Services Minister Christian Porter, thanks for joining AM this morning.
CHRISTIAN PORTER:
Thank you, Sabra.
(ENDS)