Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In speaking to this motion on the forgotten Australians and former child migrants, I will continue the speech I was making on Monday evening. In a written statement given to me, Mrs Pollard says ‘I needed to show the church and the government what a horrible mess they had made of providing protection to me and my siblings’. In 1994 Mrs Pollard reported the rape to the WA police and the following year she went to Rockhampton and went through a hearing against the priest. She says, ‘I faced up to my abuser and he was committed to trial.’ The trial was in 1999 and, despite one of the jurors knowing the priest’s brother, the trial went ahead, resulting in a hung jury. In 2000 there was a second trial, which resulted in a guilty verdict and a sentence of 7½ years for the priest. Mrs Pollard continues:

The judge also recommended that the Queensland government pay me the maximum ex gratia payment. There was an appeal and the priest’s lawyers took the case to the Mental Health Court. During this period all the court documents were sent to my husband. I was so angry that this was done as I saw it as a last ditch attempt to prevent the course of justice, because if I had all the transcripts of a closed court case it would be impossible for the case to go ahead. At no time did I ever request the Queensland government to release this information to my husband or to me.

Crown law placed a suppression order on Mrs Pollard and she could not even speak to her lawyer about them. She had to appear in court without legal representation. At this point, let us hear ex-Premier Beattie’s version, which he related in a ministerial statement to parliament on 27 February 2003. According to Mr Beattie, a policy officer in his department released transcripts of the closed proceedings out of some sympathy for Mrs Pollard. Mr Beattie refers to Mrs Pollard once as ‘one of the victims in this case’, but then quickly changed his terminology to a self-serving ‘that is, one of the witnesses who gave evidence at the hearing’. Mrs Pollard was, and still is, a victim, yet in his ministerial statement the former Queensland Premier, to his eternal shame, attempted to portray Mrs Pollard as somehow to blame for the error emanating from his office. He said:

I have taken this action because despite repeated requests, including requests in writing, the Perth couple have refused to return the transcripts or to cease contacting witnesses mentioned in the transcript.

Mrs Pollard has repeatedly denied having deliberately contacted other victims. So what does that say about Premier Beattie’s statement? Was it an unfortunate error or one of the most contemptible blame-shifting exercises I have ever come across? Premier Beattie apologised to other victims but Mrs Pollard said he never apologised to her. She said, ‘Yet I was the one who had been dragged through three trials in an effort to make the system accountable for something they already knew was happening.’ She continued, ‘The evidence I now hold from having all the records show to me the Queensland government always knew how bad this institution was and knew that no child should ever have been placed there.’ So why didn’t the Pollards return the documents to the Queensland government, even if they were not at fault? Perhaps they were concerned about Queensland’s questionable record for protecting government documents, especially when they relate to the government’s handling of child abuse cases.

There has been a deal of public debate about the so-called Heiner ‘shreddergate affair’. A document tabled in the Queensland parliament by Lawrence Springborg on 17 April 2002 entitled, The 1997 Lindeberg declaration revisited, said:

However, over and above those unresolved matters, Mr Grundy, in a six-month intensive investigative exposé in 2001, discovered that evidence of criminal paedophilia was gathered by Mr Heiner concerning the (hitherto publicly-unknown) pack-rape of a 14-year-old Aboriginal female inmate by four male inmates during a supervised educational bush outing in May 1988 which certain Centre staff claimed was covered up at the time by Centre and departmental management.

The document continued:

Against this background, on 5 March 1990, the Goss Government ordered the shredding so that the evidence gathered could not be used against the careers of JOYC Youth Workers, some of whom, on the face of available evidence, were engaging in prima facie criminal conduct against children held in the care and custody of the State in flagrant dereliction of their duty of care, and, perhaps, engaging in a criminal conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in covering up the crime of criminal paedophilia.

Reports such as these may explain why the Pollards felt a certain reluctance to hand back such valuable documents. The Pollards have told me that they have tried all sorts of avenues to get justice in this case. This is including the Crime and Misconduct Commission and the Ombudsman without any success. They have told me that the main thing they want is not just an acknowledgement that these terrible things occurred, but a full and proper inquiry to find out once and for all who was at fault. Most of the relevant documents are publicly available and Mr Pollard has repeatedly offered copies to anyone who is interested.

Who is responsible for the suffering of my constituent, Sandra Pollard, and so many other vulnerable young children at the hands of uncaring people? Who ultimately should bear the responsibility for all these well-documented cases of systemic and systematic abuse, which continued virtually unabated for years? Mrs Pollard has letters from politicians and judges saying how much she has helped other abuse victims, and, ‘how much this bravery on my part has cost me both emotionally and financially.’ Despite the appalling treatment she suffered for so many years and the perceived lack of justice for Mrs Pollard, she has managed to help her son go to university and to rebuild her life with a loving husband, and to help fellow abuse victims. The least we can do for people such as Sandra Pollard is give her procedural justice.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Monday, 16 November I began my day by going to three separate places to collect and escort to parliament, very proudly, Debra Lowe and her young son, Chris; Graham Wilson; Tina Coutts; and Barbara Lane and her young daughters, Sarah and Danielle. Ian Mackay, our driver, was lovely, showing these forgotten Australians the respect and care they so deserved, particularly on Monday.

I did it in two shifts—everyone had luggage, and I teased Graham for having the biggest suitcase. I said to him, ‘I can go around the world with one four times smaller,’ but it was all in good spirit, despite all the feelings that the day had evoked, would evoke and would continue to evoke. It is something that forgotten Australians and child migrants had long asked for. It is a shame that they had to ask for it, but that is how it is sometimes when we are dealing with what was, as the Prime Minister called it, ‘an ugly chapter in our history’.

But Monday was not the day to dwell on some of that. The Prime Minister said that an apology would be given some time back, and for that I say thank you on behalf of all the forgotten Australians, particularly in my area. I ran into Roger Green and his wife Dorothy, constituents of mine, while we were waiting in the queue. So anxious was everybody to get inside the Great Hall for the apology, and so anxious were they to get down the front and be there, that a queue formed. There was morning tea and all of the things happening and people talking, but they just wanted to get inside. I stood in that queue with them, and it was just wonderful meeting so many different people and having snippets of conversation with all sorts of people in the queue and sharing experiences as well.

My electorate office manager, Carmel Cook, was also there helping but her father was a child migrant so she was feeling a whole lot of feelings, as everybody else was, but at the same time helping to look after other people, along with me. It was a really emotional day on Monday, and it was a very draining day. I know it brought me to tears, and I can only in a very small way comprehend how the forgotten Australians and the child migrants and their families were feeling sitting there on that day.

There were some people who desperately wanted to come and be here on Monday. Other people did not want to come—for all sorts of reasons. I have people in my electorate who are really ambivalent about it, and one friend in particular. It brought up feelings for him. He wanted to see all of the recommendations out of the two Senate reports implemented straightaway with the apology. The apology was one of those, and from where I sit I said to everyone, ‘I would love it to be perfect. I would love it if we could do the absolute Rolls-Royce treatment, but that will not happen on the day. The fact is that we are doing the apology, and it is a good start.’ That was the overwhelming feeling for everybody there and for people around the country on this particular day. People left feeling that at last they were believed, they were listened to, they were included and they were able, for some, to start to heal.

I am not speaking for everybody because everybody’s experience is different. But how can a young child not be damaged in some way by being in institutions where, as the Prime Minister said, it was just loveless: there was no love, there was no nurturing and there was no caring. We heard stories about people waiting and looking at gates, waiting for people to come back, but there was nobody coming to rescue them, suffering as they did. They did not have one adult in their lives who could protect them and who could believe them. If you grow up without that trust and nurturing, it must be incredibly challenging and difficult to find your place in society, to feel included and then go on yourself to try and parent and have relationships.

I felt really privileged to be sitting with Tina, Graham, Deb, Barbara, Carmel, Chris, Sarah and Danielle and another man whom we met there. He was alone—it was clear that he was alone—and we asked him to join us, which he did. And I have had a lovely follow-up email from him. I then moved into the House where Minister Macklin moved a formal motion of apology—the one to which I am currently speaking. She spoke very passionately, as did other speakers, about the forgotten Australians. I note here the very honourable member for Swan, Steve Irons, himself a forgotten Australian, who spoke to the motion. He spoke to and about his brother, who was sitting in the public gallery, and said that they had been separated for over 30 years. It was very moving. The honourable member for Swan is such a nice person and so liked, and it was nice to have the opportunity to hear him speak. There were people in the gallery from CLAN, Forgotten Australians and the Child Migrant Trust. Also present in the gallery was former Senator Andrew Murray. Many people, of course, have been involved in recognising the forgotten Australians and child migrants but Andrew Murray, more than any other person in this place, deserves special mention for the work that he did in the Senate. Senators Jan McLucas and Claire Moore also did a lot of work in this area. It was a very moving time.

I have been having quite a few meetings in my electorate office with local forgotten Australians—I hope they are now called ‘remembered Australians’ after Monday. We have sat around the table and talked about the reports and what should happen. Obviously, we have talked about things like reparation and compensation—all of the things that should happen. My personal belief is that reparation has to happen—that is, reparation in the broad sense. This covers a whole range of things that can be done to provide care and support for people who have suffered abuse. That might cover compensation but it should cover things like decent access to health care. A lot of the forgotten Australians whom I know do have poor health status, and that can be physical, emotional and dental. Dental health is a big issue for many of these people because they never went to a dentist. They did not receive that sort of treatment. There are also other issues to do with the health of these people, such as not knowing where they come from—their genetic history—and things like that.

At one of the meetings in my office, which was quite an enjoyable meeting, I asked people, ‘If you could get money, how much would you want?’ because what has happened to them is not something that can quantified. The mean that people came up with was $500,000 to get a house and a car. That gives an idea of some of the prices for houses in my area—although one person said $300,000. Some people might say, ‘You’re dreaming’, but it is okay to dream because, if you do not dream, a lot does not happen. It was good to discuss that.

I was pleased to see that people who were forgotten Australians will be treated specially in aged care and that care leavers will recognise their special needs. Nicholas Kostyn, who comes from my area, said that that was one of the key recommendations that needed to be taken up because people who have been institutionalised will experience a whole lot of feelings, as you can imagine, if they have to go into another institution—and it does not matter at what age. So I was pleased to see that recommendation taken up.

The National Find and Connect Service is a very important initiative, and the ability for people to record their stories is also great. My local newspapers, the Northern Star and the Daily Examiner, have been actively covering this issue in a very comprehensive way. This morning, the local 2LM radio was talking about the forgotten Australians. Everybody is interested in them. The media want to cover this history; they want to talk about it; and they want to know the stories of the people involved. The key issue that has come out of this is that it should not happen again. I agree.

When we were talking about this, another thing I said was, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice’—again, dreaming—‘if a forgotten Australian could have a gold card that gave them access to the services that they needed?’ We often talk about counselling but they need a lot more than that. They could access those services individually as they needed them and not through a particular service provision or a model or something like that. One man I spoke to this morning was an older man who never thought that he needed counselling. He is just going to counselling now and he said how helpful it has been over the last few years. People need it at different times in their lives for different reasons. Barbara Lane asked me the other day, ‘You will not forget to mention the gold card when you speak?’ I said, ‘No. I will make sure I put it on the public record.’ I have done that now.

I also say thank you to Penny Sharpe, the Parliamentary Secretary for Transport in New South Wales. I put in a request to her office for rail tickets. I know that Minister Macklin’s office put in that request as well. They said yes immediately. So a lot of people were able to get here in that way, including some people from my area. Everybody who was asked said yes and helped out wherever they could.

I also got a beautiful card from the people who came down with me the other day. I said I would mention that. One of them, Barbara Lane, wrote a poem, and I am going to read that poem now, Mr Deputy Speaker, with your indulgence. She wrote at the top of the poem, ‘To Janelle, many thanks for all you have done—Barbara.’ It is called ‘Remembering Osler House:

Screams echo down the hallway of my mind, as they did the cells and hallways of that house of endless horrors, through the years.

My body still remembers all the shame of what I witnessed,

And the corrosive, all-pervasive acid-urine smell of fears.

I was thirteen years.

The sobbing, wailing background noise that ate away the night;

The soul-shattering, too-sudden … cessation of the screams,

These joined the tortured memories I buried in the abyss,

To carve away my childhood, brutally, as they stole my dreams.

I was only thirteen.

The milling, naked bodies in the showers with no doors;

The excrement and sanitary pads, my first time, on the floors.

Betrayed by my own government, the state that had my care,

In an adult asylum for the criminally insane; I’d pulled out all my hair.

I was only a child.

Hollow-eyed people, shock-treatment blank, helpless,

And no longer knowing their names;

The intellectually disabled and terrified children

Still haunt in their drugged, bruised and bare-naked shame.

I was thirteen years old.

By Barbara Lane

I worked in that mental institution. I know what it was like. There were children in there who did not have a mental illness. There are children who were forgotten Australians. There were all sorts of people dumped into that place. It was like the house of horrors. If you have ever read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, you would recognise it. Even without knowing anything about it, when I read the first line I recognised it. I worked there when I was quite young. I was nearly 17 when I went to work there. I could not abide it. It was cruel. It was inhumane. That poem evokes memories for me.

Some of those children, who are now adults, came to me some years ago to see if I was prepared to give some evidence in cases that they wanted to run against the government. I said, ‘I will, but I am not sure how helpful I can be as a witness for particular people for particular incidents that happened.’ Fancy ending up somewhere for the mentally ill. The way the mentally ill who were there were treated is a whole other chapter.

I would like to finish by just saying how wonderful the day was. It was long overdue. Isn’t it good when you do something that is the right thing? One of my forgotten Australians said to me, ‘It was really nice to hear the good words from Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull on the day.’ (Time expired)

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the motion on the national apology to the forgotten Australians and former child migrants. On Monday some of the nation stopped to listen and acknowledge the terrible damage done to wards of the state and child migrants who were raised in institutions run by churches and charities, at so-called homes, farms and other places. The only crime of the children who were sent was that their parents were poor, their mothers unmarried or they were orphaned. Over much of the 20th century more than half a million children suffered terribly, many damaged permanently, as the state, federal and local governments looked the other way.

Organisations and churches were paid to exercise a duty of care, to nurture, nourish and educate these wards of the state. Preparing them for a happy and productive life as adults in Australia was their charge. Clearly these agencies failed to exercise humanity, kindness or care for the most precious and vulnerable of the nation’s children, and they stand condemned for that. Too often, children were physically and sexually abused, poorly nourished and not educated. They were forced to work for the agencies, who profited hugely from the whole business. The boards, the elders, the trustees, the priests, the nuns and the neighbours in places like Hay, Ballarat and Box Hill simply looked away.

The institutionalised children with living parents or siblings were often lied to about the existence of their families or cruelly denied access to brothers and sisters also made wards of the state. Surviving parents were also often lied to about the fate of their children or even their whereabouts. This is a most shameful part of our history and a part of our history which we must acknowledge and understand. It is also a shameful part of the history of Britain and other countries who also agreed to send or take migrant children in an extraordinary effort to breed their country white.

This era echoes the abuse of Indigenous children in Australia referred to as the ‘stolen generations’. For the non-Indigenous children, their experience was no less damaging in the lifetime consequences. Many of those children talk, as adults, of the denial of their country and their identity, of having no experience of love or intimacy, of finding it impossible to form long-term, trusting, meaningful relationships, and of suffering long-term debilitating health problems associated with their early neglect and abuse, the hard physical work at too young an age and the poor nutrition, hygiene and shelter. The wonder is that so many children did survive to become proud, competent adults able to form families and independence in a country that for too long failed to believe their childhood neglect and suffering.

Often it is through coming to know the stories of individuals that the true cruelty of the experience and exploitation of these children becomes more deeply understood. That has certainly been my experience. I have been privileged to come to know Daryl Sloan, a constituent of mine in the Murray electorate. His life is an extraordinary example of human endurance and triumph through adversity. Not only is he a survivor of these institutions in the true sense of the word, but he and his wife now foster and love at-risk children who in the past would have been subjected to neglect and abuse in institutions like the one he was placed in.

At the age of 25 months, on 12 November 1963, Daryl and his two brothers aged four and six were charged in a court with having ‘no settled place of abode and no visible means of support’. The little boys’ punishment for this crime was immediate commitment to institutions as wards of the state. Daryl was the youngest of 13 children—some his father’s children, some his mother’s. His mother had endured and then ended an abusive marriage, but because her husband was a returned serviceman she was required to leave the war veteran provided family home, making her and her children homeless. Daryl’s mother was able to accommodate some of her children, her older children, with grandparents. She worked, but without any extra welfare support she had to give up some of her family into so-called care so she and they could survive.

Toddler Daryl was moved between Allambie, Turana and Ballarat children’s homes. The three brothers were separated according to their age in the three sections of Ballarat Children’s Home, so they were denied any access to family, or support for one another. When their mother tried to see them, she had a near impossible task. She had to travel by train from Shepparton to Melbourne, then back down to Ballarat, and try to see the three boys in three different places all in half an hour or so. You can only imagine the distress of that mother trying to stay in contact with her boys.

Daryl recalls the big plates of stale sandwiches regularly fed to the boys, apparently leftovers from a charitable nearby pub and taken carefully to Ballarat Children’s Home. He soon learned to reach for a sandwich from the middle of the plate because it was not so dry and curled, and there was more cigarette ash and beer spills on sandwiches at the edges of the plates. They had no pillows on their beds and the poorest of clothing. On reflection now Daryl can see that the people rushing franticly between cots trying to silence the babies were mere girls themselves, older wards of the state, with the far too heavy responsibility of looking after the rows of babies and toddlers. Daryl remembers wondering why so many cried, because he thought, ‘What is the use of crying.’ Daryl knows of others, little boys in the dormitories, who waited in fear each night, rolled tightly into a foetal position, dreading that the footsteps would stop at their bed, because it would be their turn again to endure violation at the hands of the paedophiles in charge of those young lives.

I agree with Daryl and so many others that the perpetrators of these and other crimes should now be identified wherever possible and prosecuted. No less than a royal commission in Victoria may be needed to ensure that these vile men and women, so far protected by the institutions that hired them, are flushed out and their deeds made public. Their victims deserve nothing less than to see them successfully prosecuted, along with others who so comprehensively failed in their duty of care to the most vulnerable and defenceless.

Daryl’s mother eventually formed a new relationship and the children in care were released back to her. But a life of great instability continued for Daryl. In all, he attended 17 schools and he left home as soon as he possibly could, at 15. You would expect Daryl’s life to then conform to a pattern that often follows poor education, poverty and a disjointed and dysfunctional family. And for a while it did. By his late 20s, however, Daryl had taken control of his life and was determined to make his mark in a fairer, kinder Australia. Daryl has now fostered in his own home with his family and their own children a succession of wards of the state—children like him who had been dealt an unlucky hand in life. He is now offering these children the continuity of care and love that he missed out on.

But Daryl, a highly intelligent, caring man, is not content to simply observe that the system of care for neglected or at-risk children today remains a serious and ongoing problem. With others, he is acutely aware that the system of foster care and carers is being driven into the ground, in particular in Victoria. The statistics speak for themselves. There were 5,500 foster carers in Victoria in 2002. By 2007, five years later, there were fewer than 1,000. The supply is in free fall and the Victorian government needs to ask why. The answers are self-evident. They do not take very long to discover.

There is a serious lack of support for foster carers, who, classified as volunteers, are expected to provide the additional, intensive support for their fostered children with very little financial or other assistance. Clearly, if you have several children of your own and are fostering others, often with very high needs, the ideal is for one of the parents to be able to offer that parenting full-time. In fact, however, in order to make ends meet, both parents usually need to work outside the home to pay the mortgage. How many good, loving, potential foster carers simply cannot afford to offer their services? Alternatively, how many of the 4,500 foster carers who used to help raise some of the country’s most troubled and needy children have simply been forced to cease fostering because they cannot afford to continue to do it—because they cannot make ends meet?

This is a disgraceful and shameful situation in our country, when we know that the alternative—institutional care in places sometimes called ‘cottages’—will continue to be less than ideal for a young child needing a nuclear family, some continuity of care and a lifetime of relationships with caring significant others. This is a hopeless situation now given that institutions are paid very substantial recompense to offer group care for wards, and I have to worry that this is potentially creating a new generation of forgotten children. Children who leave institutional care with no ongoing relationship with a caring, parent-like figure and no sense of family have diminished feelings of self-worth and a shattered identity. We see the consequences of such institutional care every day in an electorate like Murray, which has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the country. It is not surprising when we look at the Supported Accommodation Assistance Program, SAAP, that over 40 per cent of those seeking help through that program have previously been institutionalised or brought up in so-called ‘care’.

Along with Daryl and many others who now seek to give every child a chance in this country, I call on the Victorian and federal governments to look very hard at the next generation of forgotten children. They are already with us. We know of the damage and distress that a life of neglect and lack of love leads to, particularly in early childhood. It is absolutely incumbent on all of us who stood in the House or in the Great Hall on Monday and who wholeheartedly embraced the motion of apology that we do not now rest and say the job is done. The job is just beginning for those who are recently enlightened.

I have Daryl Sloan to thank for helping me to understand more particularly what a cruel blow life can deliver to an innocent young child but how you can triumph despite that blow and how you can lead a better life through your work for so many others, but foster carers like Darryl need a lot of understanding, better attention and support.

I also believe that we should not rest in trying to bring to justice those who perpetrated the cruelties and the criminal acts in the deliberate neglect of innocent young wards. Many of them are still well and truly with us in the community, some continue to hold positions of responsibility. I believe as a nation we also need to seek out and prosecute those who are found guilty of very serious charges. We cannot do any less for the victims.

I certainly will continue to be concerned, particularly for those in my electorate. We did have a Presbyterian boys home based in Dhurringile, which is now a prison. At the time numbers of boys from overseas, migrant children, were sent to that place. I am not aware personally at this point whether any of those children suffered a less than proper experience there, but I intend to find out.

Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This morning I had the opportunity to speak on the Crimes Amendment (Working With Children—Criminal History) Bill 2009. I preface my contribution to the debate on this motion by saying one of the things that I think unites most people generally, certainly everyone I know this place, is the fact that we put children in the forefront of our thinking. I am very fortunate to have three fine kids, and those who have ever heard me talk will know how proud I am of my four grandchildren. I cannot for the life of me think that anyone could not act to put kids in the forefront of their thinking. Therefore, it behoves governments that we do everything in our power to protect children. I take up the point just made by the member for Murray: these are things that should be at the forefront of government because children are our future.

I would like to take the opportunity today to reiterate the words of the Prime Minister and other members of this parliament from all sides of politics who have acknowledged the appalling abuse and cruelty towards those of the forgotten Australians and former child migrants who suffered whilst brought up as state wards in institutions—and who were brought up unloved. The apology to the forgotten Australians, like the apology made to the Indigenous Australians, is an apology that is very important. It is not about furthering a political agenda but rather doing what is right and what is decent.

We all know that this apology to the forgotten Australians and child migrants is a historic moment in their lives and, more importantly, is the first step to moving forward. It is the opportunity to formally recognise past injustices and to recognise that what happened was not their fault but the failure of the system. I know that this apology to the forgotten Australians and former child migrants will bring special meaning to people involved and their families. Hopefully, it will provide a measure of closure for them.

I pay particular tribute to one person, John Hennessey, who lives in Ingleburn—not far from my electorate office. John was born in Bristol in the UK. His mother was an unmarried 16-year-old who was encouraged to give her baby up at birth. At some stage, John, after having been in an orphanage run by a particular religious order, was shipped off to Australia along with about another 10,000 boys and girls. Clearly, British orphanages were overflowing and John, as I say, was transported to Australia. He went to Western Australia and spent his time, I think, at a BoysTown. John is 73 and is a very iconic figure in my electorate. He has been around for some considerable time. He has undertaken various roles in our community, including that of deputy mayor. But he is a 73-year-old and he speaks with an unmistakable stutter. He told me that he started stuttering at age 12. Most stutterers are kids. We went through this not that long ago when my three-year-old granddaughter started stuttering. What did we do? We went and took advice. We went and saw paediatricians. We did everything we could to address it. As I understand the advice, stuttering is normally acquired at preschool age and, provided it is approached carefully and consistently, can be ameliorated. Fortunately, that is the experience that we found with my three-year-old granddaughter.

John told me that he started stuttering at age 12. Ordinarily, I would have thought that was a bit unusual, but his life was unusual. I understand that when he was 12 John was stripped naked in front of 50 other boys and thrashed within an inch of his life at this orphanage near Perth for stealing grapes from a nearby vineyard. His point to me was that as a result of this incident he started stuttering. But the routine beatings were only one terrifying aspect of John’s life in this grim institution. He recounted to me that he faced perpetual hunger and heavy labour. But, more horrifically, and with a fair degree of certainty from his perspective, in the night whilst he was in his dormitory he would be violated sexually.

Despite this young kid being uprooted from his country of origin and suffering these mental and physical scars, John went on to represent his community with distinction. In the 1980s, over his period of time on the council, he was elected Deputy Mayor of the Campbelltown City Council and has made an invaluable contribution to our local area. Given the horrific nature of John’s life, one could be excused for thinking, ‘How could that come about?’ After reading and listening to some of the heartbreaking stories of the forgotten Australians and former child migrants like John, one can only start to imagine how much they have suffered and continue to suffer.

John says to me: ‘That pain is something that you carry on. It was bad enough that we went through all that as a child—to be cut off from any relatives, to go through not knowing anything about your parent or parents and to be told that your mother died.’ He said that is something he struggles with. In fact, when I was talking to him just recently as he was preparing to come down to Canberra to personally witness the apology, John revealed to me that it would have been great for his mother to see this day. His mother died without him ever seeing her or being able to visit her. He thought this apology should also have been delivered to her and many other young mothers in a similar predicament who gave up their children to an orphanage to try to secure a better life than they could have provided for the child. John has been invited to travel to England next year to hear the apology as it is delivered by the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, because this is not something that just involves Australians. This involves the policies of other countries—Malta and Great Britain—in terms of how these young people were treated.

However long it has taken for this apology, we know we cannot give back what was lost to people like John, the 500,000 other forgotten Australians and the 7,000 former child migrants. It is not the words of the apology that are important but the genuine feeling of sorrow, remorse and regret for the actions taken by past administrations and also the lasting hurt that the forgotten Australians and former child migrants have had to endure ever since. These are the people in our society that have been stripped of their childhood and of all those things that you, I and every other member here take for granted in respect of our kids and our grandkids. This is something that these people could never personally experience themselves. They were deprived of that experience. I know we cannot take away the pain, but this apology is aimed at addressing our past wrongs.

Finally I would like to pay tribute to the tireless work of the various groups representing the forgotten Australians and the many years that it has taken to bring this to reality. Through their persistence, I think they have done the community a great service by making sure that the facts of these issues are at the forefront of our minds. To the hundreds of people who gathered in the Great Hall to join with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, it is a very significant turning point in our national history, not simply to say sorry but to commit ourselves to take action for the future.

Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the occasion of this parliament’s national apology to the forgotten Australians and former child migrants. The apology is long deserved, and the sadness is that it has ever been necessary. We as a nation must acknowledge the trauma and abuse that this generation of people suffered, and we must work with them to improve their lives and allow them to reconcile with their past.

It is reported that more than 500,000 Australians have experienced life in an orphanage, home or other form of out-of-home care during the last century in Australia. Many of these were child migrants who were transported from Britain to these shores, bringing with them the hopes of their families for a better life. Many of us have met someone who lived in an orphanage or a ‘naughty’ girls or boys home, as they were known when I was growing up. In Albury, St Johns at Thurgoona was for many years a Catholic orphanage, as was St Anne’s Home of Compassion girls home in Broken Hill.

I am not critical of St Johns or St Anne’s as I do know that they offered a safe haven from difficult and traumatic family situations for many who lived there. However, I also know that life was tough for the girls who lived there. The nuns were hard taskmasters. They were strict disciplinarians and they could not understand behaviour that was not mainstream nor offer comfort or affection in times of sadness. I am sure for those nuns these girls were from almost alien backgrounds and they were ill-equipped to deal with the emotional trauma that resulted from being separated from families and homes.

One of the most dreadful facilities in all of Australia was the Hay Institution for Girls. It is also in the Farrer electorate. It opened in 1961 and operated as a secondary punishment centre for girls from Parramatta who were considered incorrigible or failed to meet minimum standards. Many had undiagnosed mental health conditions. Most came from poor socioeconomic backgrounds. Many had been state wards from a very young age. Some were Indigenous stolen generation children and, most importantly, none had committed any criminal offences. They were simply the lost and forgotten children of Australia’s welfare system.

Girls were transferred at night by train to Narrandera and then to Hay in the back of a lock-up van. On their arrival they were issued with a set of institutional clothes, given routine instructions and had their hair cut short to a depersonalised institutional bob. Their introduction to hard labour in Hay was a 10-day stint locked in a cell where they were forced to scrub paint from the walls back to the brick surface. This was followed with repainting the surface for the next unfortunate arrival. Cells were furnished with a single iron-frame bed, a thin mattress, a blanket, sheets, a pillow, the Bible and a night can. The girls were only allowed 10 minutes twice a day to talk between themselves, eyes to the floor at all times. They were only allowed to talk to a staff member by raising their arm and awaiting a response and at all times they had to be at least six feet apart from each other—no visitors, no mail in or out, no privacy, every movement monitored, controlled, every response signalled by procedure or order. At night they were issued only four sheets of toilet paper and ordered to sleep on their sides, facing the door and checked every 20 minutes.

The institution closed down on 30 June 1974, and in 2008 the Outback Theatre for Young People produced a play titled Eyes to the Floor by Alana Valentine based on the experience of the girls from Hay. Over the years there have been many reports into institutional care for children, some in fact date back to the 1800s when it was determined that institutional care was not the best outcome for children. One report in 1945 into a Sydney industrial school found many shortcomings which they said at the time could be matched at institutions throughout the Commonwealth, and yet we still continued to allow these facilities to operate.

A British report in 1956 called the Ross report strongly criticised Australia’s children’s institutions for their lack of trained staff, isolation from the community and the poor educational and employment opportunities provided, and yet we still allowed them to continue to provide care. In 1961 the Schwarten inquiry into the Queensland correctional centre for boys, Westbrook, drew attention to the many issues, including the poor standard of food, inadequate hygiene and excessive drill. The inquiry focused particularly on the institution’s punishment regime, noting that: the strap was used excessively and too often; punishment for disciplinary breaches was unduly harsh and excessive; and boys were physically assaulted by certain members of staff in a vicious and brutal way, a story echoed across Australian institutions. Yet we still allowed it to happen to these most vulnerable of humans—children.

I could continue on with the many other reports but I will focus on the one that I have had some involvement in and which I believe has been instrumental in the apology this week. That is the report entitled Forgotten Australians released in August 2004 by the Senate Community Affairs References Committee. At the time of the Senate inquiry into Australians who experienced institutional, out-of-home care as children I was the Parliamentary Secretary for Children and Youth Affairs and so I met personally many of those people who made submissions to the report. I feel this week as I felt then the extraordinary feelings of their suffering and helplessness and have just some very, very small idea of how they must have felt on the day of the apology this week.

But it is no less heartbreaking five years later to think that we as a supposedly civilised country turned our backs on children in this way. It is unbelievable. While it does seem totally at odds with our culture and our beliefs, it still happened. The Senate committee was due to report in December 2003 actually, but due to the sheer volume of evidence that required processing and the complex issues that the inquiry unveiled the reporting date was extended to August 2004. The committee received 614 submissions from care leavers who had been in institutions or foster homes across all states in Australia from the 1920s to the 1990s.

The Senate committee said at the time that without doubt this inquiry has generated the largest volume of highly personal, emotive and significant evidence of any Senate inquiry. The committee members and the staff of the secretariat and the department were overwhelmed at the events described in the evidence. It was as unthinkable to them, and in fact to me, that human beings could treat one another, let alone such young and helpless people, in such a psychologically and physically abusive manner. The submissions that I read at the time were almost surreal in their intensity. I would like to quote from one care leaver whose submission was included in part in the introduction of the inquiry report:

In some ways I feel like wasted potential, I feel that because I was full of potential as a child and if I’d had a different childhood I could have done anything and been anyone I wanted but instead I was lumbered with a childhood where I had no rights and the government “carers” did whatever they felt like doing to me, so instead of being anything I wanted I’ve had to deal and cope with the horror of my childhood. This is something that I will keep doing for the rest of my life. I also ask, “what if what happened to me, happened to one of your children”? That’s how you need to view me, as a child as valued as your own because I am someone’s daughter, my parents just aren’t here.

I believe that this quote eloquently and clearly outlines to us as a government that we must take some responsibility for this dark period in our history, and that this apology will go a long way towards us as a nation accepting what happened.

I still keep in contact with some of the care leavers, and it saddens me that many still do not believe that they have the right to live a better life—that they are not worthy of good things—and that they face great difficulties in improving their situation. Over the past few years I came to know Sherry, who lives in my electorate. She has been married a couple of times, she has children with whom she often had a difficult relationship and her youngest daughter is a talented musician. The first time Sherry told me her story, in her quiet, self-effacing way, it moved me immensely. She had been belted in her home by the heavy bunch of keys that the carers carried around on their belts, and she told me of girls being branded with hot irons. She told me of her escape from the institution and of her awful life on the streets. When your life begins with such hardship it is almost impossible to get it back on the rails, and Sherry’s life has never been easy. But she has great spirit. She studied and she gained a certificate in aged care. She is a fabulous mother to her own daughter and she has reconnected with her own mother, difficult though that surely must have been.

I could recite many stories which are included in the submissions to the Senate inquiry, but I want to mention one particular person who deserves to be acknowledged. She has been acknowledged by many members of the parliament. My first contact with CLAN, or the Care Leavers Network, was through Leonie Sheedy. She was a care leaver herself but also a volunteer who had inadvertently started a helpline for other care leavers. She was passionate, loving and absolutely exhausted, because she had heard thousands of stories from care leavers and she just did not know how much longer she could continue to physically and emotionally help them. But still she went on. What was amazing to me was that she had very little assistance or financial support. She was obviously trying hard to be all things to all people, and the emotional impact on her was immense. She had so few resources to help her with this huge task. For me to see her big smile during the apology on Monday was just fantastic.

The circumstances of these forgotten children are unique. Many do not know who their parents were, or even their correct name or date of birth. They have been subjected to abuse and ignorance, and they do not believe they deserve love or assistance, so they will always struggle with acceptance and trust. The apology and the many reports have gone some way to proving to care leavers that they are deserving of assistance, but we must work with them and their children and their partners to ensure that they get all of the help, love and support that they deserve. This week we have taken the first step of what will be a long journey, but the years ahead will be hard because, of course, this apology is no miracle cure. We must build more specific support systems for this group of people into the future, and I very much support the measures that the Prime Minister outlined as a good start.

I would like to provide a short but insightful quote from Solzhenitsyn, which came to him during his time in the Gulag:

It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart … If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

When we look at those who stood by and saw the evil deeds committed in the name of churches, charities and state governments, it is too easy to say that these were evil deeds committed by evil people in another time. To think that would be wrong and would lull us into a false sense of security. The reality is that children are still victims, are still betrayed and still need all of us to exercise continual vigilance on their behalf. We cannot fix it for the forgotten Australians but we can pledge to do all we can to make sure that this shameful period of our history is not revisited for any child in anyone’s care. On behalf of all the people of Farrer who I represent here in the federal parliament, may I offer my sincere and heartfelt apologies to the forgotten Australians for the wrongs done, the hurts inflicted and the childhoods lost.

Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to applaud and congratulate the Prime Minister on his apology this week and also to applaud Minister Jenny Macklin, the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, for the hard work and effort she put into bringing this issue and this event to a conclusion. But when I say a conclusion, it is really only the beginning. It is only the beginning of what we need to do in the process of healing. It is a significant event, but in order to complete the process of healing we really do have to understand the whole complexity of what occurred. It is about having no more secrets. For too long, lots of these things have been buried in people’s memories and those emotions have been covered up. I would like to acknowledge today those who were affected and who have fought for this recognition. It really goes to the opening up of more issues and to lifting the lid on some of the secrets. It is about identifying areas that still need resolution.

I have spoken before in this chamber about the fact that I am an adoptee. While I, and many adoptees more generally, have had a very good life, there are issues that relate to adoptees as much as they do to the forgotten Australians and child migrants. A lot of child migrants and some of the forgotten Australians were also caught up in the adoption process. Too many stories exist in relation to the adoption process and the forgotten Australians, but all are related to similar issues of institutional care, the problems that existed and the lack of identification of some of those problems. Many of the young women who arrived here as child migrants later became single mothers and further institutional care put them into a situation of some grief and loss.

It is about relinquishment and the profound loss experienced, whether it was families who lost children as migrants coming to this country never to be reunited, or the loss in this country of children who had brothers and sisters. Today I want to put on the record my connection with those who are affected by adoption. I have spoken many times in this House about the positive aspects of adoption. For those people who have been caught up in it, and certainly for those mothers who have had to relinquish their children, I want to put on the record what we need to do for other forgotten Australians and migrant children and for those affected by adoption as part of the healing process.

To provide a brief background—and I have spoken about this before—my mother was 17 years old when I was born. She was the oldest of 12 children and the family were quite destitute. My mother was told that she could have the child and would be able to take it home. That was not to happen but little did she know that until after the fact. Whilst I was being born, a pillow was placed to her head to stop her seeing or understanding anything that was going on. She remembers my cries as I was being taken down the hallway to the nursery. She was then put into a ward with mothers who had had stillbirths, those who had lost children through miscarriages and some who had suffered infant deaths. At that point she only saw me very briefly when a kindly nurse said to her: ‘Come and have a look. Here is the baby.’ However, she was then told to go away and forget that she ever saw it. Her breasts were then bound so that she would not produce milk and she was told to go home and start a new life; that it was just a mistake. That is the sort of profound loss that many of the forgotten Australians and migrants have also felt.

What I wanted to put on the record today is a statement, a ‘Declaration of Profound Loss’ that 21 organisations, including those involved in the apology this week, have issued. This Declaration of Profound Loss came before the apology, so the apology was the start of that reparation, getting things very much on the record and out of the closet so there are no more secrets. The Declaration of Profound Loss by these 21 organisations reads:

We the undersigned

MOURN the loss of our children

TAKEN FOR ADOPTION

Mourn the loss of our families of origin

DENIED US BY ADOPTION

MOURN the loss of our brothers and sisters

CAUSED BY ADOPTION

MOURN the loss of grandparents

DENIED US BY ADOPTION

MOURN the loss of our rightful position in life

DECREED BY ADOPTION

As I said, this is a statement signed by 21 organisations. Again, the apology this week goes some way to starting to resolve the issues of that loss.

Can I now indulge the chamber by reading a letter that I have been asked to read by an organisation called ALAS, the Adoption Loss Adult Support group. Again, these emotions are very much the same as those being felt by people who were in institutional care and affected by institutional care. This letter was to me. It says:

Dear Brett,

We, the members of A.L.A.S. Qld, call on all members of parliament to apologise to the mothers of another stolen generation here in Australia.

The ongoing pain, suffering, psychological scars and heartache have been caused by the actions of over zealous consent takers, social workers, doctors, nurses and medical staff. Through threats, bullying and coercion, our babies were stolen for the purpose of adoption.

They denied us our legal rights to raise our much loved and wanted babies, by never allowing us to see, hear or hold them. Such practices were inhumane, barbaric and cruel.

Our babies lost their biological right to be raised by their mothers, leaving them with unresolved anger and grief at the loss of their identity and natural family.

A grave miscarriage of justice was done to us.

Most of us were under the legal age of 21 years and did not have legal presentation or a parent present. It was impossible to reject the intense pressure placed upon us to sign the consent form.

At the time of consent, most mothers were still under the influence of strong medications. Signatures obtained under these circumstances for a legal document, were invalid.

Some babies were placed in locked nurseries, had their birth weight and time of birth changed so they could not be found. This was the usual procedure until a signature was obtained.

We make this approach for an apology on behalf of the A.L.A.S members and all women who were subjected to the former coercive adoption practices.

Please find attached a copy of Royal Brisbane Women’s Hospital apology.

The hospital sent an apology, and it reads:

Dear Friends,

Thank you for meeting with senior members of Women’s and Newborn Services at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital … and sharing your stories with us about the care you received at the Royal Women’s Hospital some time ago. It was very moving and indeed saddening to hear how your experiences have adversely affected your lives, and many other lives that are near and dear to you.

From our frank discussions, we understand that each of you was denied the right to experience the natural relationship between mother and child to care for and to raise your children yourselves, but because of hospital practices were not permitted to do so.

In summary you have described to us how your much wanted babies were taken from you by the practices of the hospital operating at the time and that you feel you were coerced by hospital staff to sign over your babies for adoption.

In this regard we acknowledge the hurt and suffering you have described and sincerely apologise for any ill treatment experienced by you as single women during your pregnancy and confinement at the Royal Women’s Hospital.

That is signed by Professor Ian Jones.

Further to that, the Anglican Church was also approached, among other organisations. I am only reading a sample of these letters, but I think it is very fitting that these organisations have seen fit to apologise. This letter is to one of the members of the ALAS organisation:

Dear Mrs Hamilton

Thank you for your letter … regarding your experiences in St Mary’s Home in Toowong …

I was most concerned when I read of your distressing experiences in St Mary’s in 1966 and the sad separation from your baby as he was taken for adoption. As you have so poignantly written, the effects of that separation are still with you and your son even after so many years. These effects may perhaps be only slightly lessened by your knowledge that he is alive and safe.

It is concerning now to be made aware of actions taken in the past which—while often taken with the best of current knowledge at the time—have now caused so much distress and hurt to those persons directly involved.

I sincerely apologise to you for the hurt and distress caused to you by past actions of the Church and those persons employed by the Church at St Mary’s. On behalf of the Church, I would like to offer you pastoral support and counselling. If you consider this may be helpful, please contact …

and we—

will then make the necessary arrangements with you.

That is signed by the Most Reverend Dr Phillip Aspinall, Archbishop of Brisbane.

After the apology was given, I received a letter from a group called Origins Inc. They were accepting of and very happy with the apology because they know the issues that surround the adoption processes well. The letter said:

Origins Inc is a support organisation for people affected by adoption, removal and separation welcomes the apology to the Forgotten Australians.

As stated by the Federal Government on the announcement of the apology, many of these children were from unmarried mothers, and many were taken from these mothers by the forced adoption practices of various States and adoption agencies.

Many babies taken for adoption were placed into care either as the result of medical problems, or were returned to the care of religious and State institutions when the child became an unwanted responsibility, or the adoptive parents became parents of their own natural children.

These babies were denied the security of their own mother’s love, by a system and a society that treated the lone mother as a pariah, and her child as a “result” of an immoral act that needed legitimizing in order to become an accepted part of society.

This is another group of children that follow in the path of the Stolen Generations, Child migrants and Forgotten Australians that have all suffered at the hands of a cruel and unloving system.

We are yet to hear from the 150,000 mothers and their children forcibly taken for the adoption market from 1950-2000. Once this sordid chapter in Australia’s history is addressed and documented through a Senate inquiry then we may say that we finally live in a compassionate and equal society.

They are some of the feelings that still remain. While recognising the apology it does lift the lid on some of those other issues that may have to be resolved as time goes by. I applaud the PM and Jenny Macklin, the minister, for their work in resolving the issues of the forgotten Australians and migrant children. I think it is our role as members of parliament—now that the lid has been lifted, as someone said in this chamber earlier—to start the healing process by getting some of these people on board to tell their stories and be part of a resolution so that they can live with the understanding that their issues have been recognised.

It is about those people affected by institutional care. When I said that my adoption was one that was very good for me with loving parents and a wonderful upbringing, I solidly recognise that there are some who did not have those same experiences, including many of the relinquishing mothers that I have had involvement with over the last 20-odd years. They are applauding the fact that the government has recognised issues of grief and loss and that migrant children, forgotten Australians or others in our society who are affected by institutional care should be recognised and given similar support and help, and I know that will come.

This is a very, very intense, emotional issue for many people. I do not want to upset the balance in understanding adoption, because it was well intentioned. It was a system run mostly by state agencies, and the federal government were not necessarily directly involved. Some of the statements made in the apology by the Prime Minister the other day showed that some well-meaning and caring organisations actually lacked the ability to care for individuals, which is very clear from the forgotten Australians and migrant children who suffered. Some of them doubly suffered through what occurred to them and their children through either foster care or the adoption process. It was well intentioned but it was certainly an uncaring system at the time.

It is through our recognition in bringing these issues to the table and to the chambers of parliament that everyone will know we have lifted the lid on the issue and now have the opportunity for no more secrets. One of the issues around adoption was that it was secretive. There are laws that prevented people having access. For the migrant children and forgotten Australians the problem is that there were no records, so lots of that contact was lost. In relation to adoption—and this was only just resolved in Queensland this year—people can finally get access to some of their birth information. I have spoken of my own story before in this chamber about getting information on my background and medical history. Only 20 years ago finding my natural family was very, very important to me. For a whole range of reasons people who have found themselves in that situation understand it.

That is a small part of the wider feelings the apology was directed at earlier this week. The apology was to those forgotten Australians and migrant children who suffered at the hands of institutions that were well intentioned, no doubt, but just could not provide the care, support and emotional treatment that many of us as young people certainly require, and not having proper care at a young age has an effects on us as adults.

This apology is about building a caring community—a community that does understand its past. It is so important that we understand where we have come from. The Prime Minister, in his speech, said that denying or not understanding the past can mean that we make the same mistakes in the future. In my 50 years of life we have become a sophisticated society. When I was a child, even the mention of adoption or of being the child of an unmarried mother was something to be ashamed of. My school friends would call me the ‘bastard’ and I still hold that as something that happened to me, and I accepted it and I understood it. But we have certainly progressed and matured as a country since that time.

For those reasons I again applaud the government for the apology and I certainly applaud all the members who have spoken in the House and in this chamber today about the need for this apology and about their understanding that it is a start. This is about moving forward and about rectifying the past. It also about understanding that, as a country, we have done the right thing and that we will continue to do the right thing for all those who have been affected by being a child migrant, a forgotten Australian or by adoption.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion on the national apology to the forgotten Australians and former child migrants. I acknowledge the speakers who have talked so openly about, and with so much understanding of, the hurt that they, their constituents and so many thousands Australians experienced as children. I acknowledge the member for Forde and admire the way in which he has put on record, in the Hansard, his own experience. I am sure that it is very hard to talk about, but I sometimes think that talking about these experiences is part of the healing process. Although the member for Forde said that he was adopted out to wonderful and loving parents, I found listening to his story very hard and heart-rending.

I commend the speeches that were made in the Great Hall on the national apology and of course all of the speeches that have been made on it since. The speeches of both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition took place in what was a very emotionally charged Great Hall. Many people attended the apology in the Great Hall. Obviously not all those who have suffered abuse were able to be there. Only a very small cross-section of the people who have suffered abuse from government institutions, churches and charitable organisations were there.

I want to acknowledge the work of the senators who were involved in the reports that have led to this national apology. They deserve great credit too—not just those of us who are speaking on the apology now, such as the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. These senators went out and did the hard yards in gathering the information about this abuse and in bringing forward in reports that have ultimately led to a long-awaited acknowledgment of this very dark side—a very black side—of our nation’s history. None of us can be proud of it. It is important that we look back, and we have done that.

I also want to acknowledge former Senator Murray. He has been openly and widely acknowledged by many for his work in this area. After he left the parliament, he continued this work. He and those other senators who are no longer with us and who worked in this area must feel a great sense of satisfaction with the work that that they did through the committees. If I can digress for a moment, I think this apology underpins the importance of much of the work that is done by the committees of the House and the Senate. I think too often the committees bring forward their reports and there is little response from governments of both sides of the House to them. This is one of those very positive results following the work of a committee.

I want to share with the chamber some of the comments about the apology that I have received from my constituents. I particularly want to talk about a man called ‘Ray’. For 45 years, Ray has tried to forget what happened to him and his family—his brothers and sisters. I was talking to him on the day of the apology, and he said that it is a start but more needs to be done. More work needs to be done on restitution, but the apology is certainly a start for him. I want to share with you part of his story—and it is only a very little part of it. Many years ago, programs were funded to take children away on a holiday to the beach. Ray, along with his brothers and sisters, went on one of them. They boarded a train at Cunnamulla and went to a camp down at the beach, where they saw the ocean for the first time. They had a holiday by the sea.

When they hopped on that train to go back home, they were looking forward to seeing their parents after having that wonderful time, as kids would from the bush—and I know how important it is for them to be in the salt air and sand and play in some of these holiday camps. When their train arrived at the railway station in Cunnamulla they were met not by their parents but by the police. The police put those children straight back on that train and sent them away to orphanages. Brothers and sisters were put into orphanages not far from Brisbane. I think one was near Nudgee and another one was at Riverview.

In talking to Ray about his experiences there, he said that, some days, he could see his separated brothers and sisters, but within the orphanage they were not allowed to talk to their brothers and sisters. If he did, as we have heard in a number of speeches, he was taken aside and given a flogging; these were his words. His sister would have received the same sort of treatment and they were barred from seeing their brother or their sister, albeit in an orphanage. It eventually got too much for Ray and he ran away. He spent many, many years running away and trying to escape the horror of what he had experienced. He did say to me that he was not sexually abused, but he was physically and mentally abused. He ended up on a large pastoral property in Western Australia as an unknown person, and he has a great deal of time for the family that gave him an opportunity and a job. He still has contact with the family that understood the plight he was in but never revealed him to the authorities for fear that he would be taken back and put into an institution once again.

For any parent, just to think about your own children and how you have loved them and nurtured them through those very formative years, it is hard to comprehend how those children lacked that nurturing. There are the maternal instincts of a mother that are lost because of what happened to so many children being taken away and put in orphanages. Maybe, as was considered at the time, it was for their welfare but, as we all know now, the physical, mental and sexual abuse that so many of them suffered is just incomprehensible in a modern Australia.

Another person that spoke with me was Robyn from Stanthorpe and I want to share with the chamber Robyn’s story. Back in 1959 when she was 15 years of age, her mother had been divorced for some 10 years from her husband, and she was not able to help her—

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! As a division has been called in the House and it is almost time to adjourn proceedings, the honourable member will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.