States and territories together with churches, schools and other non-government institutions could have to come up with more than $4 billion to compensate an estimated 65,000 victims of child sex abuse.
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The figure is contained in a consultation paper launched on Friday by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse which examines prospective compensation schemes for thousands of victims.
The paper on redress and civil litigation says the ideal for survivors would be a single national redress scheme led by the federal government.
However, if this can’t be done an alternative would be to separate state and territory schemes set up on principles recommended by the royal commission.
A national advisory body would oversee the schemes.
The commission envisages that there might be difficulties around establishing a unified scheme but says states and territories are going to have to take part because they ran homes where children were abused.
Apart from that, ‘‘substantial government leadership’’ is going to be needed to set up redress that is fair and equal across the country, the commission says.
There are no fixed recommendations on payments in the paper but actuarial modelling of schemes with minimum payments of $10,000 and a range of maximum payments up to $200,000 is provided.
The actuarial model is based on 65,000 eligible claimants but this number could be more or less in an actual scheme.
The total cost of providing redress to that number of claimants would be $4.377 billion over 10 years.
That figure takes in administration of the scheme, the costs of counselling and psychological care as well as lump sum payments.
Of the $4.377 billion, governments would pay $1.289 billion and non-government institutions like churches and other bodies would be up for $3.088 billion.
This figure is based on the number of claims against them - there are more against non-government organisations.
Governments could expect to pay $1.115 billion in monetary payouts and non-government institutions $2.710 billion.
The paper suggests that government and non-government institutions that are initial participants in the scheme could fund the administrative costs, - $61 million for governments and $134 million for non-government institutions.
The model shows costs spread out to 2025, peaking at over $600 million in 2017 and 2018.
Other non-government institutions that participate in the scheme, if and when an application for redress is received, could pay a reasonable fee for use of the redress scheme, it says.
The paper covers a wide range of issues around redress and civil litigation such as standards of proof needed for claims; whether there should be a time limit on the scheme; whether claimants should sign deeds of release and whether existing services like Medicare could be expanded to cover longer periods of psychological care.
The commission is now seeking feedback from governments, institutions and survivor advocacy groups.
A public hearing will be held in March with the full bench of commissioners to hear that feedback and final recommendations will go to the federal government in June-July.
AAP
