Cheating their victims

Last month, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care delivered its report, detailing a horrific litany of abuse for which the government was ultimately responsible. One of its key recommendations was for redress, for the government to compensate its 250,000 victims, with a priority on those tortured at Lake Alice who the government has been deliberately waiting to die. Yesterday, the government produced its response to that recommendation: a measly $20,000 each:

The Government will make a “rapid payment” of $20,000 to terminally ill Lake Alice abuse survivors.

The payments would be available to persons who were 17 years old or under and placed in the Lake Alice Child and Adolescent Unit between 1972 and 1977.

In a statement this evening, the minister responsible for co-ordinating the Crown Response to the Abuse in Care Inquiry, Erica Stanford, said Lake Alice survivors had “informed us there are a small number of their group who are expected to only have a short time left to live”.

$20,000 for torture which destroyed people's lives, and which the commission costed at an average $857,000. So the government is going to give these people 2% of the damage it caused. Well, its not like they're landlords, is it?

This miserliness does not come remotely close to meeting the government's moral obligations to its victims. It just doesn't. Instead, it just seems like a continuation of the government's ongoing policy of denial and minimisation of liability. And that's just not good enough.