Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (12:03:18) — My question is for the Attorney-General represented by Minister Tierney. On Friday the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Sexual Abuse will present its final report, ending that intensive and often traumatic four-year investigative process. One of the commission’s major recommendations is the creation of a commonwealth redress scheme. The scheme requires that each state government refer powers to the commonwealth in order for the national redress scheme to be created. At this stage no state, including Victoria, has indicated that they will sign up to the scheme. In April the Attorney-General stated, ‘Victoria remains open to a national redress scheme, but it’s time we saw details and dollars from the federal government’. Now that the commonwealth government has committed funds and outlined that detail over two months ago, why has the state government not yet committed to the scheme that will benefit hundreds of victims of institutional sexual abuse in this state?
Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (12:05:09) — Thank you, Minister. It was great to get such a fulsome answer, if somewhat disappointing. As a supplementary, as has been noted publicly, state jurisdictions including Victoria have been undertaking their own actuarial analysis to determine the extent of likely claims, so my question is: has the state of Victoria finalised this analysis, and what figure has it determined to be the likely extent of institutional sex abuse claims?
RESPONSE TO SUPPLEMENTARY QUESTION:
Victoria is confident in the estimates prepared by Finity Consulting (an actuarial consulting firm) for the Royal Commission, which it published on its website. Finity Consulting estimated that there are 60 000 survivors in Australia and around 15 255 in Victoria, including 5290 survivors where the Victorian Government would be responsible for paying redress.
