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

More than a year after the new Closing the Gap agreement was signed, this delayed report brings us grim news. First Nations people are still far more likely to be jailed, to die by suicide and to have their children removed than non-Indigenous Australians. Out of the 17 targets that have been set, only three are on track to be reached. In the Northern Territory we live proudly side by side with more than 60,000 years of culture, heritage and connection to country. We celebrate our First Nations' cultures and stories, but we also have a front-row seat to our nation's failure to progress on closing the gap.

I welcome the government's announcement of a new $378 million redress scheme for people forcibly removed from their families as children. This is good news for my electorate, where stolen generation members have been fighting for compensation for decades. I'm thinking of those who were abused at the Retta Dixon Home in Darwin, and I thank all those who have fought for their compensation and for so many thousands of others across the NT who suffered in many different institutions and who have been fighting for so long to be recognised.

I would like to pay tribute to survivors like Eileen Cummings from the Northern Territory Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation. Eileen does not claim to speak for all survivors, but her words do tell a story. In 1948, when she was just four, she was taken off the Arnhem Land cattle station that she lived on and where her mother was a domestic servant. She didn't see her mother again for almost a decade and, shamefully, her story is all too common. Nationally, it's estimated that as many as one in three Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families under government policies from 1910 to 1970. Eileen said she was overjoyed to learn of the compensation scheme for survivors who were under 18 years of age when they were taken. Eileen said today: 'We've been fighting for such a long time. You keep asking us for reconciliation. How can we reconcile when the history of this country is denying these stolen children? If you want us to reconcile you have to take ownership of that injustice.' Eileen said of the compensation amount: 'Some say the money is not enough. But I don't care if it's not enough, it's something. To me it's taking responsibility and saying that something happened to us, and that's what I wanted all along.'

Eileen was planning to retire from the Northern Territory Stolen Generations Aboriginal Corporation committee in November, but says she will keep going until the money is paid out. She's worried the payments won't begin until March next year and that more survivors, like countless before them, might die before they and their families are compensated. She said: 'I'm fighting for the deceased and their children. They've waited so long, why do they have to wait even longer?'

I just want to echo what Eileen Cummings is saying. It is representative of so many members of the stolen generation who were forcibly taken from their families. Again, I welcome the government's move to announce this funding to provide compensation to those NT members of the stolen generation.

Debate interrupted.

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