Abuse Survivors Protest outside Turnbull's Office

Huffington Post
February 4, 2016

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2016/02/05/sex-abuse-royal-commissio_n_9154908.html

Supporters of people abused in Australian institutions say they have spoken with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull over the Federal Government's response to calls for a national independent redress scheme.

CLAN, which represents thousands of Care Leavers who suffered abuse in Australia's orphanages, children's homes and in foster care, staged a silent protest outside Mr Turnbull's Edgecliff electorate office on Friday afternoon.

Mr Turnbull is also a patron of CLAN.

"He listened to us," CLAN executive director Leonie Sheedy told The Huffington Post Australia.

Sheedy said shortly before the protest she spoke with Mr Turnbull via phone and voiced her concerns about what approach the government was taking to redress. She described the prime minister as an "ally."

"I said we didn't trust the state governments as our legal parents, they never cared about us in the orphanages or cared about us in the intervening years and we don't want to go back to them," she said.

Last week Attorney General George Brandis and Social Services minister Christian Porter released a joint statement supporting a "nationally consistent approach" to Redress for victims of institutional child sexual abuse.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse recommended in September the Federal Government set up a 10-year, $4.3 billion national redress scheme covering more than 65,000 people -- including apologies, counselling, apologies and payments ranging from $10,000 to $200,000.

Sheedy earlier said her organisation was bitterly disappointed by the government's "attempts to drag the process out and shift responsibility" onto state governments.

"They make us wait and wait and we are terrible waiters," Sheedy told the Huffington Post Australia.

"We have waited all our lives."

She said survivors needed a one-stop shop for national redress, with the government taking responsibility to ensure dignity and respect for all Care Leavers abused in institutions, not just those who suffered sexual abuse.

"We urge Prime Minister Turnbull, our patron, not to look the other way. We want to see some compassion from this government," she said.

"The Federal Government must show it is serious about delivering justice to some of Australia's most injured and marginalised people."

The Abbott government had previously rejected a national scheme as being too constitutionally complex.

In the joint statement, Brandis and Porter said the Commonwealth’s starting point was that government and non-government institutions should take essential responsibility for the wrongs committed under their care.

"The Commonwealth’s general view -- to be advised by the impending negotiations -- is that, while substantial responsibility for the operation of the redress process will reside with the jurisdiction in which the offending institution was or is located, it is essential all governments commit to core principles and processes for the assessment and payment of redress," the statement said.

"Accordingly, the Commonwealth will seek the cooperation of the States and Territories to develop a nationally consistent approach to redress through an agreed set of national principles."