Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the members for Swan, Dobell and Cowan for their contributions, and particularly the member for Forde for putting this motion before the House. They are all part of the group of 42 first elected on 24 November 2007. I particularly acknowledge the member for Forde because his natural family comes from St George, my home town. We shared our first day in parliament together. It was the day of the apology to the children of the stolen generations, perhaps the best day we will ever have in this House. My big sister Debbie was here in Canberra that day. She has always been very important in my life and was like a mum in a lot of ways. Debbie and I have talked a lot about how those Indigenous women must have felt to have no say and no choice about the removal of their children. These children were not removed to homes filled with love and hope. Nowadays, people are quite desperate to adopt, as we heard from earlier speakers, and there is a good chance that any adopted child will be well loved and well cared for. However, the removed ATSI children were almost treated as slaves or navvies. In my sister Debbie’s words, ‘I don’t know how they survived.’ They certainly deserved an apology on that, our first day in parliament.

My sister Debbie was born in December 1958. Our father left home when she was 13 and Debbie had to take up a lot of the parenting burden as my mother went back to full-time nursing. She finished year 10 at the St George State School in November 1973, which was as high as you could go in that town. Despite our tough economic circumstances, my mum wanted Debbie to go away to a Catholic boarding school so that she could complete senior year like our older brother, David. However, in what must have been a very interesting exchange in a change room at Hannah’s in Toowoomba while Debbie was trying on her new school uniform for years 11 and 12, she told my mum that she was pregnant. She told me that she did it in a public place in front of a lot of witnesses so that mum could not kill her.

I do not recall Debbie going off to Darwin a few months later for a holiday with our cousins, the McSkimmings, but she must have because a baby was born on 23 June 1974 at the Royal Darwin Hospital. Debbie called the baby Daniel but never saw him. At the time of the birth that scared little fifteen-year-old girl was doped to the eyeballs she said. She never saw the nursery and never saw the baby. She was in a public ward with a lot of very elderly Aboriginal ladies. She remembers that the one next to her was very nice to her and helped her a lot. She was told by the authorities that the little boy had been adopted to a family either in Darwin or possibly Adelaide.

Debbie heard the babies crying off in the distance in the hospital and it made her milk come in. Was it the crying of her baby that prompted this physical process? She only recalled this memory and wondered about it in the last month—prompted by her interaction with her nephew, my son Leo Perrett. Physiologically, she did not understand her physical response as a 15-year-old, but she now wonders if she heard her own baby’s call down the corridor.

After the birth Debbie moved back to St George, got a job and looked after me and my younger siblings. She met a good man called Philip, and when things started to get serious she thought she had better tell him about her son. Of course, in the way of small towns, Philip already knew about him.

That little boy born in the Royal Darwin Base Hospital was adopted by two wonderful people called Hans and Mavis. They always told their son Andrew Garbe that he was adopted, as was his younger sister. Hans and Mavis also encouraged Andrew to find his birth parents. Andrew was around 15 or 16 when he started looking. That is when Debbie was about 30. She had her 50th birthday in Glen Innes in December last year.

My sister Debbie never put her name on the contact register because she felt she had given up the right to seek out her son—that is, if he had not been told by his parents that he was adopted then she had no right to contact him and tell him so. Debbie was contacted by the adoption agency in Darwin by registered mail on 2 June 2008. She was asked whether she was the person who had been in Darwin in 1974 and was told that a young man was seeking family. Debbie felt nervous, apprehensive, excited, emotional and upset. But then she had to put all those emotions on hold and tell her three girls, Christine, Tricia and Leanne, that they had a brother. My nieces’ initial reaction was surprise that they were never told this great family secret, despite their eight uncles and aunts drinking around them so much over the years. After that they were just glad their new sibling was a boy, rather than a new sister to argue with.

On Tuesday, 3 June, Debbie contacted the agency and said that she could either write to her son or leave her phone number. She left her number and three hours later she had her first conversation with her 34-year-old son. There were a lot of tears. They tried again the next day and there were still more tears, but they kept calling and crying and laughing. Debbie says it was unbelievable—like a part of her that had gone had come back again. I have seen my son Leo change so much in the last five weeks, whereas she had 34 years of catching up to do with someone that she did not know.

Debbie and Philip flew up to Darwin on 1 August and met Andrew for the first time. He also met his sister Leanne, who coincidentally had already arranged to go to Darwin. The immanent will that stirs and urges everything moves in mysterious ways. Andrew is a great bloke—when I look at him I see family. There are so many things that are nature over nurture. He has a love of books and reading, and also needs a bit of time out. (Time expired)

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