AUSTRALIA
Mercury

CATRYNA BILYK, Mercury
November 23, 2016

LIKE many Tasmanians, I was shocked and appalled by evidence given at the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse.

All abuse of children is horrendous, but it is particularly abhorrent for abuse to be committed by people entrusted with the care of those children.

I welcome the Turnbull Government’s decision to fund trauma counselling and other support, and to appoint an advisory committee of survivors and their supporters.

However, I have concerns about the Government’s proposed opt-in redress scheme. Under the proposed scheme, states, territories and institutions responsible for allowing child sexual abuse to take place can opt-in. This means if the institutions that perpetrated the abuse do not want to pay, they won’t have to. This is not good enough.

Leonie Sheedy from Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN) described allowing the states to opt-in as a cop-out. We…