Annette Ellis (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Page 48 of the Bringing them home report states:

Because [my mother] wasn’t educated, the white people were allowed to come in and do whatever they wanted to do—all she did was sign papers. Quite possibly, she didn’t even know what she signed ... The biggest hurt, I think, was having my mum chase the welfare car—I’ll always remember it—we were looking out the window and mum was running behind us and singing out for us. They locked us in the police cell up here and mum was walking up and down outside the police station and crying and screaming out for us. There was 10 of us.

It is with a mixture of both great sorrow and frustration that I rise to speak today on the motion moved by the member for Jagajaga commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Bringing them home report. I commend her for moving this motion. I would also like to commend the remarks made by the member for Calare earlier in this debate. My sorrow is caused by the fact that we as a nation had such dreadfully destructive policies, destroying the families and lives of Indigenous Australians, and impacting on the victims of forced removal. My frustration is at the lack of progress made in the decade since this report was completed. This report brought some promise to those stolen generations. They believed the heart-wrenching stories in this report would help us all to understand.

Ten years is a long time and it is a very long time for Indigenous Australians who suffered terribly at the hands of successive Australian governments who sadly perpetuated the policies of forcible removal of children from those families. It is easy for us to forget that real people are living this horrible part of Australia’s history every day. For them it is not just an anniversary that comes around every year; for them it is every hour of every day that they live with the consequences of the past. The quote that I read out a moment ago in my view demonstrates the depth of the sorrow, the depth of the trauma.

Ten years is also a long time to wait for an apology. The word ‘sorry’ costs nothing but is worth everything to those that have been wronged. A formal apology has been given by every other Australian government but not here in this place. I look forward to the not too distant future when a Labor Prime Minister will, hopefully, be in the position to deliver that long overdue apology—an apology we are dedicated to. I am very pleased that we have made that commitment. We need to draw that line in the sand to help those whose lives were ripped apart to move on and to begin healing. The victims of the stolen generation have been working very hard to overcome the problems that they inherited from this policy of forced removal. They are trying to get their lives in order to overcome additional levels of social disadvantage that the policy created.

When I was first elected to this place some 11 years ago, the inquiry that formed the basis of this report was still conducting hearings and taking evidence. As the inquiry process rolled on, it became very clear that this inquiry was long overdue for our nation as a whole, not just for the victims. Australians of all ethnic backgrounds needed to know the truth about what had happened up until the 1970s. This report dispelled the myth that these were practices from only our early days as a nation. Forced separation of Indigenous Australians from their families had been happening with the full support of governments at the time. This report shone a spotlight on one of the darkest times in our nation’s history and it gave non-Indigenous Australians some understanding of this shameful part of our history.

In my own experience, seven years ago this month, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs, of which I was member, tabled a report into Indigenous health in this chamber. Seven years later we are still seeing the same atrocious problems mentioned in the same newspaper headlines and the same poor health outcomes driven by the same lack of services and funding for Indigenous health.

We must move this debate forward. We must act to improve the lot of Indigenous Australians in health, education, employment and in their communities. We must address the generations of social disadvantage that the misguided policies of the past, including the forced removal of children, have created. We must stop the blame game. We must start providing solutions. As a parliament, we must break the cycle of our mistreatment of Indigenous Australians and work with them to move forward for the benefit of all Australians.

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