Peter Andren (Calare, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Those of us who attended the 10th anniversary of the Bringing them home report—a gathering I was privileged to cohost with other House and Senate colleagues—could only have been impressed by the incredible forbearance of our Aboriginal peoples. Despite the shocking health statistics of life expectancy being no greater now than in the 1920s, despite the bitter disappointments of seeing structures of self-determination and self-governance dismantled, despite the lack of an apology for past practices that separated kids from families and set in train an intergenerational grief—despite all this and more—the Aboriginal peoples of this nation politely seek our understanding of their prior ownership of the land and ask us to support but not dictate their lives and to say sorry. Our health minister tells them to be patient.

Tens of thousands of Australians took part in the first Sorry Day in 1998, a year after the Bringing them home report was tabled in this parliament. One million people signed the Sorry Book and marched for reconciliation. A year later the journey of healing was launched. There were great expectations. But a decade later there has been no formal apology and two-thirds of the recommendations of Bringing them home have been ignored. Last week the National Heart Foundation of Australia and the Australian Medical Association reported a disturbing lack of access by Indigenous Australians to health programs, which many see as a result of institutionalised racism. It is a health system that still means an Aboriginal child in Australia is likely to die before his or her counterpart in Bangladesh dies. The difference in life span between an Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal person is around 20 years. Twenty years ago in Orange I saw how Aboriginal mothers were reluctant to take their kids, many with serious inner ear infections, to a baby health centre because of a deep suspicion, a reluctance to deal with a non-Indigenous health system, however committed the workers. It is still happening, as several reports in the past week show, which underlines the reality that mainstreaming services is not the answer. Specific training and services delivered by communities and a properly funded Aboriginal health service would seem the only way forward to address these terrible statistics.

As this motion details, the impact of the removal of children in mental health care is still having enormous social and health impacts several generations down the track. The Urbis Keys Young report into stolen generation mental health services has revealed that many counsellors are struggling with more than 80 clients each, compared with the average case load of 25 for mental health workers in mainstream society.

Why has it taken this report, stemming as it did from the stolen generations document a decade ago, to prompt the government into some action on these statistics just last week? The Urbis Keys Young report listed those continuing health and social consequences. The minister has promised 22 extra Link Up places. I learnt this morning that the New South Wales Link Up service has over 200 cases—counselling and family reunion cases—per worker. Has the government even begun to do an audit of the demand for these services? There are 8,000 Indigenous people in New South Wales waiting to go home—not only the victims of the stolen generation but a subsequent generation or more of children adopted or fostered out.

Contrast this with Canada where $4.8 billion has been set aside to meet the aftermath of that country’s child removal policies. This includes a truth and reconciliation commission charged with uncovering the whole story of the native Canadian residential school legacy. There is half a billion dollars for a healing foundation to provide proper counselling and parenting programs. And, yes, there will be compensation for every surviving stolen generation child. On top of all that there is a commitment to a national apology after the findings of the truth and reconciliation commission are handed down. Importantly, some compensation has come before the apology. There was no fear that an apology would lead to claims.

I apologise to our Indigenous peoples and call on all fair-minded Australians to insist that this vitally symbolic act of acknowledgement of pain and suffering is delivered now and that this nation sets in train a process no less comprehensive than the Canadians’ to address the long-term consequences of government policy now and past.

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