Hansard debates

Mr PEARSON (Essendon) (17:45:29) — I am honoured to join the debate on the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse (Commonwealth Powers) Bill 2018. I have indicated in the house previously and I will again restate it: I initially thought that allocating this work to the Family and Community Development Committee was not the appropriate or right step. I thought at the time that it would be more appropriate that it be referred on to a royal commission. That was my view then. Really, what has been borne out by the work done by others shows that I was wrong. I want to place that on the record because you look at these things and you think it is the right thing to do, you think it is the appropriate course, and in that initial position I held my thought process was a disservice to the members of that committee. I thought that the work would be done better through a royal commission, not a parliamentary committee of inquiry, and I was wrong. The work that was done by the committee was landmark work. It was a really important piece of work, and obviously it was a contributing factor to the Gillard government establishing the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The bill that is before the house today is really important, because it looks at trying to penalise those institutions that did the wrong thing. I agree with the member for Ferntree Gully, who spoke exceptionally well and was very eloquent in his contribution, in that money does little for a victim of abuse later in life. I absolutely concur with that view. What I would say, though, is that if larger organisations and institutions realise that there is a financial penalty for having inadequate systems and processes in place that they will need to seek insurance cover for because of the appalling behaviour of their employees, then perhaps they might ensure that there are appropriate systems and processes in place to ensure that there are no more victims of institutionalised child sexual abuse. I think that for a number of these institutions, when you try to quantify the financial compensation they will have to pay or the penalty that will be levied against them as a consequence of these failings, you will start to see them changing their processes and taking this far more seriously than they ever did previously.

I have spoken in the past about the ratings for adverse childhood experiences, and I do not propose to go through the 10 different measures. I think if you are male and you have had four or more adverse childhood experiences — and clearly physical and sexual abuse would be indicators — you are 47 times more likely to be an intravenous drug user. Studies have shown that when a child is traumatised, particularly at a young age, their cognitive — brain — development starts to shut down. When you think about it, it is a bit like when you are in an extremely stressful position and the fight or flight tendency takes over — your mind shuts down. You focus on the one thing in front of you — that is, to try to exit the situation or fight your way out of it. The impact that has upon a young child is that the synapses in their brain just shut down and their brain cannot develop in the way the brain of a child growing up in a functional environment does.

What does that mean? That means that when the child starts school they are significantly behind their peers because they have been traumatised so much that they do not have the ability to read or write as well as those who have grown up in a loving, supportive, nurturing environment. Therefore you have what is called the achievement gap. A child who is in prep or grade 1 who has been physically or sexually abused starts to feel worthless and stupid because they cannot read or count up as well as their peers. They feel worthless; they feel useless. They fall behind, and then they fall further and further behind. In Australia at the moment every year around 40 000 children drop out of the high school system, so on a per capita basis it is reasonable to suggest that 10 000 of those would be Victorian children. I am hopeful that with the investments that this government is making we will close that gap, but it is still a very large number.

When you look at what has happened over the passage of time, many of those children who drop out or are lost to the system would have been victims of sexual or physical abuse. How many times would we have walked down the streets of Melbourne or a country town and seen a homeless person who is drunk or drug affected? We think — quietly, maybe — that we are better than them, that we are leading full and productive lives and they are not, that they have thrown their lives away. How many of those people would have been victims of child sex abuse? I think it would be a very high number.

The Attorney-General is to be commended for bringing a bill like this before the Parliament, because we are harmonising the different jurisdictions of the states. If you want to tackle this seriously and make a serious contribution, you need to have harmonisation that addresses these differences across the states — you need to have a uniform approach — and you need to do it in a very thorough, measured and consistent way to ensure that these institutions are held accountable for the abuse they have perpetrated over decades against young and vulnerable children.

I do think that as a Parliament and as members we owe not only an obligation to the members of the 57th Parliament who served on the Family and Community Development Committee inquiry but actually a debt of gratitude in a peer support way. I cannot imagine how hard it must have been for those members to sit through some of that evidence. I imagine that would have had an impact on those members who sat through those hearings, read the evidence and wrote up the report. I think it would have been extremely difficult for those members. I know I would have really struggled if I had been tasked to serve on that committee. I know in myself I would have found it incredibly stressful, difficult and challenging.

This bill is about doing what is right. It is about recognising the systemic failures that occurred in these institutions over a long period of time. It is about righting a wrong. It is about ensuring that we say sorry and we compensate the victims of institutionalised child sexual abuse. It is about making sure that we put the onus back on these institutions to get their house on order and force them to make sure that they deal with these matters seriously, because if they do not, there will at the very least be a significant financial penalty levied against them and their assets, and in addition to that obviously there will be criminal charges. We are far more worldly now than we were previously, and we are far more aware of the insidious nature of these crimes. And as parents I think we are all far more vigilant than our forebears may have been. We are not as trusting. We are not as willing to hand our children over to people of some reputed standing and think that they will be fine. We do not do that.

This is a really significant piece of legislation that is before the house. It represents the tireless labour and endeavours of many across both sides of the house. It is probably the most sincere way of acknowledging the pain and grief that victims of child sex abuse have endured, and I commend the bill to the house.