Survivors want action on redress holdouts

AAP via Channel 9 News
June 30, 2020

https://www.9news.com.au/national/survivors-want-action-on-redress-holdouts/d0b9edb2-a44f-4037-bb47-90a4cde1c403

Institutions who refuse to join up to a redress scheme for survivors of abuse will know on Wednesday how serious the government is about the issue.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said he will stop further public funding for organisations that fail to sign up by the June 30 deadline and warned their charitable status and tax concessions are also at risk.

The non-participating institutions will be named and shamed when Social Services Minister Anne Ruston announces what action the federal government will take.

Child sexual abuse survivors want the "redress laggers" to lose their charity tax status, says the Care Leavers Australasia Network, which advocates for people who grew up in orphanages and children's homes.

"People want sanctions," CLAN executive officer Leonie Sheedy told AAP.

"People are elderly and people are dying. They deserve justice before they die."

Senator Ruston said on Tuesday, ahead of the announcement, it was unacceptable some institutions were refusing to sign up to the scheme.

"So (on Wednesday) we will be naming those institutions and taking further action to make sure that they understand how really serious the federal government is," she told the ABC.

She said the federal government had a number of tax-related and financial levers to pull, and the states would discuss possible measures at a meeting on July 8.

The national redress scheme website has Swimming Australia and Tennis NSW listed among institutions named in the royal commission that have not signed up, but both have committed to join.

Senator Ruston said some sporting bodies who had signed up had been given a little longer to get the necessary paperwork in place.

"We are now at the two-year mark, so our focus going forward from now is ... (to) make sure the applications can be processed and survivors are able to get the redress that they so justly deserve."

Federal Labor said the government had been threatening to publicly name the institutions for some time now.

"Yet the government has failed to take action on this, while survivors continue to miss out," Linda Burney, Mark Dreyfus and Andrew Leigh said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

"Labor has consistently called for these institutions to be publicly named and future federal funding agreements for institutions be made contingent on signing up to the scheme."

The Victorian government has also threatened to cut off state funding for organisations that don't join the scheme.

The Jehovah's Witnesses has refused to sign up, saying it does not have the institutional settings of other faith-based institutions that the redress scheme is designed to cover.

Major institutions like the Catholic, Anglican and Uniting churches, Salvation Army and Scouts Australia are participants.

All Catholic religious institutes named in child abuse royal commission data have joined or committed to joining the scheme, peak body Catholic Religious Australia said.

The largest religious institutes are all declared participants and numerous others not named in the royal commission have also joined or committed to doing so, CRA said.

"Catholic religious institutes believe in the NRS; we want the NRS to work effectively, we want it to be successful for survivors," CRA president Br Peter Carroll said.