Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, you may remember last year I brought a busload of women down from Parramatta. They came down for the apology to the forgotten Australians. They were of course women from the Parramatta Girls Home, known at the time as the Parramatta Girls—and, as people who survived some appalling treatment in that place, they still use that title as a matter of pride. At the time I was very pleased to hear the Prime Minister recognise the work of Bonney Djuric, who is one of my local women who has worked so, so hard on behalf of these women.

I do not have to tell you what a watershed it was for those women; we were all there. But for many others in my area who actually could not make it—and it was not that they could not make it because they physically could not make it; they got up that day and were not actually emotionally ready to get on the bus—there is still great healing to come, and that goes for those who came too. Can I just ask you where we are with that process, what the follow-on has been like and what the government is doing?

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