The National Redress Scheme is in its death throes. Over three years remain of its ten-year span — yet it’s already convulsing.

This is a silent scandal, hidden in plain sight at a national level. If you haven’t heard of the Scheme, you’re not alone. As it wraps up its seventh year, whenever I mention it I still receive blank looks.

In my training as a Redress Support Worker, I learned that the Scheme has deliberately not been publicised to avoid triggering survivors. The people I meet with laugh out loud at this: they say the memories are ever-present, and reminders are everywhere — on the news, in books, films, casual conversation. Matt^[1], now forty-two, puts it like this: “I was raped twenty-nine years ago, and I’ve been raped every day now for twenty-nine years.”

When applications close, on 30 June 2027^[2], survivors who haven’t applied will miss out once and for all, losing their chance to have grievous harm acknowledged and institutions held to account.

The Scheme offers a financial payment, counselling and a “Direct Personal Response” to Australians who experienced child sexual abuse for which an institution was responsible — provided their application meets a set of eligibility criteria and an Independent Decision Maker deems it “reasonably likely” that abuse occurred.

The criteria are that the abuse occurred before July the 1^st, 2018; that the applicant was under eighteen years of age at the time; and that an institution can in some way be found responsible. In addition, aside from specific exceptions, applicants must be current Australian citizens or permanent residents — a problematic stipulation for many reasons.

Independent Decision Makers are “professionals who have experience and qualifications in sectors including, but not limited to, social welfare, case management, policy, psychology, Indigenous affairs, and/or legal.”

“Institution” is defined broadly, and includes sites where primary caregivers are replaced (residential care, orphanages, foster care, missions, youth detention), or where children live at home (such as churches, schools, sports clubs, scouts, youth groups, army cadets). This sweeping scope is unique, ambitious and fraught. Forty-two percent of Redress applications name three or more institutions according to the 2024 Senate Enquiry Report.

The Scheme’s key strengths leverage the experience of smaller-scale redress schemes from Australia and overseas, and include free independent legal advice from Knowmore legal service, and free Redress Support Services (RSSs) to help with the daunting task of applying, and — at least in theory — with the profound psychological and emotional impacts of disclosing, then waiting for and processing an official response to horrific childhood experiences of abuse.

Working in an RSS, I see people plunge into sleeplessness, nightmares, terror and grief after speaking their secret out loud. I listen to people who’ve been stood over for Redress payments, or kidnapped for them. I watch applicants weep over even positive outcomes, because no amount of money can fix such fundamental harm.

As a bureaucratic system governed by legislation, the Scheme is inevitably cumbersome, slow, inflexible and frustrating to deal with. But through choice and design, it also diverges in many significant ways from the recommendations of the Royal Commission that gave rise to it.^[3] The matrix determining payouts was not presented to Parliament before the Scheme was passed into legislation, nor was a rationale offered for its divergence from the Royal Commission’s recommendations, nor for a significant additional sum for “extreme circumstances” paid to an undisclosed number of applicants on undisclosed criteria. On top of this, the Scheme has imposed discriminatory barriers and constraints on people with criminal histories — despite the well-established correlations between abuse, substance use, mental health and crime acknowledged by the Scheme itself.^[4]

The Commission recommended that unlimited “counselling and psychological care” should be available throughout a survivor’s life, with flexibility and even extending to family members, but the Scheme provides a maximum of $5000 cash for counselling in some states, an equivalent number of counselling sessions at approved agencies in others. That’s just over one year of fortnightly sessions, at current rates. And it’s available only after — and if — a person receives a positive outcome.

Whether RSSs can provide sufficient therapeutic support for people to safely manage their relationship with trauma during the wait period for an outcome, to ensure it’s healing and not harm that the Scheme dishes up, has always been one of the Scheme’s most contentious aspects. But as applications soar and funding drops, the role of RSSs is of necessity increasingly administrative: therapeutic support takes time that’s simply no longer available.

Now RSS waiting lists are closing, more than two years before the closing date for applications, since the remaining time is needed for those already waiting — for many, there will be no support at all. We workers can testify (because they come to us for help after their initial application is rejected by the Scheme) that people applying without RSS support have less chance of a positive outcome, and greater risks resulting from the application process itself, such as mental unwellness, exacerbated substance use, even suicide.

Neela was abused in a girls’ home from age three to seven, then returned to alcoholic parents. She’s been waiting eighteen months already for an outcome. She says:

If I knew it would be like this, I’d never have applied. It’s killing me, I keep wondering what they’re doing, what are they checking? It’s been a long time coming, and I still have the feeling I won’t be believed, that’s my biggest worry.

If the outcome is negative, there’s no doubt it would be better for Neela that the Scheme never existed. Not so for Matt, who tells me proudly: “I’ve stopped raping myself every day in my head. I realised I don’t have to.” This is the fruit of therapy from a free service which Matt felt able to access after disclosing his abuse for the first time ever, with the incentive of the Scheme. This is the Scheme’s transformative potential.

Matt says: “This was never about the money. It was always about the truth finally being believed.” Applicants tell me over and over it’s not about money, it’s about breaking the silence and getting relief from the crushing everyday impacts of trauma. But Matt has just received a negative outcome that I know is incorrect: I’ve seen his tears, his triggered responses, all the telltale legacies of child sexual abuse.

The Scheme was designed with a lower standard of proof than civil damages claims, so applicants are not subjected to cross-examination or character assassination, nor required to furnish evidence for things they can’t possibly prove. This is what makes the Scheme the “single chance” for many applicants, since the gruelling pathway of civil action is often unviable for people battling the lifelong consequences of abuse.

In contrast to the courts, where a miniscule percent of historical abuse claims succeed, the Scheme was designed to yield false positives rather than false negatives to make it easier for survivors to get acknowlegement.  Yet, as it writhes under an impossible load, we workers are seeing a spike in negative outcomes, although the Scheme’s official updates have not disclosed this figure since 2022. We witness the wrenching distress as people speak about their abuse for the first time — then the gut-punch, the king-hit, of being disbelieved. Matt says “Nobody ever believed the truth about this — parents, teachers, police.” The Scheme was set up to rectify that, but instead has just replicated it.

The Scheme’s Strategic Success Measures set out an aspirional wait time of under six months for 75 per cent of applicants, but this target has not been met since 2022. By the fifth year the wait time was closer to eighteen months, and currently, it’s blown out past two years.

Neela’s application is now in its twenty-fifth month, and no-one can say how much longer it will take. She says:

I remember as a little kid looking in the mirror wondering how am I going to keep this huge secret? Now I’ve finally told them what happened and they’re still making me sit here in the corner like a naughty little girl, like I’m the one who did something wrong. It feels like punishment all over again in some way. I feel like I’m being judged for [the abuse] by those who know. While the whole country that should know, doesn’t know. No-one’s hearing us, still.

The Scheme’s funding is based on projections from a 2015 Finity Consulting report which stated: “Our estimate assumes that three quarters of applications will be [submitted] in the first 5 years of the scheme and the remainder will taper off.” Reality mocked the projections. Despite the dearth of publicity, from a slow start application numbers rose exponentially, from an average of nine per day over the first few years, to twenty-three per day two years later, to thirty-eight per day by February 2024. For the past year the number has consistently sat at over fifty per day.

The other redress schemes cited in the Finity report all saw a spike in applications before the closing date. They put this down to the shorter time frames of those schemes, but I disagree. It takes decades (for men, on average over twenty-five years) to disclose child sexual abuse.^[5] Many survivors never do. The Redress Scheme incentivises large numbers of people to disclose in a specific time frame, but they’ll drag their feet. Numbers will continue to rise, and will spike before the closing date.

Redress payments are funded by the institutions responsible, which includes State and Federal Governments where they held responsibility, such as state schools and child welfare departments. However, the administration and support services for the Scheme are federally funded. Eighteen months after the Scheme began, the Morrison government cut $610 million from Scheme funding in “reprofiling”, based on lower-than-expected applications. Given application numbers now far exceeding the projections, a new, reversed “reprofiling” is urgently needed.

A Senate enquiry into the NRS released its report in November 2024.^[6] It calls for increased funding to Knowmore and RSSs, for the Scheme to be extended, and for reconsideration of “the preferred basis on which the Scheme should eventually close; for example, based on a fixed date or when application numbers drop below a fixed threshold?” The report also recommends all “ineligible” decisions be panel-reviewed, better safeguards for Redress payments, and outlawing of claim-farming (making it unlawful for lawyers to charge for Redress application assistance, cold canvas or solicit survivors, or offer bribes for “dobbing in” other survivors — all of which are currently happening, especially among the prison population).

Whether these recommendations are heeded depends on political will, which in turn requires public attention and outcry. The Committee urges an “[urgent] public information campaign to increase awareness of the Scheme,” including media advertising, echoing the Royal Commission’s original recommendation.

Silencing the victim is how abusers operate. Not publicising the Scheme perpetuates the dynamics of abuse. Neela says: “It makes this still our filthy little secret — like it’s always been. You can have your Redress, but shut up about it, we don’t want to know.”

TV ads by private legal firms referring to the Redress Scheme are currently airing, but do not in any way reduce the Scheme’s responsibility to publicise the Scheme. On the contrary, they encourage survivors to turn to private lawyers who, unlike Knowmore, may be primarily motivated by profit. When this is the case they often don’t take care to ensure survivors understand what the legal process entails, including having to repeatedly recount the trauma and be quizzed on it, and psychiatric assessments which can be damning and highly traumatising. They also often fail to ensure the client understands that “No Win No Fee” applies only if the lawyer fails to obtain an outcome; if a survivor chooses to withdraw — say, because the process proves too stressful — they can be left with a huge debt they weren’t expecting. Accurate, impartial information broadcast widely is needed more than ever.

The National Redress Scheme is a once-in-history opportunity to face up to the harm that happens to children in all kinds of places, to grapple with what that means for Australian society and Australian children, now and in the future. We owe it to survivors, to ourselves and to our kids. But we’ll miss the chance if it continues to be a filthy little secret that survivors have to keep.

Acknowledgement: This work was created on Kaurna land, where the author gratefully writes and works. On this unceded land, disadvantage and trauma continue. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children currently and historically are vastly over-represented in ‘closed’ institutions (missions, orphanages, foster care, residential homes). As such — and additionally due to racist attitudes — they have been subjected to much higher rates of institutional abuse. An estimated 30% of Redress applicants identify as ATSI, compared to around 3% of the population. Given significant and specific barriers for ATSI people applying to the Scheme, even this statistic probably vastly under-represents the numbers of ATSI people who would be eligible to apply.

^[1] Identities are composite and names are invented, to protect applicant privacy.

^[2] The Scheme runs from 1 July 2018 to 30 June 2028, but applications close a year earlier, on 30 June 2027.

^[3] See the following stories in The Guardian: $150,000 cap proposed on redress scheme for child sexual abuse victims; Child abuse redress scheme would exclude offshore detention victims, lawyers say; Child sexual abuse redress scheme ‘creates deserving and undeserving survivors’;

The redress scheme for child sex abuse victims is unjust. Redress academic Professor Katherine Daly has stated: “In the maelstrom of political and policy wrangling, over 80% of the scheme’s elements were altered in ways that departed from the spirit of the Royal Commission’s recommendations.”

^[4] ‘Survivors are overrepresented in the health and welfare system and in the criminal justice system’, National Redress Scheme Discussion Guide, Australian Government — Department of Social Services, p9, undated but Scheme website updates mention its release in September 2024. In early 2024 (nearly six years into the Scheme) the ban against applying from gaol was relaxed, but tailored redress support is critically needed to address additional complexities and vulnerabilities in this context; instead, most prisoners around Australia have no access to redress support — most RSSs view this area of work as too hot to touch.

^[5] Finding of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, in Volume 4 of its Final Report, available online — noting the Royal Commission was in itself an unprecedented time-limited incentive for people to disclose who otherwise might have disclosed later, or not at all.

^[6] ‘Redress: Journey to Justice’, report of the Joint Standing Committee on Implementation of the National Redress Scheme — Inquiry into the operation of the National Redress Scheme, November 2024, available online. Citation from the Committee Chair is from media release, Government of Australia, 26/11/2024, available online.