Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Procurement) Share this | Hansard source

I have been a passionate and long-time supporter of an apology to the stolen generations and therefore I was very pleased to be a supporter and part of that motion in the House last week. I believe it has provided a very important symbolic step forward for reconciliation with Indigenous Australians. I also believe that it was only a Labor government that would have delivered an apology to the stolen generations and I am very proud to be part of the Rudd Labor government which did so because I think it moves this country towards a greater position of national unity.

I would like to say a few things in my remarks today about this week’s motion, the Bringing them home report and my electorate and some of its constituents. Firstly, on the apology itself, I was very proud to have been a member of parliament during the apology to the stolen generations, and to finally hear the Prime Minister and government of this country say the simple yet powerful word ‘sorry’ was a truly wonderful moment. Even more wonderful were the reactions of the Australian public—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians—who in the majority wholeheartedly and overwhelmingly supported the apology. A mountain of grief seems finally to have been released, leaving optimism and hope for the future.

The Prime Minister’s motion delivered on behalf of the parliament addressed the past, present and future. Firstly, it was a motion about the past. We apologised on behalf of the parliament for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that without question inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on fellow Australians. We focused particularly on the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country. We said sorry for the pain, suffering and hurt of the stolen generations, their descendants and their families left behind. And we said sorry for the indignity and degradation that was inflicted on a proud people with a proud culture.

Secondly, the motion was about the present. The motion called on us to reflect on the past and to honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, who have of course the oldest continuing cultures in human history. It offered us a chance and an opportunity to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and allowing us to move forward with confidence into the future.

The motion, importantly, was also about the future, and I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister, on behalf of the parliament, outline a very positive future program. The motion spoke of a future where we harness the determination of all Australians, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, to close the gap that lies between us in life expectancy, educational achievement and economic opportunity. It is a future where we embrace the possibility of new solutions to enduring problems where old approaches have demonstrably failed; a future that is based upon mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility; and a future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners with equal opportunities and an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country. It was a motion to be proud of, and today I again reiterate my heartfelt support for the motion and the apology.

I want to make a few remarks about why and how we reached the point where our parliament was able to say sorry and why it was necessary to the stolen generations. It was not really until the 1980s that Australians began to turn their minds to, learn about and realise what had happened in the past and what had happened to the stolen generations. There was early research by the academics Coral Edwards and Peter Read that started to draw people’s attention to this part of our history. Then in 1995, under the Keating government, the then Attorney-General, the Hon. Michael Lavarch, announced an inquiry to examine the past and the continuing effects of separation and to identify what could be done in response. Two years later, on 26 May 1997, the report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, entitled Bringing them home, was tabled in parliament.

I think some of the key findings of that inquiry are worth recalling. They included that, nationally, between one in three and one in 10 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970. That is an extraordinary statistic: between one in three and one in 10 Indigenous children were separated from their families. Indigenous children were placed in institutions, in church missions, adopted or fostered and were at risk, as we have heard in many instances, of physical and sexual abuse. Having been placed in work, such as in domestic labour, many never received any wages for the work that they performed for many years.

We also saw in the Bringing them home report that welfare officials failed in their duty to protect many Aboriginal wards from abuse. The report recommended, amongst other things, that all Australian parliaments issue an acknowledgement of responsibility and apology. The federal parliament, until the Prime Minister’s motion on Wednesday, was the only parliament in this country not to have done so. All state and territory parliaments, under the leadership of both sides of politics, had previously offered an apology. The former Howard government refused to do so. The wait for an apology has therefore been a long one and the actions of our parliament were overdue.

Within my electorate of Charlton, I have a significant population of Aboriginal people—quite a large community. I also, of course, have many non-Indigenous Australians who feel very passionately about the importance of saying sorry, and they have expressed this to me in the last week. I have received many letters and emails, every single one of them expressing their support for the motion and offering their congratulations to the Rudd government. I would like to thank those who have offered their support and specifically those who have kindly shared their stories and experiences with me. I would like to relate a couple of those stories that have been brought to me in the last week. They come from two people actually affected as part of the stolen generations.

One of the residents of my electorate came to Canberra last week for the occasion of the apology and, when I saw her in my office, she told me an extremely saddening history of her mother’s life and of her own experience. Unfortunately, it is an all too familiar story. Her mother had been taken as a child and placed in so-called care and thereafter subjected to appalling trauma and abuse. This apparently included a practice, in circumstances where a person resisted the systematic abuse, of brutally shaving women’s heads and, in the process, taking pieces of scalp, leaving permanent scarring. My constituent’s mother was placed in early adulthood in domestic service, like many other Aboriginal women. She never received any wages for her work and in this work she suffered sexual abuse and bore children. Her children were then removed, and my constituent was one of them. She related to me an appalling story about her own experience, which I would prefer not to repeat, but it is nonetheless very distressing. She has spent much of her life trying to understand who she is, to understand the system which so alienated her from her family and prevented her seeking out her siblings. She is a lovely person and I can only hope that the government’s apology has given her some comfort.

Another of my constituents wrote to me about her experiences. I was particularly taken with the hope and positive feeling of her words when she spoke of the future and her capacity to forgive. She wrote this:

I am just one of the many stolen children from the 1950s. I have learnt that we all do things that are not in the best interest of others, both great and small things, at some time in our lives. The best thing about this is that it can always be remedied with a heartfelt apology and made into a whole new beginning, and new beginnings can be wonderful. The next step after that and the one after that into that new beginning is equally as important as the sorry. What I mean by this is the follow-up of care and recognition for the original people of this land Australia, health, education, guidance, respect and support to enable them to live in a healthy and happy environment and to enable them to hold their heads up with dignity. We as a nation have much to say sorry for—two centuries of being downtrodden, robbed, raped and murdered. It is with much excitement and anticipation that I wait for the future of Aboriginal people to no longer be destructive but positive and constructive.

That is from one of the constituents in my electorate, and that message was conveyed in a wonderfully positive vein.

The accounts I have heard of people’s experiences of the stolen generations have been very disturbing and confronting. However, I am also pleased, of course, to say that I have sensed a great feeling of hope amongst the Aboriginal population of my electorate. The apology was more than just words to many of them; it was an important and symbolic act that helped signify a healing of old wounds. It was a great moment but it was also a first step. We must now make sure that we continue to offer practical solutions to the challenges that our Indigenous population faces. We must look forward to an improvement in health, education and economic opportunities. Old solutions to the problem have clearly failed and I hope that the apology will allow us now to move together towards a real and meaningful set of reforms. I am hopeful about this future and look forward to working with my colleague and close friend the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin, on achieving a better future for the original inhabitants of this country.

I will just conclude with a few remarks about some of the people involved in implementing the policy of removal. It is true to say, I think, from many of the accounts that have been heard, that some of the people involved in the removal of the stolen generations committed wrongful and horrible acts. Generally, however, I think what we are looking at is a systemic failure, a system which was at fault. The predication that decisions of this magnitude could be taken due to a person’s race was and is wrong and offensive. There is no doubt that the system imparted a great deal of hurt and damage to those involved.

I have been taken aback by the level of forgiveness shown by many of the stolen generations towards those who implemented this system, and this is surely remarkable, given what many of them experienced. But I have also read, as others have, I am sure, of a number of instances in which the public servants implementing the system themselves have apologised and also recognised the inherent wrongs of what they were being asked to do. It is these kind acts of apology and forgiveness from both sides that have given me hope in these circumstances in our grand project of reconciliation. I was proud to be associated with the apology given by this parliament, and I truly believe that it was an important and necessary gesture that will help heal some of the wounds of the past and help us move towards an agenda for the future.

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