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Attorney-General Nicola Roxon says the proposed child sex abuse royal commission isn’t primarily aimed at compensating victims.
While the government would not rule out that it might be an outcome of the inquiry, it wasn’t a starting point for the commission.
‘That might be something that flows from the work of the commission,’ Ms Roxon told ABC Radio on Tuesday.
‘Our primary concern is to look at the recommendations that will help fix the system for the future.’
The government on Monday released a consultation paper that calls for submissions on how the inquiry should be conducted.
Ms Roxon said many victims wanted to tell their stories which was an important cathartic process.
But others did not or had spoken already in other forums.
‘One of the complexities is how we meet those needs without entirely overwhelming the commission,’ she said.
‘We want to do that in a manageable way.’
It would be open to the commissioners to establish processes to set a balance.
Ms Roxon insisted the royal commission was not an alternative to reporting crimes to the police.
‘It is not a prosecuting body and those processes need to be able to continue while the royal commission is under way,’ she said.
Senior counsel Andrew Morrison, from the Australian Lawyers Alliance, said the discussion paper left open the possibility of a statutory change by state governments which would allow victims to sue for civil damages.
It could make the trustees of the Catholic Church – who preside over millions of dollars worth of property – liable in respect of abuse and negligence by priests and teachers in Catholic organisations, he told Fairfax Media.
A 2007 NSW Court of Appeal decision found that the Catholic Church was not a legal entity for the purposes of compensation claims.
Dr Morrison said the Sydney Archdiocese should be answerable to legal claims, just as the church is in England, Wales, Ireland and the US.
Roxon downplays sex abuse compensation
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