AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
September 4, 2014
Annette Blackwell
The national inquiry into child sexual abuse will be asked not to allow the federal government to run a victims’ redress scheme because it is likely to keep payouts artificially low.
The Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) will meet in private with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Melbourne on Friday.
The meeting is part of a week of special roundtable discussions the commission is holding to discuss a redress scheme for abuse victims.
ALA spokesman Andrew Morrison SC said the alliance had no problem with a redress scheme, but “we do have major problems with it being controlled by the very bodies which are responsible for making the payments”.
“A large part of the offending bodies are government and constraints on government expenditure mean the government will impose very low caps as they have done on victims’ compensation,” told AAP on Thursday.
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