The federal government bureaucracy is drowning under a flood of applications to the National Redress Scheme for survivors of institutional child sexual abuse.
The scheme is currently scheduled to stop receiving most new applications on 30 June 2027 and to wind up by 30 June 2028. Since it began in 2018, more than 27,000 applicants have received a redress outcome, with a total of about $2.1 billion in payments.
However, under grilling on 11 September by senators and MPs on the Joint Standing Committee on Implementation of the National Redress Scheme, senior officials from the Department of Social Services conceded that this timeline is all but impossible. There are more than 51,000 applications on hand but the DSS is managing to process only about 900 applications a month.
Acting Deputy Secretary Grant Lovelock told the committee that throughput had increased significantly, rising from about 471 applications a month in 2024-25 to 769 in 2025-26 and to more than 900 in recent months. Despite their work, there is still a backlog of 39,000 applications.
The Royal Commission estimated in 2015 that 60,000 people would participate in a redress scheme. But 74,174 applications had been received by February – and a last-minute tsunami before the deadline is expected.
Committee members repeatedly questioned whether the DSS could process existing claims plus a surge in applications as the deadline approaches.
Tasmanian Senator Richard Dowling declared that it seemed “mathematically impossible”. And NSW Senator David Shoebridge commented: “Even if you tripled it, you would only deal with what I see you’re going to get this year. You’ve then got 39,000 in the backlog.
“So it’s not a doubling. It’s not a tripling. It’s something more like a sextupling. Am I wrong on that maths?”
Officials did not challenge the senator’s calculation. “We absolutely need to significantly increase,” Lovelock responded.
Under legislation passed in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the redress scheme was supposed to work for ten years, from 2018 to 2028. But under pressure from the members of the committee, it appears that the DSS could need another four years.
The hearing highlighted the options now confronting the government.
One option is to maintain the current legislative timetable. But Lovelock said that this would leave around 40,000 applications unresolved by the end of the scheme. And that figure would not include a last-minute surge.
A second option is to provide additional resources and systems to dramatically increase processing capacity. A third option is legislative change, including extending either the application deadline, the operational life of the scheme or both.
The hearing also examined the growing controversy surrounding the Christian Brothers and the Trustees of Edmund Rice Education Australia following allegations aired by the ABC’s Four Corners.
While officials told the committee that existing applications involving survivors of sexual abuse in Christian Brothers schools would continue to be processed regardless of any future developments, they acknowledged there are risks.
Lovelock confirmed that if an institution ceased participating in the scheme, future applicants could be affected and taxpayers could ultimately bear costs that would otherwise have been met by the institution.
The message from the hearing was stark. Despite improvements in processing rates, the National Redress Scheme is foundering. The government faces difficult decisions on the funding, timing and future of Australia’s biggest survivor compensation scheme.
