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Referral

On 10 October 2017 the Member for Cairns, Mr Rob Pyne MP, introduced the Civil Liability (Institutional Child Abuse) Amendment Bill 2017.

View: Mr Pyne’s speech introducing the Bill into the Queensland Parliament

View: Civil Liability (Institutional Child Abuse) Amendment Bill 2017

View: Explanatory notes to the Civil Liability (Institutional Child Abuse) Amendment Bill 2017

In accordance with Standing Order 131 of the Standing Rules and Orders of the Legislative Assembly, the Bill was referred to the Legal Affairs and Community Safety Committee (the committee) for detailed consideration. The committee is required to report by Tuesday, 10 April 2018.

The Bill

The objective of the Bill is to implement Recommendations 89 – 94 of the 2015 Redress and Civil Litigation Report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (“the Royal Commission”).

That is to:

• introduce legislation to impose a non-delegable duty on certain institutions for institutional child sexual abuse despite it being the deliberate criminal act of a person associated with the institution;

• introduce legislation to make institutions liable for institutional child sexual abuse by persons associated with the institution unless the institution took reasonable steps to prevent the abuse. The ‘reverse-onus’ should be imposed on all institutions;

• persons associated with the institution should include the institution’s officers, office holders, employees, agents, volunteers and contractors. For religious organisations, persons associated with the institution also include religious leaders, officers and personnel of the religious organisation; and,

• introduce legislation to provide that…where the institution is alleged to be an institution with which a property trust is associated, then unless the institution nominates a proper defendant to sue that has sufficient assets to meet any liability arising from the proceedings: a) the property trust is a proper defendant to the litigation, b) any liability of the institution with which the property trust is associated that arises from the proceedings can be met from the assets of the trust.