I rise today to speak in support of the Justice Legislation Amendment (Vicarious Liability for Child Abuse) Bill 2025. I really thank every other member in this house who has spoken about this bill today, especially the very moving contributions from the member for Wendouree, the member for Frankston and the member for Brighton. This is a very emotive topic. It is so heartening to see support from both sides of the chamber for these critical changes here today.

This bill is about justice. It is about accountability and compassion. It makes sure that our laws reflect the lived reality of victims-survivors of child abuse and that institutions cannot hide behind technicalities to avoid responsibility. At the heart of this bill is the principle of vicarious liability. As we have heard from many other members today, vicarious liability is a form of strict liability whereby a defendant organisation can be held liable for the wrongful acts or omissions of another person, even when the organisation itself was not directly at fault. In Victoria, claims for child abuse under vicarious liability are currently brought under the common law. Importantly, the common law applies retrospectively, meaning that organisations can be held liable for historical child abuse perpetrated by their employees.

This principle recognises that institutions benefit from the roles and the authority that they give to individuals and therefore must bear responsibility when those roles are abused to harm children.

The need for this bill arises directly from the High Court’s decision in Bird v DP in 2024. In that case we saw the High Court overturn a decision of the Victorian Supreme Court, upheld by the Court of Appeal, that had extended liability to relationships akin to employment. The High Court’s ruling narrowed the scope of liability, leaving victim-survivors who were abused by individuals in positions of trust but not technically employees without a clear path to justice. The High Court itself acknowledged the impacts of this decision as harsh and noted that addressing it sits squarely in the hands of legislators, inviting us as legislators to make the changes needed to address that harshness. This is exactly what this bill does today. It legislates both retrospectively and prospectively that vicarious liability for child abuse extends to relationships akin to employment. No child should ever be abused and no perpetrator should get away with it just because they were not employed by an institution and not taking a paycheque at the time of the abuse. This is deeply unfair and has meant that some victim-survivors of child abuse have seen justice if their perpetrator was employed and others who were abused by volunteers have not seen that same justice.

This bill makes two critical reforms. It amends the Wrongs Act 1958 to expand vicarious liability for child abuse to include relationships akin to employment, ensuring institutions are liable where they placed individuals in roles of authority, trust or intimacy with children. It amends the Limitations of Actions Act 1958 to allow victim-survivors who received a settlement or civil judgement between the Bird v DP decision on 13 November 2024 and the commencement of this bill to apply to the court to set aside that settlement or judgement and commence new proceedings. This makes sure that those directly affected by the High Court’s decision are not denied the benefit of these reforms. This bill ensures that claims can be brought regardless of when the abuse occurred. We know that it can take over 20 years for victim-survivors to disclose their abuse. In my own community of Creswick and the broader Ballarat region there are devastatingly high numbers of child abuse victim-survivors, many of whom have taken decades to disclose their trauma, if they have at all. The retrospective operation of the bill recognises the lifelong effects of child abuse and it gives, hopefully, some comfort to many victim-survivors that they will finally receive some justice.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that survivors have faced substantial barriers to accessing justice, including the imbalance of power and resources between survivors and organisations and complex legal procedures. This bill helps dismantle those barriers and is carefully confined. It applies only to child abuse and only to organisations exercising care and authority over children and it only extends existing vicarious liability to relationships akin to employment. This limited expansion is required to alleviate the impacts of Bird v DP on victim-survivors of historical child abuse.

The ACT government has now passed retrospective legislation which operates very similarly to this bill. We have seen the Western Australian government introduce retrospective legislation which takes a different approach, deeming religious practitioners as employees, but that achieves a similar outcome. Even older examples exist in Canada and the UK, where the approach that we are proposing has been the status quo for over 20 years. This bill will put us in line with other states, territories and countries who have progressed their laws to better support victim-survivors and right the wrongs of the past. Where religious, community and volunteer organisations continue to operate, it does not stop them from operating – that is a very important point – but it makes sure that they are better and that there will, hopefully, be much more accountability going forward if there is ever abuse experienced in those settings.

I acknowledge that some religious and community organisations, as the member for Footscray outlined, have expressed some concern about financial impacts, but the financial interests of institutions cannot outweigh the rights of victim-survivors to seek justice.

This bill is not about punishing faith communities or charities, it is about ensuring accountability where children were harmed under their care. This bill restores faith in our justice system. It says to survivors that we hear you, we believe you and we stand with you. It complements the government’s past efforts to remove barriers to civil litigation for victim-survivors of historical child abuse, and it delivers on our ongoing commitment to supporting victim-survivors.

I commend the Attorney-General for bringing this legislation forward. I commend all of the work of the member for Frankston, and I thank him so wholeheartedly for doing so much hard work with this legislation. Thank you so much, Paul. I thank all of those who were involved in the journey to get here, including plaintiff and defendant law firms; legal professional associations, including the Victorian Bar Association, the Criminal Bar Association and the Australian Lawyers Alliance; Sexual Assault Services Victoria; and religious organisations, including the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat, Christian Brothers and Anglicare Victoria. I really want to thank so many members of the community in Ballarat especially. As a representative of the outskirts of Ballarat and many of the surrounding communities, I know how hard fought so many community members in Ballarat have been with this legislation and to get us to today, so I sincerely thank every single person involved within the Ballarat region.

These reforms have been informed by an independent committee as well, chaired by the Department of Justice and Community Safety, with members from other departments. I thank every person and every public servant who was a part of the committee and a part of drafting this important bill. It will help so many victim-survivors who were forced into accepting unfair outcomes following the Bird v DP decision, and it will ensure victim-survivors of child abuse will no longer be denied justice by a loophole allowing organisations to evade accountability because their abuser was not formally employed.

I am so proud to speak on this bill and to see it become law. This is truly an example of the best of Parliament, when we come together and unify over such important reform and important legislation in this place. Thank you again to every person who has been involved in this chamber and outside of it, and I commend the bill to the house.