National Child Abuse Redress Scheme

Ms REDMOND (Heysen) (15:20): My question is to the Minister for Child Protection Reform. Can the minister advise whether he has had any discussions with the Hon. Christian Porter (federal Minister for Social Services) or with any other relevant persons regarding the government's intentions with respect to joining the proposed single national redress scheme for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse? With your leave, Mr Speaker, and that of the house, I will briefly explain.

The royal commission into child sexual abuse estimates that some 60,000 survivors were abused in institutions across Australia, including government-run institutions and church, charitable and community-run institutions. The commissioner has recommended that a single national redress scheme be established, which would ensure that all survivors throughout the nation have equal access to appropriate counselling support, as well as financial compensation. It is recommended that each state should opt into this nationally run scheme. Has the South Australian state decided to opt in, and if not, why not?

The SPEAKER: The member's explanation adds nothing to the question and gives the minister ample time to think of an answer.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (15:21): Indeed it does. First of all, as I understand it, the question was essentially whether I've had communications with Christian Porter regarding the redress scheme. I have had a number of communications with Mr Porter. In fact, I met with him when he was in Adelaide a week or two back, and we discussed matters which were actually not focused on this topic at all.

We were discussing matters about the extent to which the commonwealth and South Australia might cooperate in using our respective data to achieve socially beneficial outcomes by, for example, looking at the question of truancy in schools and seeing whether we could do something to work together to improve those things. If my memory serves me correctly, I don't believe Mr Porter is the minister who has the day-to-day conduct of this matter; I think there is another commonwealth minister whose name presently escapes me who works essentially with Mr Porter and they are primarily responsible in this space.

As to the primary question, I don't recall having discussed this issue with Mr Porter. That said, it certainly has been the subject of conversations between the state and the commonwealth going back some time. It has been a matter which, if I am not mistaken, has been on the COAG agenda and the Premier has raised this with other ministers in that forum. The position South Australia has taken in relation to this matter is essentially this. States like New South Wales and Victoria, which did not go down the path we went down and have an inquiry like the Mullighan inquiry, did not establish the redress schemes that we established and had limitation of actions provisions within their equivalent of our legislation which were far more difficult to overcome in terms of abridgment of time.

For a whole bunch of reasons—I don't wish to be critical of other jurisdictions because it is their business—they did not move many years ago when we did. So we now find ourselves in the position of having done a great deal, particularly in respect of those people who got to tell their stories to commissioner Mullighan, particularly in relation to all of those people who are victims of some sort of abuse in state care or in agencies into which they were placed by the state government. We have been going about trying to settle those claims with those people in a cooperative way, which has involved a very low bar, nothing like common law burden of proof. We have been trying to actually bring to an end the trauma for those people by resolving their claims.

The commonwealth has now said that it is going to come in and tell everybody what the gold standard is going to be, it is going to tell everybody what the compensation is going to be, it is going to say how high the bar is for people to enter the scheme and then it is going to send the bill, as the insurer of last resort, to each of the states. If the commonwealth wishes to be a participant in a truly national scheme and to underwrite the truly national scheme, I think you will find South Australia would be prepared to have a very serious conversation with the commonwealth.

Ms REDMOND: Supplementary, sir.

The SPEAKER: The member for Newland.