Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker Vale, I congratulate you on your elevation to the Speaker’s panel. I am sure you will do a very good job.

In my nine years as a member of this parliament, this motion offering an apology to Australia’s Indigenous peoples is for me the most memorable and significant. In my first term as a member of this parliament, at the time of the National Sorry Day in October 2000 I addressed the issue of the stolen generations and the importance of an apology as an essential part of the reconciliation process. At the time I predicted, ‘Very shortly there will be a Prime Minister who can say sorry for the wrongs of past governments.’ That prediction proved a little too optimistic, but as we have seen we now have a Prime Minister who can say sorry for the wrongs of past governments.

My comments in October 2000 were made after I met with a wonderful woman named Valerie Linow. Valerie lives in the Fowler electorate. Her story is one of the many thousands that can be told by members of the stolen generation. Those stories of grief and abuse did not occur in some far-off land; they happened here in our country, Australia. These gross abuses of human rights were not carried out under the orders of murderous dictators but under the orders of what our official history regards as democratic and humane governments. The view that these acts were carried out by people who had the best interests of the children at heart fails to explain one important thing—why they were directed against members of one race.

In the motion we refer to these abuses in fairly bland terms as ‘mistreatment’. While the motion does say that we apologise for inflicting ‘profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians’, it is impossible for those of us who were not subject to these human rights abuses to fully appreciate that suffering, grief and loss and to understand how in so many cases that suffering affected the whole of the lives of those of the stolen generations. How can we understand the anguish and grief of a mother whose child is wrenched from her arms, never to be seen again? How can we understand the trauma of an infant torn from her mother and then at later stages of life separated again from brothers and sisters?

It is only when we each consider such a nightmare that we can begin to understand the consequences of this monstrous crime against Aboriginal people in Australia—a crime committed by Labor governments as well as conservative governments, at both the federal and state levels. And those governments were aided and abetted in those crimes by the Christian churches in Australia. We in the Labor Party are justly proud of our history but we accept this black mark on our record and offer an unqualified apology. Those Christian churches have accepted responsibility for their role in this dark past and offered their apologies as well. But from the successors of conservative governments we only get belated, half-hearted and qualified apologies. I can only ask those who have distanced themselves from this apology to think about what they would feel like if it had happened to them. I would ask them to sit down with Valerie Linow, to trace her past and put themselves in her place.

When I first spoke to Valerie she showed me her most treasured possessions—old black-and-white photos of her childhood. One of those photos touched me very deeply. Taken in the early 1940s it shows a neatly dressed young woman wearing a sun hat. Next to her is a young man dressed in the uniform of the 2nd AIF, his slouch hat worn so very proudly. In his arms he holds his baby daughter. If you grew up in the 1950s—I was a young lass still in nappies—you would have noticed similar photographs on mantelpieces in thousands of homes across Australia. That photograph is the only image that Valerie Linow has of her mother and father. The reason that Valerie did not enjoy the love and support of growing up in the family environment that we enjoyed was that she was black.

At the age of two Valerie was removed from her home near Grafton in New South Wales and placed in the Bomaderry Children’s Home. She was later taken to the Cootamundra Girls Home, where her three elder sisters had been taken earlier. Her three brothers had been taken to the Kinchela Boys Home near Kempsey. Attempts from Valerie’s father to see her on two occasions led him to be taken away by police. Can any one of us imagine his heartbreak? His only crime was that he wanted to see his daughter—a daughter he wanted to hold, a daughter he wanted to kiss and a daughter to whom he wanted to say, ‘I love you,’ and, ‘This should never have happened.’ He was a man who served his country in a time of war only to see his children taken away from the family home, separated and subjected to years of abuse and torment in institutions; a man who only saw his daughter again as he lay on his death bed, 16 years after she had been taken away.

Can any one of us imagine the grief of Valerie’s mother, having her children torn from their home while her husband was away at war? She had no-one to turn to; there was no appeal, no justice—that was the white man’s law. And who would defend those laws today? What laws can justify tearing a loving family apart? When I think about what effect the kind of separation that Valerie Linow suffered would have had on my life I can understand the bitterness and sadness that flows from the stolen generations. Valerie has beautifully expressed her understanding of her mother’s sorrow:

No wind or dust could dry my mother’s tears as we were torn apart ...

Yes, I know today if she was here she would say: ‘My daughter we made the rivers you see today

Our tear drops are proof of the flowing waters

No wind and dust can dry my tears.

All my life I have treasured the close relationship that I have had with my parents, Alan and Lois Welsh, my sister Helen, my two beautiful children, Rebecca and Blake, and my adored grandchildren, Liam and James. Along with my husband, they are the most precious things in the whole world to me. I cannot begin to understand the trauma of having those bonds shattered. And yet that trauma has been faced by thousands of Indigenous Australians, Australians who have at the same time suffered great disadvantage.

From Cootamundra Girls Home, Valerie was placed in domestic service, which was the most common prospect for young women. But working life was even harsher than the girls home. Valerie was abused, beaten and raped by her employer and was forced to flee. In the years since, Valerie has tried to reconcile her removal from her home, the tragic consequences for her brothers and sisters, three of whom died while in state care, and her at times brutal upbringing in the institutions responsible for her care. Today, Valerie works with the Origins organisation at Bonnyrigg in my electorate of Fowler. She works with families who have been separated by adoption. Valerie was in Canberra last Wednesday to realise her dream of seeing the Prime Minister of Australia making this historic apology. Her comments were:

This apology means everything to me and my family. It is an acknowledgement of the past and it’s very emotional.

She added:

I do not blame the Australian people of today for what happened to me in the past; all I ask and pray is that history will never repeat itself.

The surest way to ensure Valerie’s hope is realised is through the adoption of this motion of apology. Saying sorry is the very least that we as a nation can do to right the wrongs of the past. If each and every Australian truly seeks to understand the trauma and suffering of the stolen generations then we will never repeat this sad chapter in our history. It must be an individual, as well as a collective, act of apology. We are all individually responsible for the wellbeing of our fellow Australians. I thank and praise Valerie Linow for allowing me to stand up in this chamber today and tell her story.

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