Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

I thank my friend Steve Irons for bringing this motion before the House. The apology to the forgotten Australians five years ago was a very important moment in Australia's history. Finally, after so long, Australia opened its eyes and opened its arms to half a million Australians who had been ignored, neglected, let down and, too often, terribly abused. Perhaps most hurtful of all was that for so long they were not believed. These are the half a million Australians who grew up in orphanages, children's homes and other institutions in the 20th century. These were supposed to be places where people were looked after, but that was not the case. Slowly, over the past few decades, the truth has emerged, stories that would make you shudder: terrifying violence, awful depravity, extraordinary brutality.

Here is just one, from Mark, who grew up in a boys' home in Toowoomba and gave this evidence:

Oddly enough … In a place so full of brutality, sexual abuse did not rank as high as the other forms of abuse—such as mental and emotional torture, lack of adequate clothing, shortage of food, and the strings of punishment that never seemed to end … That sexual abuse was the least of our worries should tell you how bad things really were.

All of this, for too long, was a secret. Anyone who went to the police wasn't believed. They were called bloody liars and told to go away.

This is why the apology five years ago was important. Finally, there was some recognition that what happened to these young people was real—that it happened, and that is important in and of itself.

My strongest memory of the day is of a woman who came up to me and thanked me for helping to organise the apology. She told me that she had been married to the same man for 30 years but had told him only a couple of days previously, when she heard of the apology, that she grew up in an orphanage. She told me that ever since then the nightmares had stopped. In the seven years that I have had the privilege of being a member of this place, this is the most important thing that I have done—the work I did with Steve Irons and my friend Richard Marles to urge our parties to come together to make that day happen; the work we did with the incredible Jenny Macklin; and the work we have done with the unbelievable Leonie Sheedy, Joanna Penglase and the whole team at CLAN. The apology would not have happened without them.

Five years on, that apology is still important, but it is not enough. There is more we have to do. There are still Forgotten Australians who need help but are not getting it. There are still forgotten Australians who may never get the justice they deserve in court against the criminals who did them so much harm, unless changes are made to the law. And there are still thousands and thousands of forgotten Australians still waiting for the financial compensation they deserve from the institutions that did them so much harm. My hope is that the royal commission will fix this. Set up by Julia Gillard and headed by Justice McClellan, it has already gathered enough evidence to justify a public inquiry into more than 1,000 different institutions. In January the royal commission will release a discussion paper about compensation or redress, and in June it will release its recommendations. Those recommendations will be very important to many people.

One of those people is Frances. Frances is going to see the royal commission in January and is going to tell them what happened to her when she was a little girl—the neglect she suffered, best typified by a visit to a doctor years after she left the orphanage. The doctor asked her, 'Didn't you have milk or cheese as a child?' She said no; she did not even know what cheese was when she was a child. And she is going to tell the royal commission about the abuse—being forced to sleep on wet mattress, the beltings, the bruising, the caning, the blood all over her dress, and worse. Next month, Frances turns 93. Time has not erased those terrible memories, and tears still well in her eyes as she remembers them. Frances deserved that apology five years ago. And she deserves justice and redress now, and so do the thousands and thousands of other forgotten Australians. They deserved it a long time ago.

Debate adjourned.

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