Anglican Church’s redress scheme advances

The Anglican Church of Tasmania has revealed when it expects to be approved to join the National Redress Scheme.

The Right Reverend Dr. Richard Condie, Archbishop of Tasmania, speaks about the final list of properties held by the Anglican Church in Tasmania that will be sold to fund redress. Picture: LUKE BOWDEN

The Anglican Church of Tasmania expects to be approved to join the National Redress Scheme next month.

Bishop Richard Condie said the church had signed up to the scheme in September last year and had been working since to satisfy regulatory requirements.

“We believe these have now been met and we are expecting to be part of the scheme by the end of March,” Bishop Condie said.

In Tasmania the church synod voted to sell of church properties to fund the expected redress commitments and that process is under way.

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The Federal Government encouraged churches to form representative bodies to join the scheme and an Anglican participating group was formed to represent the Anglican Church of Australia.

“The directors of the Anglican participating group will assess our application this Thursday. It is highly likely that our application will be approved and the Department of Social Services will receive the documentation in early March,” Bishop Condie said.

In 2015 the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse recommended a National Redress Scheme for all institutions to provide an accessible, independent, fair, accountable, and efficient scheme to allow as many survivors as possible to access redress.

“We encourage those people who suffered abuse in the Anglican Church in the past to come forward to us or the National Redress Scheme,” Bishop Condie said.