AUSTRALIA
ABC – 7.30
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 20/11/2012
Reporter: Leigh Sales
Federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon has called for input into the establishment of the Royal Commission into institutional child abuse. She joined 7.30 to explain the process.
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Many people who suffered sexual abuse as children in institutions will be desperate to tell their stories to the royal commission the Federal Government announced last week, but how many of those cases will be investigated? The Government has released a discussion paper on the inquiry and is calling on any interested parties to provide suggestions about how it should run. The Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, is in Sydney today to promote changes to the federal anti-discrimination laws but she made time to join me in the studio to discussion the royal commission plans.
Nicola Roxon, will every person who wants to tell their tale of sexual abuse to this royal commission be able to do so, and will every one of those cases be investigated?
NICOLA ROXON, ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Well, our position and our starting point is yes, they should be able to, but of course there’s going to be a lot of work done – particularly with victims’ groups who are talking with us now about how you potentially might group people together, how you might find a selection of individual stories. We do think it’s important for people to have the opportunity to tell their story and we do think that that informs the sorts of recommendations commissioners will make – but it has to be manageable, so there’s a difficult balance there. Whether they will all be investigated is going to depend on the circumstances of every case. We’re really trying to make clear that a royal commission is not a police force, it’s not a prosecuting body, it’s not a court and the normal criminal processes should still continue. We don’t want people to see this as an alternative to pursuing, in the proper forums, criminal action if that should be taken.
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