Premier: Barnett of Western Australia thinks the Royal Commission into child sex abuse may lead to a compensation bill of $2bn or more. The Federal Government hopes to release the Terms of Reference for the Royal Commission sometime in December.
“Western Australia just completed a similar scheme called Redress, which involved people coming forward telling their stories and getting, if you like, a compensation payment”, Mr Barnett said in Canberra. “That cost $140 million in WA alone and it was a fairly limited scope”. Translate that across Australia and this Royal Commission will result in calls, probably justifiable calls for compensation. The cost of that is certainly going to be $2bn or more.”
There are calls for a national fund to be set up to compensate victims of organisational and institutional child sex abuse.
