Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to acknowledge again the member for Barton and the other contributors to this debate who have spoken on this very important issue. I rise to speak on the National Redress Scheme for Institutional Child Sexual Abuse Amendment (Technical Amendments) Bill 2020. Back in 2014, more than six years ago now, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse travelled to the Northern Territory. They went to hear evidence from surviving Aboriginal people who had, as children, been housed at the Retta Dixon home in Darwin. These were mixed-race children that the government had forcibly taken, the Commonwealth had forcibly taken, from their families as part of the stolen generations and institutionalised between 1946, when the home opened, and 1980, when the home was shut down. The centre was run by AIM, formerly the Aborigines Inland Mission, now the Australian Indigenous Ministries—same acronym, AIM.

The royal commission heard horrific, appalling evidence of abuse by the adults employed by AIM to run the Retta Dixon home. These were adults who were charged with caring for these children that had been taken from their mothers. I outlined some of that evidence in previous speeches. What I want to say is how incredibly brave the witnesses, the survivors who came forward, were to detail what they had endured. It was unspeakably difficult for them to do that after decades of living with the shame and with the silence. I want to take a moment to pay tribute to the dozens and dozens of other victims who we did not hear from at the royal commission but who suffered all the same. They too were incredibly brave. They are survivors. It hardly needs saying, but I'll say it anyway: they did not deserve any of it. None of it was their fault. They were betrayed at every level by the adults around them and the church and the government systems that were supposed to support them. What happened to these children is unforgiveable.

It has been 40 years since Retta Dixon was shut down. It has been almost 80 years since it was opened. In that time, many former residents have died. They died waiting for an apology, an acknowledgement that what was done to them—the abuse—was wrong. They died waiting for redress. Seventy-one victims came to private settlement following a class action taken against AIM, but many others missed out. It has recently come to light that, AIM, the organisation that ran the Retta Dixon Home, to its credit, has tried to join the National Redress Scheme, but it has been barred from doing so by the Department of Social Services, which says the group doesn't have enough money to pay out potential claimants.

That's bad enough, but, on top of that, no funder of last resort has been identified for Retta Dixon Home survivors. That means that no state or territory government, nor the Commonwealth government, has stepped up to guarantee that any compensation payments ordered through the scheme be fulfilled. That means that those brave survivors have been left in administrative limbo. We have agreed that they deserve to be paid compensation, but there's no-one there to compensate them. How can this be happening? It is not right; it is clearly not right.

The federal government, the Commonwealth, administered the Northern Territory from 1911 to 1978, so the Commonwealth is responsible for what happened to these children during that time. It's really as simple as that. The Commonwealth must be the funder of last resort in the Northern Territory. The federal government has failed to properly manage the implementation of the National Redress Scheme, and survivors are not applying; they're missing out and facing even more distress as a result. The Commonwealth, the federal government, those opposite, have failed to step up and ensure that governments at all levels are funders of last resort when the offending institutions cannot pay or no longer exist. There are at least 10 Retta Dixon Home survivors who are now in this limbo, and that is just a handful of the people that we could help, that we should help. They are getting on in their years now and some of them are sick. We must urgently establish an early payment scheme for elderly and ill applicants to address issues with delays so that people do not die while they are waiting for this decision. This has already happened for far too many.

I have written to the Prime Minister about this and haven't had a response. I recently met with Eileen Cummings. Eileen is the chairperson of the NT Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation. She is a remarkable and tenacious woman. She was taken from her family as a young child and almost totally lost her Aboriginal identity. She lost her parents, her siblings, her cousins. She lost her connection to her country and all the associated learnings that go along with that. Eileen has worked tirelessly with other members of the stolen generations, giving them support and advice. She deeply understands intergenerational trauma and has done so much work to try to reduce that. Eileen was taken to Croker Island in the Northern Territory, not to the Retta Dixon Home that I have been speaking about. But of course she's very familiar with the Retta Dixon Home due to her work with NT Stolen Generations. Eileen took me out to the Retta Dixon site in Darwin the week before last. It's adjacent to Bagot Road—members would be familiar with it—a major arterial road that takes you from the airport into the city. To the untrained eye, it just looks like a vacant block. Sometimes I do roadsides from that block. I always stop at the stone and the plinth to remember all those young children who suffered so much. Thousands of Darwinites drive past the site of the home every day and most likely have no idea of the horrors that were perpetuated there. But we all have a responsibility to know, and I believe this is also part of the truth telling that we desperately need in our nation. Now that we know, we can't turn our backs on the people we've let down—and we have let them down terribly. It's beyond time to acknowledge that fact and to begin compensating as best we can.

As I said to the Prime Minister in my letter to him, facilitating the redress of the Retta Dixon survivors would, in the big scheme of things, be a small but incredibly significant and appropriate step towards acknowledging their hurt and suffering. It would be in line with the acknowledgement and substantive response afforded to other Australian victims of institutional child sexual abuse. These children suffered the same hurts, and they deserve the same compensation. Compensation offers both symbolic and monetary meaning for the victims. It may help them, their families and their communities to deal with the ongoing disadvantage that they're grappling with. It may help them, their families and their communities deal with the ramifications of intergenerational trauma. It may even offer them, at this late stage in their life, some sort of closure. Surely, Madam Deputy Speaker Bird, they deserve that?

So I'm asking, as the federal member representing Darwin, the place where these young children were taken and where many were abused, that they be respected and that the Commonwealth fulfil its obligation. Just imagine the hurt. Just think of being taken away from your mum and brought up by people who abuse you and those around you. Just imagine that for a second, and then imagine the effect on all the relationships you then have in your life. Imagine the strength of those people to survive. Why are they still waiting for the Prime Minister to just acknowledge their hurt and suffering and say, 'Yes, the Commonwealth took these children away; the Commonwealth is responsible to step in as a funder of last resort'—to simply accept that responsibility, show some leadership and get it done. (Time expired)

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