Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse

Ms CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:59): My question is to the Minister for Education and Child Protection. Does the minister agree with the comments made by the Attorney-General that the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse are 'basically a bunch of Johnny-come-latelies'?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (14:59): One of the proudest moments I had in parliament was the role I played in establishing the Mullighan inquiry into child sexual abuse for children in state care. We took a lot of time and effort in discussing the way in which we conducted that matter with the people who were the survivors of child sexual abuse. Also, we took very extensive advice from experts in the field about what would be the most beneficial form of redress and inquiry. We took detailed soundings from respected psychologists about what was the thing that was going to make the largest contribution to the health and wellbeing of those people who suffered from this abuse.

The truth is that judicial processes and claims for compensation, while important and a necessary part of the process, do require that, in order for people to maximise the amount of entitlement, they need to maximise the amount of loss and damage that they have suffered. Many of the psychologists who gave us the advice about how we should construct this inquiry told us that that was the last thing that they wanted.

The way we constructed the Mullighan inquiry was as a process where the telling of the story and the healing process associated with that was as important as the payment of money. We did not preclude the payment of money, but we did not make it the first and most significant element of the equation. Many of the young people in South Australia who availed themselves of that very substantial inquiry—I think resources from the state were allocated in the order of $11 million to that inquiry to allow every single one of them to come forward and tell their stories, and to have those stories respected. For many of them, it was the first time they had the opportunity to tell their story.

For many of them, they had been through a judicial process, which sadly resolved, for many of them, as just sitting in a corridor waiting for a settlement conference to occur and then getting, essentially, a paltry sum of money put in front of their nose and being told, 'You'd better accept this, this is the best we can do.' Or, even worse, told by a police officer, after they had been grilled by the police officer, 'I don't think this thing is going to stack up in court and, sadly, we can't pursue the matter.'

I know for many it might seem like the payment of money is the most important thing, but the truth is it can often be not the salve that many people think. That is not to say that we did not provide for it, and we have set up our own scheme of compensation, and it ought to be respected by the royal commission and we ask that it be respected. We note that a national scheme is being proposed. We do not think it properly takes into account the steps we have already taken here in South Australia; it should. If the commonwealth want to establish their own scheme and fund it, well and good, but we think that we have struck the right balance in the way in which we have responded to the victims of this awful abuse.