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Child abuse campaigner 'livid' about Queensland bill to end time limits on civil claims
By Joshua Robertson
A child abuse victim named by the Queensland premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, as a friend and key inspiration for her government’s push to end time limits on civil claims has attacked her proposed legislation as a betrayal of many victims. Allan Allaway says he is “absolutely livid” the the bill, which is due to be voted on in parliament on Tuesday, excludes survivors of physical and psychological abuse. When introducing the bill to parliament in August, Palaszczuk singled out Allaway for thanks and acknowledged his advocacy, describing him as “a friend for many years and whose personal stories have touched my life”. But Allaway, 76, who suffered serious physical abuse at Neerkol orphanage near Rockhampton after being taken from his mother as a baby, said the legislation abandoned him and thousands of other victims because their abuse was not sexual. The bill would retrospectively abolish the need for victims of institutional child sexual abuse to file lawsuits by the age of 21. But the Palaszczuk government has defied widespread calls from legal groups and victims’ advocates such as Allaway to expand the definition of eligible abuse victims to mirror that in New South Wales. It has also ignored calls to empower courts to set aside previous secret out-of-court settlements by institutions with victims whose claims would have been ineligible under the statute of limitations. “I am absolutely livid,” Allaway told Guardian Australia. “Unless the government or governments, both state and federal, are going to agree to include the physical and psychological abuses along with the sexual abuse, then it is nothing more than what we have received our entire lives, which is double talk and hollow promises. “We’ve heard all the fancy talk and speechmaking and where are we today? We are still being treated as society’s detritus. “Unless they are going to combine the physical and psychological abuses along with the sexual abuse then once again we are still being abused. “What is it we’re asking for? This is not about money. This about recognition.” Palaszczuk told parliament in August that the introduction of the bill was “a historic occasion”. Along with Allaway, she thanked social advocacy group Micah Projects, the Historical Abuse Network and members of the Brisbane Grammar abuse victims network. “Having had the opportunity to sit there and personally hear their stories has had a deep and lasting impression upon me,” Palaszczuk said. “I have conveyed those views to my cabinet and to caucus … what I say today is that your government is listening; your government has heard your voices.” Micah Projects and members of the Grammar network have since argued for the time limit to be lifted for a broader category of victims – including those outside institutions, such as foster children. They have also argued for courts to be allowed to set aside unjust past settlements by institutions who invoked the statute of limitations. This would be in line with a parallel bill tabled by the independent MP Rob Pyne, which the government refuses to support. All except one of 23 submissions to a parliamentary committee supported those changes. They included the Queensland Law Society, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service, and Knowmore, the official legal service for the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, run by the former top state anti-corruption official Warren Strange. Allaway, who decades ago founded what he believes to one of Australia’s first child abuse victims groups representing those who went through Neerkol, said he had known Palaszczuk “for a long, long time” through his advocacy. “She is an honest, decent person,” he said. “But she is not in control. It’s the establishment that is in control. “She is being controlled by the establishment and why? Because the establishment knows that unless they control this they will be exposed and they and those that worked in the system, even to this very day, the bureaucrats are still protecting those that worked in the system and those that are dead. “That is what they are petrified of. “Those in positions of power need to ask themselves one question and one question only. What would they do if their children were stolen from the to the extent that we have been abused. They would move mountains.” While the government has said it will not use past settlements to block fresh lawsuits brought against the state, it has cited potential “far-reaching and unintended consequences” of legislating to override legal barriers preventing repeat claims against churches and schools. A spokesman for the state’s attorney general, Yvette D’Ath, said before the bill’s introduction that a national redress scheme may be “more appropriate”. Victims’ legal advisers, including Strange, have separately highlighted the need for a national redress scheme for those who would struggle to muster sufficient evidence for a civil claim owing to the passage of time and lack of records. Palaszczuk, speaking in parliament on Tuesday, said she would “implore” the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, at the Coag meeting next month to enact a broad national scheme after directly raising the issue on his last visit to Queensland. “While the initial signs are encouraging that the federal government is looking at this very important issue, I firmly believe that as a nation we must address this issue, as a nation,” she said. “It has been a long time coming and the victims of childhood sexual abuse and abuse in other institutions need justice.”
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