Shannon Deery: Has Labor lost its heart? Just ask victims of historic abuse ‘betrayed’ by this government
Tormented Victorians that had their childhoods ripped from them in state care have been yet again betrayed by Labor’s new redress scheme — so shocking it could cost the government the election.
Opinion
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Has Victorian Labor lost its heart?
With the ALP now trailing the Coalition on a two-party-preferred basis for the first time in seven years, it’s a fair question.
Hamstrung by crippling debt and an emerging inability to keep pace with service delivery expectations, the Allan government is paying lip-service to its traditional base but is increasingly unable to back it up.
It talks about record health funding and a commitment to investing in hospitals, healthcare workers and emergency departments.
At the same time it threatens massive funding cuts to hospitals which are straining under the pressure of unprecedented demand.
Ambulance response times continue to lag well behind benchmarks, emergency departments are overrun and the government has been accused of failing to enact key mental health reforms.
It talks about fixing the housing crisis, with a bold plan to build 800,000 new homes over the next decade.
One year into the plan and there is general consensus among the construction industry that the lofty ambition simply cannot be met.
The government’s approach to tackling the housing crisis has been rated the worst in the nation, with its performance plunging to a record low.
It talks about addressing cost of living issues.
And while it has introduced measures to help, like the $400 School Saving Bonus, polling shows Victorians experiencing severe economic stress have turned on the government.
With limited capacity to put its hand in its pocket, there is only so much the government can do financially to protect and claw back a drop in support from its traditional base.
On a sleepy Friday last month, as the Premier prepared to jet off to India, the government announced its much anticipated redress scheme for Victorians impacted by historical institutional abuse.
Under the scheme, people impacted by physical, psychological or emotional abuse or neglect as a child living in state care before 1990 will be eligible for payments of up to $20,000, counselling and an apology.
This is for children who were beaten senselessly day after day, whipped, emotionally tortured, bullied, degraded and demeaned.
Some were effectively stolen from their families and put into orphanages, children’s homes, foster care or other institutions.
They were robbed of their childhoods and deprived of any real future.
Apologising on behalf of the government earlier this year, Allan lamented those “bright children full of life, who could have done anything, been anything, but instead had their childhood and education cut short.”
“When you were old enough to leave, many of you were simply discarded — often with no more than the clothes on your back,” she said.
“You went from having every element of your life controlled, regimented, and policed to being completely alone.
“Brutal punishments were handed out for imagined misbehaviour.
“Children who wet the bed … were singled out and made to wear their wet sheets or worse.
“The intention was nothing less than humiliation, a deliberate attempt to rob a child of their dignity and self-esteem.
“Children were also physically abused, locked in dark and airless cupboards and denied food or given what was rotten.
“A list of everyday objects that were weaponised against children is a list so long and so awful I cannot imagine reading it out loud.
“But if you can imagine it, it probably happened.”
They’re the Premier’s own words.
Brutal, sadistic, violent, cruel, bastardry.
And in return, adults who live haunted by these crimes now stand eligible for up to $20,000, providing they can jump through the hoops needed.
Meet a single person who has endured the childhood of a care leaver and you are left in no doubt of their dark past.
The scars are etched deep on their faces, and they hide behind the smiles they insist on sharing with you.
The $20,000 on offer for these forgotten children is, as the Care Leavers Australia Network has pointed out, well short of other Victorian redress schemes.
Up to $100,000 is on offer for victims of the stolen generation, and $30,000 to those impacted by the forced adoptions scheme.
Compared to other states Victoria is also trailing, with $40,000 to $60,000 on offer to apologise for the sins of the past to those in state care.
CLAN advocate Frank Golding said he was appalled by the Victorian scheme.
“It is depressing to see the government treating elderly and frail Care Leavers with so little respect. I feel we have been betrayed,” he said.
It is this type of betrayal, or its traditional voter base, that might end up costing the government the 2026 election.
With money scarce, and the government hamstrung, it is decisions like this that have left Labor insiders questioning how the government can continue to appeal to its base.
Leonie Sheedy has helped run CLAN for decades, is a fierce advocate for care leavers and is well known to the government.
Victorian born and raised, she moved to Sydney after getting married but returned home six years ago.
“I chose to move back to Victoria because I thought it was the fair state,” she said.
“It’s not the fair state anymore.”
And herein lies Labor’s problem.
Originally published as Shannon Deery: Has Labor lost its heart? Just ask victims of historic abuse ‘betrayed’ by this government
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