Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Very resourceful. The reality was that the information was there. There was frustration, which is long gone now because the laws are changing. I was in my late 20s when I started my search and it was very frustrating not to be able to access any information, knowing that it was stored somewhere. The wonderful thing of course is that archives—whether state or Commonwealth, as in this bill—went a long way towards ensuring that once I had legal access I could find and understand my family history. Cutting to the chase and talking about the success of that reunion—and there are lots and lots of stories about reunions; mine was a particular focus given my circumstances—I note that I discovered that my mother was the oldest of 17 children. So you can start to do the numbers: I had many uncles and aunts younger than me and my grandmother had become a grandmother at 36—all those wonderful things. They could only have been confirmed by the fact that we had records. With regard to this particular bill, the amendments to continually enshrine the protection of and certainly the access to this information are really important.

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