Malcolm Turnbull to deliver apology to child sex abuse victims

Malcolm Turnbull outlines the government’s response to the abuse royal commission as he sets a date for an apology to victims.

The Turnbull government has agreed to act on 104 of 122 recommendations of the child sex abuse royal commission, promising to deliver a national apology to the survivors, victims and families of institutional child sexual abuse later this year.

The royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse delivered its findings late last year, giving the commonwealth, state and territory governments six months to respond.

Of the 409 recommendations made, 122 fell wholly or partially under the commonwealth’s jurisdiction.

“We’ve already acted on many of the recommendations of the commission, but today, we accept or accept in-principle 104 of the remaining 122 recommendations directed wholly or in part to the Australian government,” Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said.

“The additional 18 recommendations have been noted as they require further consideration. “We’ve not rejected any of the royal commission’s recommendations.”

Flanked by Social Services Minister Dan Tehan and Mr Tehan’s predecessor, Attorney-General Christian Porter, Mr Turnbull said he would deliver his national apology on October 22.

“The apology will coincide with national children’s week, a date chosen to bring together our acknowledgment of the past and our commitment to the future wellbeing and safety of children in Australia,” Mr Turnbull said.

“I look forward to meeting with the national apology reference group, chaired by the honourable Cheryl Edwards, to ensure the apology meets the expectations of survivors.

“I’d like to, once again, thank the commissioners and staff of the royal commission for supporting the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to tell their stories. It has not been easy work. It’s been harrowing work, and the compassion and the respect shown by the royal commissioners and their staff for this process has set us on a pathway to real change.

“Now that we’ve uncovered the shocking truth, we must do everything in our power to honour the bravery of the thousands of people who came forward.”

‘Credit Gillard for apology’

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said credit for the national apology should go to former prime minister Julia Gillard.

“The reason why we are having this apology, and the reason why there is redress, is because Julia Gillard and the then Labor government, with some opposition, I must say, from some elements of the conservative media and some elements of the then opposition, said we needed to have a Royal Commission into the institutional responses to child abuse,” Mr Shorten told a press conference in Perth.

“Thousands of people came forward, survivors came forward, and they told their stories. Very harrowing. The royal commissioners and the staff were fantastic.

“It uncovered a shame which goes back decades and Western Australians do not need to be reminded of some of the abuses which happened to child migrants who came here and children in the care religious institutions.

Mr Shorten called for Mr Turnbull of offer Ms Gillard a role in the apology.

“Prime Minister Julia Gillard did start this, and leave aside all the debates about everything else, I think that was a significant contribution, so this would not be a day to play politics, this would be a day for national healing, this would be a day where we tell the thousands of survivors and the families of those who didn’t survive that we are all sorry.”

Mr Shorten said Labor believed the redress scheme should have had an upper limit of $200,000, as recommended by the royal commission, rather than $150,000, and was disappointed that access to trauma and mental health counselling for survivors was not more extensive.

“Having said that, it is a good thing that there is a redress package,” he said.

“It is a good thing that that package comes into place on the 1 July.

“We voted for it, but we expressed our view that if we were to form a government we would see if we could further improve on it, but fundamentally, the announcement today, and the work, this shows that parliament is actually working, with government and opposition working together.”

WA final state to join redress scheme

Mr Turnbull said he had spoken to WA Premier Mark McGowan yesterday and received a firm commitment that Western Australia would join the national redress scheme.

All other states and territories have already joined, as have all major church groups and charities, meaning an estimated 93 per cent of survivors will be covered.

Mr Turnbull said the government would begin setting up an office for child safety — another key commission recommendation — from July 1.

“The office will be set up in the Department of Social Services and will work with states and territories to progress the national framework for child safety and a national strategy to prevent child sexual abuse,” Mr Turnbull said.

The Prime Minister highlighted measures already implemented as a result of the royal commission, including the appointment of Children and Families Minister David Gillespie, work on a commonwealth child safety framework, and funding for national working with children checks.

He also announced a task force to track the progress made by all Australian governments in implementing the recommendations of the royal commission.

“The task force will remain in place until 2020 and will report annually in December until 2022, with a commitment to conduct a 10-year review in 2027,” Mr Turnbull said.

“Our response is wide-ranging and extensive. We must keep our children safe. The survivors have told their stories, many of them for the first time.

“They have been heard, and they have been believed, many of them for the first and only time.

“We must honour them, honour their testimony, ensure that out of their suffering, out of that abuse, comes lasting reform so what they suffered, the wrongs that were inflicted on them, can never happen again.”

18 remaining recommendations fall across jurisdictions

Mr Porter said the 18 recommendations the government was still considering fell across state, federal and local government jurisdictions.

“They are a group that I would simply describe as requiring more work on the part of all three levels of government so that we can determine responsibility and the way in which the response will be formulated,” the Attorney-General said.

“There was no point in delaying this day in terms of the substantive response to the recommendations and the more work on the 18 is occurring.”

Mr Porter said the apology would be made to survivors, but it was also their apology.

“There it is an important consultation process going on and anyone can go to www.nationalapologyconsultation.gov.au,” he said.

“Consultations are taking place face-to-face around Australia but the more who participate in the process the more the apology is owned by those to whom it is given.”

Redress scheme to be up and running by July 1

Mr Tehan said the government hoped to have the National Redress Scheme up and running by July 1.

“The legislation is through the house of House of Representatives. It will go through the Senate in the coming fortnight and our hope is Senate passage willing, we will have the National Redress Scheme up and running as of 1 July,” the Social Services Minister said.

“The other responsibility in my portfolio is the establishment of a national office for child safety which we will also have up and running by 1 July.

“This office will work with the states and territories to develop a national framework for child safety research and national strategy to prevent child sex abuse.

“It will consult with stakeholders about the national prevalence study which will look into incidents of child sex abuse and then what needs to be done to continually monitor that and ensure that by implementing the recommendations we are seeing a decrease and hopefully in the end, the elimination of child sex abuse in this nation.”

Sanctity of confessional an issue for states

Mr Porter said one of the royal commission’s more controversial recommendations - that priests be obliged to disclose information relating to child sex abuse that they hear in the confessional — was an issue for state and territory jurisdictions, but the federal government would work with them to ensure the laws were harmonised.

“The states and territories almost wholly are responsible for mandatory reporting laws and regimes,” Mr Porter said.

“At the moment, it’s the case that each state and territory has a slightly different application of their mandatory reporting, with slightly different ways in which those laws apply to priests and exempt or don’t exempt the confessional.

“The process will be that the states have agreed, and this occurred at the Council of Attorneys-General last week, to harmonise their laws, so in effect to accept the recommendation of the royal commission.

“That process will take a little time. At the end of that process, a question does arise for the Commonwealth, which is how the harmonised model provisions that the states will work towards might interact with section 127 of the Uniform Evidence Act.

“That provision, which is often overlooked, provides a protection to the confessional, but ever since that provision has existed, that protection has never been absolute.

“It’s always been very heavily qualified by the fact that confessions made for a criminal purpose have never been the subject of a protection or a privilege.

“Now, when the states reach a modified, uniform position with respect to mandatory reporting, it is likely that there will need to be some form of modification to that exemption to the privilege so that there’s consistency with the states’ position.

“So we will assist the states, work towards an outcome and then consider the Uniform Evidence Act.”

How redress will work

Mr Tehan said the maximum payment under the redress scheme would be $150,000.

“The royal commission recommended that it should be $200,000, but what all states and territories and the federal government agreed was that that level should be $150,000 but that there would be a higher average payment, and the higher average payment would be $11,000 higher,” Mr Tehan said.

“So $76,000 will be the average payment, the royal commission’s recommendation was around $65,000.”

Mr Porter said the redress scheme was intended to be non-litigious, with low evidentiary standards. “It’s a relatively low and the scrutiny that will be cast over these applications and will be largely on the papers so that we can make sure that they’re dealt with in a way that doesn’t retraumatise survivors,” he said.

“A paper-based form of application and those will, of course, start very soon.”

Mr Porter said survivors of sexual abuse in institutional settings were eligible.

“Institutional settings can be very, very broad in their range, which is why the coverage now is high, because we’ve had opt-in from diverse groups - Anglican Church, Catholic Church, Scouts and a range of others, so that 93 per cent coverage covers everything from immigration and defence cadet settings right through to kinship arrangements and care arrangements,” he said.

Mr Tehan said payments for counselling would form part of the redress scheme for some survivors.

“We’ve worked very closely with all the state and territory governments to ensure the counselling services will be provided where they have committed to providing those services,” he said.

“In some instances, where the state or territory hasn’t committed to offering the counselling services themselves, it will be up to the individual themselves as the type and form that that counselling will take place, and I say this and I don’t say it flippantly at all, in some cases they may want to take the money and they may think the best type of counselling for them is to take a vacation and they will have the right to do that.

“They will have the individual choice to decide what is the best form of counselling for them. We’ve made it as flexible as we can for the individuals, where the states and territories have committed to doing the counselling themselves, we’ve had close consultations with them to make sure that the counselling services will be provided right across their jurisdictions.”

How will recommendations apply to indigenous children in NT?

Mr Turnbull was asked how the new measures would apply to indigenous communities in the Northern Territory where horrific instances of child sex abuse — including the rape of a toddler whose family had been the subject of 52 child protections notifications — have recently come to light.

“Any abuse of children, in any context, in a family or in an institution is unacceptable, absolutely unacceptable,” Mr Turnbull said.

He said he had discussed the issue with Northern Territory Chief Minister Michael Gunner.

“Clearly they have not done enough to stop what has already occurred, but it is a very complex issue, as you know,” Mr Turnbull said.

Asked whether he believed the balance was right currently, between removing indigenous children in danger from their families and maintaining kinship links, Mr Turnbull said the safety of children had to be paramount.

“It’s difficult to generalise about this because every case is different,” he said.

“Some children are in unsafe conditions, of course they are, we understand that. But the safety of children must always be put, you know, in the forefront.

“That is the duty of parents. It is the duty of family, and I have to say again it’s the duty of neighbours.

“If you see a child being or you believe a child is being abused, don’t turn a blind eye.

“All of us, if we see children being mistreated or abused, speak up, speak out. That’s critical.”

‘Too many children known to child protection authorities being harmed’: A-G

Attorney-General Christian Porter said child protection departments were governed by states and territories, and clearly too many children known to authorities were being harmed.

“In every state there is an essential measure, which looks something like this: ‘which is the number of children known to child protection to whom harm comes?’” Mr Porter said.

“Your question goes to this point - from time to time and place to place, is that measure far too high?

“The answer is it absolutely is.

“That measure is different, and the performance of child protection authorities and departments is better and worse in different times in a single state and from state to state.

“I would say that a quarter to a third of all the recommendations that have come out of the royal commission go either directly or substantially to ways in which that child protection system across the states and territories can be radically improved.

“So that is the major and central project, if you like, for these recommendations and this report, and we play a leadership role and a coordinating role with the states and territories.”