Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I have chosen to confine my remarks this evening in the address-in-reply debate to the apology to our Indigenous peoples moved in the House this morning and supported by the parliament. Last Saturday, a number of Indigenous people met with me in my electorate office in Perth. On a number of occasions since the government announced the date for the formal apology, I have invited Indigenous people to my office, and they have all been willing to meet with me to discuss the apology and I thank them for that. On this most recent occasion, a proud Nyungar woman told me her story. I have sought, and been given permission from her, to relate to this House some of what she told me.

She is considered one of the stolen generations and, as she spoke, I was not thinking about whether the term ‘stolen generations’ was or was not the most appropriate way to describe her life circumstances. No—I was listening to what had been stolen from her: her childhood innocence, her trust in people, her sense of self, her sense of belonging, her culture, her heritage. Whether, as a young child, she was taken from her family because of race or because of welfare, she lost her childhood. Whether, as she grew older, she was separated, time and time again, from her brothers and sisters because of race or because of welfare, she lost her family. Whether, as a young woman, her first child was taken from her because of race or because of welfare, she lost the opportunity to nurture and love her baby.

As she told her story, in a voice so soft that I strained to hear her, and as she described her feelings of alienation and deprivation, it was palpable that she was hurting as much then as 40 or 50 years ago. She spoke of painful events in her childhood as if they were yesterday, and as if her heart would break yet again. We are about the same age. As she spoke, I thought of my childhood, with my parents and sisters and brother, and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins, all living on the same farm in the Adelaide Hills and enveloping me with love and support, and I cried with her.

This woman is part of the history of Western Australia, a history that is and will remain highly controversial when it comes to matters Indigenous. It is, however, an incontrovertible fact that there was state legislation, beginning with the Aborigines Act 1905, which imposed a strict regime of control over the state’s Indigenous population. This 1905 act conferred on a Commissioner of Native Affairs powers over Aborigines, including the power to remove Aboriginal children from their families by virtue of the commissioner’s role as guardian of all Aboriginal children up to the age of 16 years. This act also gave the commissioner the authority, under ministerial warrant, to direct Aboriginal people to any reserve or settlement the commissioner thought fit. It also outlawed miscegenation—the procreative sexual union between the races.

Such were the times and prevailing attitudes that similar legislation and accompanying practices existed in the 19th and 20th centuries in European settlements across the globe. Over the next 50 or 60 years, Aboriginal children were separated from their mothers and their families on a systematic basis. In Western Australia, Aboriginal people were directed to settlements at places such as Moore River; Carrolup, near Katanning; and Roelands, outside Collie. Particular attention was directed at the growing number of what were termed half-caste children and how to address that problem. Whatever motives lay behind this legislation and however one chooses to interpret it, the acts and statements of those entrusted with its powers made it clear that it was based on Darwinian theories of survival of the fittest. The full-blood Aborigines were thought to be a dying race. The problem was what to do with the half-castes.

In 1936, the Western Australian Native Administration Act gave much wider powers to the commissioner over a wider range of persons of mixed descent. Virtually any children of Aboriginal descent could be forcibly removed from their families and placed in government institutions to be trained in the ‘ways of white civilisation’. The commissioner, not parents, controlled the lives of Aboriginal children until they were adults—21 years of age. From this age, any person of quarter-caste descent or less was prohibited by law from associating with Aboriginal people. In this way, Aboriginal people were forced to live in the white community, but there were no measures introduced to ensure their acceptance. As the first Western Australian commissioner, appointed in 1914, explained at the inaugural Commonwealth-state conference on Aboriginal affairs in 1937, ‘the natives must be absorbed into the white population of Australia’ and that while the state had control over their marriages this would ‘prevent the return of half-castes who were nearly white to the black’. While the commissioner noted that, ‘It is well-known that coloured races all over the world hate institutionalisation, they have tremendous affection for their children,’ he was confident that with the absorption over time of the entire Aboriginal race into the white community it would be, as he said, ‘possible to forget that there were ever any Aborigines in Australia’.

Throughout the 1950s and sixties, Indigenous children continued to be separated from their families and institutionalised in places such as Sister Kate’s Children’s Home. The reasons children were sent there and how they got there are a complex tale. They were sent for welfare reasons. Single Aboriginal mothers, for example, had no access to social security up until the 1960s and were particularly vulnerable to having their children taken away from them and put in homes. Some were forcibly removed, others were placed there by families who could see better opportunities for their children than they could offer. There is evidence that children were sent there based solely on their Aboriginality. In more recent times, some who grew up at Sister Kate’s have acknowledged the opportunities and benefits, including an education, that they gained. A few years ago, I attended an anniversary event at Sister Kate’s and Magistrate Sue Gordon spoke, as did many other Indigenous people present, of the good times and the bad growing up at Sister Kate’s.

The damage done to many children who were brought up in closed institutions cannot be overlooked, whether Indigenous or non-Indigenous. White children taken from their families in the post-war era and placed in homes by welfare authorities and Indigenous children in institutional care can suffer lifelong psychological, emotional and physical damage. A number were subject to gross mistreatment and abuse.

In more recent times, there has been greater understanding of the harm occasioned to children who are separated from their families and as a consequence feel they have lost their identity, their sense of belonging, their inner security. And where there was and is physical, mental or sexual abuse, the effects can be profound, challenging their capacity to take part in society, to form lasting relationships and to mature into functional adults. The policies and practices of the past, for which we as a parliament extended our apology today, existed up until the 1960s in one form or another. Today, welfare authorities still remove children from families, Indigenous and non-Indigenous. In many Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities today there is despair, disadvantage and dysfunction. As legislators, we must understand the circumstances that gave rise to the stolen generations so that we do not repeat the injustices of the past.

As a minister for just over four years in the coalition government, I had the privilege of having responsibility for two separate portfolios that brought me into close contact with many Indigenous people, people who were working hard to overcome the challenges that confront current generations of Indigenous people. As Minister for Ageing, I was acutely conscious of the fact that, in the provision of aged-care services, the government assessed Indigenous need at a far earlier age than that of the rest of the population, recognising the brutal truth that the life expectancy of Indigenous people is 17 years less than the rest of the population. As Minister for Education, Science and Training I was assisted by many Indigenous people who served on advisory committees and who provided me with valuable counsel and advice on Indigenous education and training issues. I thank them all for their support.

There was an outstanding initiative involving the federal government and all state and territory governments when relevant education ministers—and I was among them—agreed unanimously in 2006 to a series of recommendations relating to Indigenous education in a report entitled Australian directions in Indigenous education. The recommendations covered early childhood Indigenous education, partnerships between schools and Indigenous communities, school leadership, quality teaching, pathways to training, and employment and higher education. It is my hope that the relevant ministers will recommit to these recommendations in this report so that educational outcomes for all Indigenous Australians can be improved and they are at least the equivalent of those of the rest of the population.

We must break the perpetuating intergenerational cycle of social and economic disadvantage. The Indigenous population is young. About 40 per cent are under 15, compared with 20 per cent of the non-Indigenous population. While we can point to improvements in educational standards for Indigenous Australians over the last decade or so, we should not accept that incremental gains are acceptable. All governments must accelerate the pace of change by making Indigenous education at every level core government business.

I visited many communities and observed a number of wonderful initiatives. In the Tiwi Islands, for example, the local community have taken responsibility for the education of their children, supervising the building of a boarding school for the island children, funded by the federal government. At Eva Valley, a school sponsored through the Ian Thorpe foundation has a focus, through its Literacy Backpack Project, on supporting literacy levels in the school and in the home. And at Woolaning in the Northern Territory, I was so impressed with the facilities and opportunities for Indigenous children that I worked hard to secure more funding for this and similar boarding schools in the 2007 budget. These schools offer a safe, secure and nurturing learning environment.

Two of the most successful development programs, the Indigenous Youth Leadership Program and the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program, have seen young Indigenous people provided with opportunities to pursue academic and training pursuits. These young people are selected by their communities to undertake studies away from their communities and in some of Australia’s best schools, public and private, and best universities. It is the hope of the Indigenous communities that they are developing through these programs the next generation of Indigenous leaders. There is much more to be done to heal the ravaged communities in the Northern Territory, and I hope that the Northern Territory emergency response is permitted to run its course as introduced, in the interests of every child who is at risk.

Today must mark the beginning of another journey. It cannot be, nor should it be, seen as the end of a journey; it must be seen as the beginning of the next. The opposition welcomes the government’s initiative of a joint commission on Indigenous policy.

This brings me back to last Saturday and the woman who spoke to me of her life story. She is one of generations of Indigenous Australians who feel so deeply the loss of the precious things in life that were taken from them. To meet with her and with others was important for me, to shed light on our past, shake my comfortable certainties, enlarge my appreciation of the challenges we face as a country and enrich my understanding of reconciliation. It will be hard for any of us who have not experienced their story to fathom the depth of their feelings. One of the Indigenous men said to me: ‘Julie, I don’t blame you. It was the time. It was the place. It was the circumstance.’ Time, place, circumstance. To the Indigenous people who made the time to see me and tell me their story, I say thank you. This is the time, this is the place, this is the circumstance in which I say, in the terms of the motion, ‘Sorry’.

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