Only a Royal Commission can reveal the full extent of child abuse

Perhaps the greatest test of any government is how it treats children.

Frankly, under the Howard government, children are not the priority they deserve to be.

Witness the government's extreme actions to keep children locked behind razor wire in immigration detention; even the Prime Minister's inquiry into the rebuttable presumption of shared residence for parents in Family Court proceedings - a suggestion that panders to the interests (and votes) of men's rights groups but runs completely contrary to decades of research that shows such a system - is not in the best interests of the child.

But where this government fails children most is its inaction on the fundamental issue of child protection.

Protecting children from abuse must undeniably be a basic tenet of any society.

Yet what we have is a government paralysed, unable or unwilling to act when faced with increasing evidence of a national problem of child sexual abuse.

The latest investigation into child sexual abuse, by the Anglican Church in South Australia, is welcome.

But, again, it is an inquiry into one church organisation in one State and it will not have the legal powers to ensure a comprehensive investigation or full protection of witnesses who may give evidence.

Child protection demands a national focus. Only a Royal Commission will provide this.

Child sex abuse is not limited to the church. It is certainly not limited to the Anglican Church. It is most particularly not limited only to Anglican Church organisations in Brisbane and Adelaide, which are both the most recent focus of investigations.

The Adelaide inquiry follows claims by two clergymen that up to 200 victims were abused by church staff over a period of almost four decades. The Brisbane inquiry ultimately led to the resignation of Governor-General Peter Hollingworth after it was found he protected a known paedophile operating within the diocese - a paedophile who is alleged to have strong links with some of the people whose actions now being investigated by the Church in Adelaide.

Child sexual assault exists across all sorts of organisations and we need a comprehensive Royal Commission so we can get some clear ground to deal with the issue of protecting children.

We shouldn't leave it up to individual churches to have the courage to tackle such a difficult, unpleasant and ugly issue.

Government must show leadership and it must show strength.

We need a Royal Commission to ensure we get a proper national approach, not an ad hoc, city-by-city, or church-by-church, peek at the problem.

In some instances there is a network of paedophiles that work across State boundaries and even across institutions.

Only a national inquiry with full legal powers will uncover this.

The issue of child sexual abuse is very emotional and very dark. It will be a difficult and confronting issue to investigate.

But it needs to be done.

It needs to be done to give the thousands of survivors of sexual assault a voice and justice.

Work has been done, notably by my Democrat colleague Senator Andrew Murray, to establish a Senate inquiry into treatment of children who were brought to this country as orphans. Only through that inquiry was an enormous amount of material able to be made public for the first time.

There is another Senate inquiry now into the treatment of other children in institutions in Australia and, again, that will be very valuable for many people but it has to be said that that is not enough.

Senate committees can only go so far. They cannot realistically compel witnesses to appear, they cannot compel witnesses to answer, they cannot compel people to produce documents, they cannot use search warrants to investigate people's places.

They can give parliamentary privilege to evidence but that evidence cannot then necessarily be used in a court of law if there is a prosecution relating to it. So Senate inquiries, vital though they are, still fall short of what is required to deal with crimes such as sexual assault.

This is why a national Royal Commission into child sexual assault is so important.

We all live in an imperfect world. I am not being utopian. There will always be these sorts of acts committed. But we can do so much more than we are to ensure children are protected.

We can all say individually that this is a serious issue, but that does not cut it with people anymore. People want action, people want direct acknowledgment.

A Royal Commission into child sexual assault means finally something will be done.

Senator Bartlett will chair a Public Forum on Child Abuse at Southbank, Brisbane on July 31. For more information contact Senator Bartlett's office on (07) 3252 7101