Redress WA
HON ALISON XAMON (East Metropolitan) [9.12 pm]: I rise tonight because I wish to respond to the ministerial statement made about a month ago on the finalisation of Redress WA. Since I took my seat in this house almost two years ago I have spoken on numerous occasions about the Redress WA scheme and what I believe is the great injustice done by this government in almost halving the maximum allowance available under the scheme. I note that this matter has been raised also many times by other people sitting on this side of the house.
The Redress WA scheme was supposed to be a powerful symbolic recognition and apology for the horrendous experiences that were suffered by many young people who were abused and neglected while in state care. It was never intended to fully financially compensate victims for the losses they had incurred. How could it? We cannot replace a lost childhood. But, unfortunately, the positive foundations and intentions from which the scheme evolved were tarnished early on by the government’s decision to cut the maximum amount of payment. I note that even the Premier has since commented that it is a decision he regrets. It caused a great deal of anguish and despair for many of the Redress applicants, and their feelings, unfortunately, have not diminished. Their reaction was not actually about the money or about the potential loss of dollars; it was about the message the halving of the amounts on offer was sending them.
According to the ministerial statement, the Redress WA scheme has now been completed, and when the minister spoke in this place last month to recognise the scheme’s completion, she went to some length to talk about the positive aspects of the scheme and the experiences of applicants. The minister even used the word “therapeutic” to describe the impact that she understood the scheme had on some applicants. I have no doubt that for some of the applicants that is true. Unfortunately, the overwhelming feedback I have received, and I have no doubt others members of this place would have received, including I would imagine members opposite, has not been anywhere near as positive. Instead, the word that I hear time and again from Redress WA applicants who contact me is “traumatic”. They talk about trauma; they do not talk about the experience being positive. They found recounting their experiences and applying for redress to be far from therapeutic, not to mention that the amount they could potentially have received was reduced by almost half. Instead, in many instances they found that it had effectively “retraumatised” them.
I note that individuals who applied to Redress WA demonstrated great courage and also trust in making their application, and I know that the experience was not easy for many people. These are people who had attempted, after a horrific past, to get on with their lives and who found that the process meant they had to revisit trauma that had had a profound impact on their lives and, in some instances, trauma that had effectively defined their lives. For many of them, revisiting this trauma painfully opened old wounds. Many applicants are now saying that they felt that throughout the process they were not treated with dignity and that they should have received more respect.
I was very sad when I read the letter from Michelle Stubbs, which received a fair bit of coverage at the time. I contacted Michelle, because I knew her from other dealings, and spoke to her. I was amazed by the courage she has shown in coming out and speaking about her situation. That was a particularly powerful story, because she is possibly one of the more experienced advocates and she understands and knows the system. If someone like Michelle could have such a traumatic experience, it did not augur well for so many of the other people who did not have her experience. Certainly the point that she made, which has been made by many other people who have contacted my office, is that the process of Redress WA, the application and everything that emerged from that, has left them feeling as though they have been betrayed all over again by the very system that betrayed them as children. That is tragic. They feel as though the treatment they received has simply highlighted the ongoing sense of betrayal that they live with, and they still feel that the state is not there to protect their interests and continues to fail them, just as it did all those years ago.
The sorts of things that people who have contacted my office kept saying to me, and are still saying to me, are that their calls to the Redress WA office often went unanswered. They relayed to me that their messages were not returned and too often the questions they had about their applications were not answered adequately; the big question often being, “How on earth, after I relayed to you my story, could you possibly have come up with the amount you did?” They felt that their trauma had not been acknowledged at all and sometimes it took quite extraordinary lengths of time for people to access their care records. I have to say that I am still getting emails and calls from people who are deeply aggrieved about the Redress process. In fact, the most recent email I received was yesterday, and I thought I really needed to respond to this ministerial statement the next time I would be in Parliament, which is today. Even though a ministerial statement made a month ago effectively referred to wrapping up the scheme, I am still getting calls from people who are distressed and who are complaining. For those people, the issue is not resolved at all. It may have formally ended but there is ongoing trauma, hurt and damage for a significant number of the applicants.
We have to ask: what is left for these people who have been traumatised by the Redress process? For some the fallout has been significant, and we need to know that the conclusion of the Redress grant scheme does not mean that those people who applied for redress, who in many cases experienced appalling abuse while wards of the state, now have closure and can move on with their lives as if nothing has happened. We know that stolen childhoods cannot be replaced by dollars, and that the tragedy and the hurt can last a lifetime. Certainly, from my perspective, the conclusion of the formal elements of the Redress scheme should by no means mean that that concludes the government’s commitment to address past wrongs. It needs to be just the start, and this needs to be the message that is somehow made loud and clear to these people.
This government has a lot of lost ground to make up in this area. I suspect that members opposite understand that. I suspect that they are not naive about that. A good start, I suggest, would be proactively providing and extending the availability of ongoing access to independent specialist support. In the meantime, there are still applicants with significant grievances about the process who are still seeking to have resolution, and they will need an avenue to do that. As I said, Redress WA might be formally over, but the issues that arose from the mishandling of the process are not.