Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think it would be appropriate if I begin my comments in support of my personal apology to acknowledge the Ngunawal people on whose land the parliament is located and pay my respects to elders past and present. Last Wednesday, 13 February, was a memorable day for me, probably the most memorable day in my time as a representative in this federal parliament. The Prime Minister’s apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples, and specifically to the stolen generations, was heard in gatherings across the nation, including at many meeting places in my region of the Illawarra. Here at Parliament House, and on the lawns outside, the PM’s apology was greeted with a mix of emotions and many of these I witnessed. There were tears and there was joy, there was pain and there was happiness, there was grief and there was pride. Certainly, there was relief and release. I think people felt that, finally, it had happened. There was indeed a collective sigh of relief that the long awaited moment had finally arrived—just like the day before when the moment had also finally arrived. It had only taken 41 Australian parliaments to be sworn in before we collectively came around to accepting that a ‘welcome to country’ from the local Indigenous community would be very appropriate. But it did happen, and I am pleased to see a bipartisan commitment to ensure that we continue this tradition into the future. As the member for Grayndler commented, it was a very unique blend of our Westminster tradition with the traditions of one of the world’s oldest living cultures.

For me, the content and the power of the Prime Minister’s apology ranks his speech alongside Prime Minister Keating’s Redfern speech of 10 December 1992 as being among the most significant in our nation’s history. The speech accompanying the formal apology helped lift our spirits by appealing to the better side of our natures, and tonight I want to add my personal apology to that given by our Prime Minister on behalf of the parliament and the Australian people. I think the PM’s apology has helped in transforming our national consciousness about the relationship with our Indigenous communities. Importantly for me, it acknowledged historical wrongs and injustices and it put an end to a decade of stubborn intransigence and political mean-spiritedness about this issue and, very importantly, foreshadowed an ambitious agenda for further reform, which I hope can be conducted on a bipartisan basis.

As the Prime Minister indicated, that agenda will feature very much our government’s commitment to do all in our power to reduce the very unacceptable 17-year gap in life expectancy between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. I want to quote a small section of the Prime Minister’s speech when he said:

For us, symbolism is important but, unless the great symbolism of reconciliation is accompanied by an even greater substance, it is little more than a clanging gong. It is not sentiment that makes history; it is our actions that make history.

Saying sorry is a very important further step in the long journey for genuine and lasting reconciliation. As we all know, there is much unfinished business. I was delighted to see Sir William Deane, a distinguished former Governor-General, present at the ceremony in Parliament House on the day of the formal apology. I want to quote his wise words:

True reconciliation between the Australian nation and its Indigenous peoples is not achievable in the absence of acknowledgment by the nation of the wrongfulness of the past dispossession, oppression and degradation of the Aboriginal peoples ...

I listened to my colleague the member for Riverina speak. I went to school in about the same period of time as she did and it is true to say that for many non-Indigenous people our understanding of and contact with Indigenous communities and people was very scant indeed. Like the member for Riverina, my understanding of these issues and the history of that tortured relationship of the past has really developed in more recent times. But now that we know what occurred I think it is even more incumbent on us to address some of that dark part of an otherwise very inspiring history of Australia’s nationhood. There were certainly dark chapters of our history, ones that we believe should never be repeated in the future, that need to be understood and recognised and apologised for.

As we know, the term ‘stolen generations’ refers to up to about 50,000 Indigenous children who were forcibly removed from their families and communities from about the mid-1800s right through to the 1970s. We have to understand that these forcible removals occurred as the result of official laws, statutes and policies aimed at assimilating these children into the wider non-Indigenous community. It was clearly the case that these removals were instigated predominantly on racial grounds.

The publication of the Bringing them home report 10 years ago revealed to all of us the rather cold, confronting and uncomfortable truth about the stolen generations, a truth that we can no longer ignore. That report contained evidence of case studies and evidence of past practices and policies and recounted many studies pertaining to the members of the stolen generations. It told of cases of children ending up in situations of deprivation and at times physical, sexual and psychological abuse. Even those who were taken in by well-meaning foster families and well-meaning institutions had to deal with life-long and profoundly disabling consequences: losing connection to the land, losing connection to their culture and losing connection to their language. But, most significantly of all, losing connection to their family has caused the children of the stolen generations and their families immeasurable grief. One child wrote of her experience:

As a child, I had no mother’s arms to hold me, no father to lead me into the world. All of us damaged and too young to know what to do. Many of us grew up hard and tough. Others were explosive and angry. A lot grew up just struggling to cope at all. Everyone and everything we loved was taken away from us as kids.

In the local paper, Sonny Simms, CEO of the South Coast Aboriginal Lands Council, recalled on the day how thousands of Aboriginal children were told they were going on a train ride but one that took them only one way: to the Bomaderry Children’s Home located in my neighbouring electorate of Gilmore—I see the member for Gilmore here tonight. Mr Simms recounted that there were no official records of the children, but he estimates their number would be in the thousands. He said:

They came to us as babies ... and some were here for more than 10 years. When they left at 14, they were sent to work on farms around NSW.

We know the experience, too, of young Aboriginal men and women in other homes, most notably the Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls Home and the Kinchela Boys Home near Kempsey. We know that their stories are based on a fact—a fact that has to be recognised and dealt with as part of the process of atonement and apology.

The first step in healing for the Aboriginal community is the acknowledgement of the truth. And as I say, that truth has been there now in official publications for all of us to read, to empathise with and to understand. On reflection, I think that refusal to apologise over the last decade has amounted to a denial of the life experiences of many children and indeed their identity and how it was framed and forged. The apology which has now been given allows those who were forcibly removed to feel that their pain and suffering has finally been acknowledged.

In 1992 in that memorable Redfern speech, which I referred to earlier, Prime Minister Keating asked us to imagine the perspective and view of Aboriginal people of the injustices of our nation’s past. There were some memorable lines in that speech. Among other things, he said:

... we took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask how would I feel if this were done to me?

As a politician, it is always a salutary experience to walk in the shoes of others to truly understand. The Catholic Bishop of Wollongong said on the day:

May this apology be a genuine step that will free us to look objectively at the issues that we must address if all Australians are to be able to live in peace and unity with dignity and mutual respect.

I hope this apology will be a preface to a new chapter in our nation’s history, a chapter based on mutual respect and resolve between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, as together we find the ways of dealing with enduring problems, challenges and disadvantage. At a gathering in Wollongong on the day of the apology, Kellie Evans, whose mother was taken from her family at the age of six, had this to say:

I feel relieved because I was so nervous about what was going to be said and I am so glad that Rudd did it in such a respectful way and I’m glad that its over and we can move on to the next stage. It is healing, we are here for our people and it’s a good day, a good memory and I’m glad I was alive for this.

Following the apology, I looked around the chamber, engulfed in spontaneous applause. I paid my quick and silent respects to members of the stolen generation and later spoke with a number of my colleagues from the former days of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, including Patrick Dodson, Linda Burnie and Lowitja O’Donoghue, from whom I have learnt so much. And I shared these precious moments with Col Markham, a former member of state parliament and a great friend to many Indigenous peoples across New South Wales.

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