Sex abuse inquiry savings 'are result of lower-than-expected costs'

By Daniel Hurst
Guardian (UK)
May 28, 2014

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/28/sex-abuse-inquiry-savings-are-result-of-lower-than-expected-costs

Royal commission head Justice Peter McClellan, centre, during a hearing.

A senior bureaucrat has moved to allay concerns about nearly $7m in savings gained from the royal commission into child sexual abuse, saying they were the result of lower-than-expected capital and legal costs.

The opposition questioned the redirection of $6.7m of previously earmarked funds into a separate royal commission – the Abbott government-ordered inquiry into Labor’s home insulation program – and accused the attorney general, George Brandis, of concealing the decision.

But the secretary of the Attorney General’s Department, Roger Wilkins, said the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, initiated by the previous Labor government, was not being under-resourced.

Wilkins said capital spending on fit-out work had been $4m less than expected, and the other saving of $2.7m arose because the government had not incurred forecast expenditure for commonwealth witness legal costs.

“Let me say at the outset that there should be no suggestion funding was taken away from the child abuse commission that it needed or without its knowledge,” Wilkins told a Senate estimates committee hearing on Wednesday. “It was not a case of removing funding from an existing need and leaving that need under-resourced.”

Tony Abbott was brought into the fray when the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, opened parliamentary question time by accusing the government of heartlessly cutting funds for the inquiry into child sexual abuse.

“There has been no cut,” the prime minister said. “It’s quite common for an underspend in one area of a portfolio to be spent in another area of the portfolio.

“The government has budgeted $377m for this royal commission until the middle of 2016 because we want this commission to do its work.

“I would be fairly confident that by the time it’s finished this would be well and truly the best funded royal commission in Australia’s history and it should be, because this is an abhorrent crime, it is deplored by this government and by all members of this house.”

The outgoing chief executive of the royal commission, Janette Dines, said 186 witnesses had appeared before the 11 hearings so far. She said many of the witnesses were from institutions and therefore the funding for commonwealth support had been lower than expected.

“Some of the original budget estimates were actually more than our experience showed we needed,” she said.

Dines was unable to provide an estimate of how many witnesses were likely to be called to future hearings but indicated the budget was sufficient to meet the existing need.

Brandis had previously denied that funding for the $20m insulation royal commission had been offset by cuts to any other royal commission, but undertook to obtain an answer.

The subsequent answer from the Attorney General’s Department stated that "$4m was redirected from savings achieved in the 2013-14 capital budget of the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse (RCIRCSA) and $2.7m was redirected from funding provided to the department and not required in 2013-14 for financial assistance for legal costs and related expenses for witnesses to the RCIRCSA".

Brandis rejected claims by the Labor senator Kim Carr that his answers in Senate estimates in February were “clearly misleading”.

At that previous hearing, Carr asked Brandis whether there had been “any offset in any other royal commission, for instance” and Brandis replied: “No.”

On Wednesday Brandis read out that portion of his own testimony and said: “As the secretary [Wilkins] has just told you, that’s absolutely correct.”

Brandis continued to read from the February exchange, in which Carr asked: “So there has been no ... money that was previously allocated for the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse?”

At the time Brandis replied: “It has been absorbed by the department itself, I am told … As I understand it, no money has been taken away from anywhere else, but there was an underspend that was reallocated.”

Brandis said on Wednesday: “That was my evidence and it was precisely correct … It wasn’t diverted … The money was not spent.”

He said the insulation inquiry reporting deadline had been delayed from 30 June to 31 August but the commissioner expected to finish about $4m under budget.