The chief executive of the Australian Olympic Committee says sports are committed to supporting child abuse victims but many cannot meet the financial test required to sign up to the national redress scheme.
The chief executive of the Australian Olympic Committee, Matt Carroll, has warned that the national redress scheme for sexual abuse victims could put some sports at risk of becoming insolvent if they signed up.
The National Redress Scheme for sexual abuse survivors has a deadline of June 30, 2020 for institutions to sign upThe AOC's chief executive, Matt Carroll, says he is trying to find a way to allow sports to participate without putting their future solvency at riskcriticism aimed at Swimming Australia by Australian swimming great Shane Gould for not signing up to the redress scheme,The scheme — one of the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse — enables survivors to receive compensation without having to go through a lawsuit. In a statement on Sunday, Swimming Australia said it was"obtaining advice on the best way forward and has not formed a view either way" on joining the scheme.Carroll said that Swimming Australia and a number of other sports had not yet signed up to the scheme but were"fully committed" to dealing with survivors. "The issue is being able to meet the financial requirements of the scheme, and also even if we did that, to be able to ensure that the sports can actually meet those [requirements]," Carroll told the ABC. "Most of the Olympic sports aren't large organisations, and they simply could become insolvent and therefore not be able to meet the financial commitments, and it would be the people who have been sexually abused as children who would miss out. "That's what we're working with the scheme on, and with the minister [federal families and social services minister Anne Ruston]." Mr Carroll said the AOC had been engaging with the Federal Government for several months on behalf of the 44 Olympic sports in Australia. He said that the way the national redress scheme worked, there was a financial test required to sign up, and that Swimming Australia and others did not have enough money to pass the test. "A claim of $150,000 is the maximum payout — if there was several of those claims, then I doubt Swimming Australia and the greater majority of sports [would be able to remain solvent]," he said. "The issue we've got is around that financial piece, because the scheme was set up for major institutions such as the churches, it wasn't set up for the organisations that we represent, the sports."
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