Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Yanggu gulanyin ngalawiri, dhunayi, Ngunawal dhawra. Wanggarralijinyin mariny bulan bugarabang. Today we meet on Ngunnawal land and we acknowledge and pay our respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. We pay respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the chamber today and across Australia, including the Hon. Ken Wyatt, the first Aboriginal man to be elected to the House of Representatives and the first to be appointed a Commonwealth Minister, and Linda Burney, the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the House of Representatives, and of course we acknowledge, in the Senate, Senators Pat Dodson and Malarndirri McCarthy.

Acknowledgement requires the humility of acceptance of the truth, and acknowledgement is the seed from which hope and healing grow. Today we remember a period of our history when loss and grief almost consumed whole peoples, our first peoples. We stand in awe of the strength of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians who, despite all the injustices, have survived.

Today marks a decade since former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised to Australia's first peoples. Ten years ago the gallery in this place was a sea of proud but heartbroken Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, their eyes telling the story of the trauma they'd lived with for their whole lives. They came to hear the leader of the nation finally acknowledge that their pain, suffering and hurt, and the pain, suffering and hurt of their parents and grandparents, was a deep and irreparable wrong. Hundreds gathered in the Great Hall, and thousands more spilled all the way out onto the lawns in front of the parliament and down Federation Mall. Many watched from afar as Mr Rudd apologised for the laws and policies of successive governments across successive generations, and I reaffirm his apology today.

As I said in this House, when Mr Rudd retired in 2013, that apology to the stolen generation will never be forgotten. It is not just one of those marks in the sand of history to be blown or washed away by time but it is carved into the granite, into the bedrock, of our history.

Most of us will never know—have never known—the heartache of being torn from the arms of your mother, of never knowing your brother and sisters, of being denied the right to have a name and being known only as a number, and, after all that, then having to wait for so long for that simple acknowledgement and apology.

When past governments took children away from their families and denied them their cultures and languages, the policies were brutal and based on ignorance. What Australia failed to understand was that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were proud peoples with an intimate knowledge of these lands, who'd cared for this country for 65,000 years, whose songs and culture date back to time out of mind, who had an intricate knowledge of the seasons and the waters, and who had complex social and kinship structures that guided their lives. We did not see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and peoples as the gift they are—a gift which should have been honoured but which was cast aside, disparaged and ridiculed.

Today, on the 10th anniversary of the national apology to the stolen generations, I extend my respect, I'm sure on behalf of all honourable members, to all the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who, despite immeasurable pain, have survived. We are grateful that you accepted our apology with such generosity of spirit. But our research tells us there is still much more we can do. On the 20th anniversary of Sorry Day last year, the Healing Foundation provided me with a copy of Bringing Them Home 20 years on: an action plan for healing. The report recognises that the needs of members of the stolen generations are changing and evolving, and their descendants' needs are changing too. The biggest change, of course, is that many are getting older and face new health and social challenges, including the fear of being reinstitutionalised when they go into aged care. It's important we understand those changes better so we can continue to support them. We're supporting, as I noted yesterday, the Healing Foundation to undertake a needs and demography analysis so we can get a clearer picture of what the stolen generations and their descendants require into the future.

The Closing the gap report I presented to parliament yesterday is a practical embodiment of the original apology and its promise for a better future. Great challenges remain. A person's right to shape their own identity and for that identity to be respected is absolutely central to the wellbeing of all people. The national apology recognised that indigeneity and skin colour had been used to control the lives of Indigenous people and diminish their value in society. But, as I said yesterday, we have the chance to write a new chapter of history where indigeneity is embraced, not divided; where diversity of cultures and language embodies strength; where individuals, families, governments and institutions operate in a relationship based on high expectations. Together we can build a relationship based on mutual respect and, in doing so, we'll honour the resilience and the survival of the stolen generations, who wanted nothing more than what was their right—to be cared for by their own families, brought up in their own culture and respected by their nation as equal citizens in their own country.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Prime Minister for his words. This morning in the Great Hall we paid tribute to the survivors of the stolen generation. This morning in the Great Hall we paid tribute to former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for his courage and his leadership, and he's most welcome here with Therese.

This morning in the Great Hall I shared Paul's story. In 1964, when Paul was 5½ months old, he and his mother both fell ill. His mum took him to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne. Paul recovered more quickly than his mother and the authorities recommended to her that she place him at St Gabriel's Babies' Home in Balwyn until she recovered. Soon after, Paul was made a ward of the state and transferred to another institution, so when his mum came to visit him she only found an empty cot. At the age of three, Paul was placed with a family for adoption. Just after seven months, his adoptive mother complained to officials that this boy, barely three years old, was dull, unresponsive and an embarrassment at coffee parties. Paul was then sent to The Gables orphanage in Kew. He remembers being paraded in line-ups when prospective foster parents would view the children. The staff at the orphanage told foster parents not to worry about Paul's dark complexion, explaining that he could easily be mistaken for being southern European.

When he turned six, Paul was taken in by another foster family. He lived with them until he was 18. He was shunned by older siblings as not being their real brother and was bullied at school for his skin colour. Then one day soon after his 18th birthday, Paul was called to the Sunshine welfare offices to be discharged from his wardship. In the space of one 20-minute conversation he was told the following: that he was of Aboriginal descent, and that he had a mother, a father, three brothers and a sister. He was given a file full of letters, photos, and 18 birthday cards from his mother. Paul found his mother working at a hostel for Aboriginal children. She was looking after 20 kids. They had six years together before she died, aged 45. This is just two pages from the Bringing Them Home report.

At Redfern, Prime Minister Keating said that the greatest failing of non-Aboriginal Australians was that we did not stop to ask, 'How would I feel if this was done to me?' Honestly, I don't know I could answer that question. I don't know if any of the members of parliament here could. I do not know if we could imagine ourselves as boys or girls growing up adrift, isolated, bullied, ridiculed, not knowing if anyone loved me, not knowing if anyone cared and not knowing where I came from. And indeed, as a parent, I cannot imagine the horror of visiting my baby only to find an empty cot. I do not know if we would have the strength of Paul's mother to live with years of unanswered letters of desperate pleas for information to break down the faceless rock of bureaucracy. If that had all happened to me, if I'd been a parent or a child subject to these injustices, this shocking cruelty, I do not know if I could have found it in myself to accept the apology. But the survivors did, 10 years ago. They showed us a generosity and a kindness and a humanity that we never showed them. What I do know, what we know today is that saying sorry was the right thing to do, and it was the least we could do. Ten years after saying sorry, we need to know that we mean it with belated compensation for survivors, with support for the healing of their descendants, with national action to tackle the crisis of Aboriginal kids growing up in out-of-home care. We need to show that we mean it by removing the shadow and anxiety from Aboriginal parents and grandparents now that their kids could still just be taken from them. We need to show it by adopting in our hearts the Uluru Statement from the Heart. We need to show that we mean it by not turning a blind eye to those who criticise the black armband view of history, or the paternalism, or the indifference, or who use words like 'Aboriginal industry'. We need to show it by closing the gap so the next generation of Aboriginal children do not get the deal that their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents have had. This is the challenge for the whole parliament. Not just this day, every day of the year.

Honourable members: Hear, hear.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I ask leave of the House to move a motion to enable further statements on indulgence on the 10th anniversary of the apology to the stolen generations to be made in the Federation Chamber.

Leave granted.

I thank the House. I move:

That further statements on indulgence on the 10th anniversary of the apology to the stolen generations be permitted in the Federation Chamber.

Question agreed to.