As practitioners in England and Wales anxiously await the publications of IICSA’s Final Report on the 20th October 2022, which will finally include its recommendations on redress, it’s a good time to have a brief look at the progress being made in the Australian National Redress Scheme (“the NRS”).

The NRS was established on 1 July 2018 and is now 4 years into its 10 year term.

It was anticipated that it would receive in excess of 60,000 applications and was projected to cost up to AUS$4 billion,

As of 29 July 2022, the NRS:-

• had received 17,783 applications.
• made 10,184 decisions (through the NRS’s Independent Decision Makers (IDMs)) — including 8,968 payments, totalling approximately AUS$781 million, with an average of AUS$87,119.
• of the 10,038 outcomes issued, 9,765 applicants, representing 97.3% were eligible for redress and 273 applicants, representing 2.7% were ineligible.
• is currently progressing 7,953 applications.
• had 1,587 applications that are on hold or paused, including 121 applications due to institution not participating (representing 1.5% of applications on hand).
• had finalised 9,342 applications.
• had 45 IDMs actively making decisions.

As of 21 July, 2022:-

• all Commonwealth and State and Territory government institutions and 598 non-government institutions are now participating in the NRS.
• approximately 70,400 sites across Australia are now covered by the NRS.
• 73 unique institutions have been declared under the Funder of Last Resort (FOLR) arrangements. These institutions are defunct and the Commonwealth and/or relevant state governments are the FOLR.

The figures would appear to indicate that there is quite a backlog of applications to be progressed to the decision stage, where the award of redress is made and we have seen the average award increase from AUS$81,346 in May 2019 to AUS$87,119 as of July 2022