Abuse and Neglect Blog – Australian National Remedy Program Update
As practitioners in England and Wales eagerly await the releases of IICSA’s final report on October 20, 2022, which will finally include its recommendations on redress, now is a good time to take a quick look at the progress made under the Australian National Redress Program (“the NRS”).
The NRS was established on July 1, 2018 and is now 4 years into its 10-year term.
It was expected to receive over 60,000 applications and cost up to A$4 billion,
As of July 29, 2022, the NRS:-
- received 17,783 applications.
- issued 10,184 decisions (through NRS Independent Decision Makers (IDMs)) – including 8,968 payments, totaling approximately AU$781 million, with an average of AU$87,119.
- of the 10,038 results delivered, 9,765 candidates, representing 97.3%, were eligible for compensation and 273 candidates, representing 2.7%, were ineligible.
- is currently progressing by 7,953 requests.
- had 1,587 requests pending or on hold, including 121 requests due to the non-participation of the establishment (representing 1.5% of the requests in progress).
- had finalized 9,342 applications.
- had 45 IDMs actively making decisions.
As of July 21, 2022: –
- all Commonwealth and State and Territory government institutions and 598 non-government institutions now participate in the NRS.
- around 70,400 sites across Australia are now covered by the NRS.
- 73 unique institutions have been declared under last resort financing agreements (FOLR). These institutions are obsolete and the Commonwealth and/or relevant state governments are FOLR.
The figures seem to indicate that there is a significant backlog of applications to move to the decision stage, where the reparation award is made and we have seen the average award drop from A$81,346 in May 2019 at AU$87,119 in July 2022.
