Survivors should be able to receive partial payments while they wait for all institutions responsible for their childhood sexual abuse to join Australia's redress scheme, an inquiry has been told.
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A federal parliamentary committee is considering whether to recommend Australia follow the Scottish government in making advance payments to people who may otherwise die before receiving redress.
Redress expert Professor Kathleen Daly said survivors should be allowed to receive interim payments or make multiple applications where institutions have not yet joined the national redress scheme.
More than 530 applications are currently on hold because at least one of the institutions named by a survivor has not joined the $3.8 billion scheme.
"This fact should not bar survivors from receiving a partial or interim payment based upon those institutions who have opted in," Prof Daly from Griffith University told the parliamentary hearing on Wednesday.
Scotland's redress scheme for survivors of historical child abuse in care makes advance payments of 10,000 pounds to approved applicants with a terminal illness or aged 70 and over.
West Australian service Tuart Place, which has helped child migrants apply to the Scottish scheme, also backed the need for interim payments.
Its director Dr Philippa White said for applications involving multiple institutions, survivors should be able to receive payments from those organisations that had joined the scheme rather than have their entire application held up.
She said the Scottish advance payment scheme involved a simple and quick process, requiring survivors to declare they were abused while in care and show evidence they were a former child migrant.
Any further claim required detail about the abuse.
"I think it would be great to apply something like that to the national scheme," Dr White said.
The Department of Social Services last month said 295 institutions named in redress applications had yet to join the scheme ahead of the June 30 deadline.
Dr White criticised the long waiting times for redress decisions.
"The waiting times are outrageous and in my view, without being overly dramatic, amount to re-abuse by the system because it is excruciating for people to wait that amount of time," she said.
"It's just not okay to do that to people who were abused in the first place."
Priority cases involving the elderly and terminally ill are fast-tracked but there are still complaints about the time it takes to process those applications.
Like all applications, priority cases cannot be finalised until the institutions named by the survivors formally join the scheme.
Australian Associated Press
