Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a few short comments on the Territories Stolen Generations Redress Scheme (Facilitation) Bill 2021. When the bill proceeds to the Senate, this matter will be taken up further by our First Nations spokesperson, Senator Lydia Thorpe. In making these comments today I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the country on which we are meeting today here in Canberra, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people.

Across the country, wherever we are, we are on stolen land. As we debate this important bill that goes a step further to giving redress to members of the stolen generations, we need to pause and acknowledge that this country was founded on violence and dispossession. That is our history. Any rational, honest look at our history would see that it is one which began with conquest and began with violence and began with dispossession. Whether it is the frontier wars that turned into massacres in many, many instances, whether it is the continued refusal of even basic civil rights, not just voting but in being able to go where you want to—into shops and businesses and where you want to go—or whether it is the forced removal of children from their families, the stolen generations, which is the subject of the bill today, we haven't done a very good job in this country of being honest about our past. When you are not honest about your past, you then find yourself repeating it and continuing to inflict pain. And I want to talk a bit later on about the real risk that we are facing at the moment that we will continue to see future stolen generations.

This bill seeks to address the despicable practice where First Nations children were removed from their families—and, distressingly, it continues today at alarming and increasing rates and extremely disproportionately with First Nations children—that is, it is happening more among our First Nations children. The bill is welcome, and the Greens welcome it. The stolen generation survivors are finally getting some redress. Too many stolen generation members, though, have already passed and haven't seen any attempt at justice. It is beyond sad and tragic that they have not been around to see the parliament at least take some step towards redressing the massive, massive injustice that they suffered.

We have seen some piecemeal approaches to redress across different states, but one of the things that that has meant is that some people have fallen through the cracks and redress has been very different in its extent, which is not fair, given that the trauma that was inflicted was a deep, deep trauma that is still being suffered, because it is multigenerational. The Greens conducted extensive consultation with stolen generation members, and our spokesperson, Senator Lydia Thorpe, put forward a while ago the need for a national redress scheme and, after consultation, arrived at a proposal that members who are accessing that scheme should be entitled to $200,000 plus $7,000 for funeral expenses, as a starting point. Of course, like any scheme—and I expect there would be acknowledgement of this probably across the parliament—we recognise that no amount of money can ever compensate for the loss and for the pain that was experienced. That proposal, that sum, is fair, I think, when you look at the way other schemes across the country work, and it begins to go some way towards acknowledging the harm and the trauma and providing some redress.

This scheme only provides $75,000, plus $7,000 healing assistance, which we'd say is not enough. We'd say that is not enough. It is welcome that it has started, but that sum is not enough. We heard during the inquiry that we conducted that people think that this is inadequate, but they know it's better than nothing, and many of them are not going to wait any longer or even be able to wait any longer, and so they are going to accept it.

One of the issues that people need to understand about these bills is that, in many respects, they are quite basic and they leave a lot of the detail to regulations. So we're going to be watching closely to make sure that the government put forward details of the scheme in the regulations, as they've proposed, because we've seen in the past, in other areas, a gap between what gets announced and what actually turns up in the regulations. And, in forming the regulations, we want to urge the government to continue to consult with members and representatives of the stolen generations to make sure the government get it right, because it's too important for them to get wrong.

One of the limitations, though, in the scheme as put forward by the government, is that families—aside from those of stolen generation members who pass away between August this year and March next year—cannot seek redress. One of the things that Senator Thorpe has been at pains to point out is that it's critical for the government to understand that taking away children doesn't just affect those children; it affects whole families, and several generations of those families. It is multigenerational. Multigenerational trauma has been inflicted by the forced removal of children from their families. Sadly, at the moment, from what we know from the government, we don't have a situation where the families of all those stolen generation members who've already passed and those who might do so over the duration of the scheme would be eligible, which we'd welcome as a step towards the passage of this legislation. But, given that this legislation does give significant breadth to the minister to craft a scheme through regulations, we hope that that is something that the minister will consider—that he will understand the multigenerational nature and the descending nature of this trauma. That is something that could potentially be fixed if the minister was willing to design the scheme a bit more broadly and a bit differently.

It is good that the payments that are going to be made—and we welcome them—will certainly not be taxed and won't be treated as income in many respects. For example, they won't count towards bankruptcy and so on. But we have to make sure, likewise, that there are no flow-on impacts from treating any of the money as assets, for example. We have to get that absolutely right by considering its interaction with other forms of payment and other forms of support that people can get.

As I say, because of the nature of this legislation—because it leaves a lot of the design of the scheme to the government—we put those matters forward, on the table, in good faith, in the hope that the government will take them into account when actually designing the scheme. There are a number of other matters that we want to raise, and raise in a bit more detail, but Senator Thorpe will take those up when this legislation comes to the Senate.

To conclude, this is legislation passing through this parliament of which an outsider looking in would say, 'Of course there has to be some redress and of course there has to be some compensation for such a wrong and such an injustice that was perpetrated.'

It's one of those things that has taken this parliament far too long to get here, and we have to acknowledge the significant milestones along the way from within parliament, including former Prime Minister Rudd's apology, which was crucial and made a difference to so many people. But I particularly want to pay tribute, in closing, to the members of the stolen generations and also to their families and their descendants, and applaud them for continuing to fight and continuing to push for justice. I think that no-one in this place would say that there's any amount of money that's going to compensate, but we can acknowledge it was the wrong thing to do and we can start to provide redress. Does this bill go far enough? No, it doesn't. Is it a welcome step towards providing redress and some acknowledgement to those people who have suffered so much? Yes, it is.

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