Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and to the traditional owners of all the lands that make up our nation of Australia. In the long history of the land that we now call Australia, the period of non-Indigenous occupation has been very short—less than 300 years. In that short time, much damage has been done to our Indigenous Australians. Some people still try and delude themselves that everything that was done was done with the best intentions. But if everything was so well intentioned, why do our Indigenous Australians still have a higher mortality rate, poorer education outcomes, poorer health, lower homeownership rates, higher unemployment rates and higher incarceration rates than the rest of us? White settlement of this nation brought with it the view that nothing else mattered but the advancement of the new—white—colony, and that was coupled with the belief that white people were somehow superior. It was an attitude that led to abuse and dispossession of our Indigenous Australians, a beginning from which the nation has yet to recover.

As we focus today on the forced removal of children from their families—the stolen generation—there will persist those self-satisfying remarks from some who continue to say that things were not really so bad and that the ‘stolen generations’ is a misnomer. An extreme view is that there is nothing at all to apologise for if the actions were seen by the perpetrators to be for the advancement of Aboriginal Australians. Put aside for the moment that our Indigenous Australians were not even regarded as equal Australians, because they did not have the vote. The families who had their children taken away were not consulted. They were not engaged in any discussion about the matter at all, about whether or not this action would be better for them and their children. They were not engaged and not consulted because they were not considered worthy of such engagement.

Some people do not like the word ‘stolen’, yet it is very appropriate to use this term when anything is taken without permission and when it is hidden away. The fact that human beings were involved, with force and secrecy used to sever ties with family and culture, makes it the most offensive and cruel form of theft. The fact that governments condoned this happening, indeed legislated for it to happen, makes it even more regrettable. Let us not fool ourselves. While the nation’s short white history is rich in achievements, some of our past is shameful and what happened was hurtful—and the hurt of the past continues to the present. If there is hurt we must apologise and we must say sorry. This is an Aboriginal as well as a non-Aboriginal custom. To deny an apology when it has been asked for does nothing to help us move on as a nation from a past that allowed racism and discrimination to be sanctioned by governments.

Systematic discrimination swept across our country, beginning in Victoria in 1869 when the Aborigines Protection Act (Victoria) gave the Governor power to order the removal of any Aboriginal child from their family to a reformatory or an industrial school. In 1897 Queensland introduced the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act, which allowed the chief protector to hold children in dormitories. Western Australia, New South Wales, South Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania followed suit, giving bureaucrats the power of guardianship over Indigenous children. These laws stripped mothers and fathers of their right to be their child’s guardian and principal caregiver.

In 1937 there was nowhere for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to escape from these bigoted policies as the first Commonwealth-state conference on ‘native welfare’ adopted assimilation as the national policy. That policy meant that children could be taken away from their parents, not because the parents were bad parents but because the children were a different colour, because the children had a mixed parentage and needed to be ‘saved’ from their traditional culture—that is, the black part of their culture. Indigenous children were placed in institutions or church missions, adopted or fostered. Often their new living conditions meant they not only lost contact with their family and friends but with their culture. The vast majority of the stolen children had every connection severed as they were taken away from their land, their language and their loved ones. Some were able to reconnect later in life, but for many, by the time they were able to find the strength to seek out their mothers and siblings, it was too late because their loved ones had already died or because they could not reconcile the culture they had been taken from. Of course, experience varied from person to person and it is ridiculous to say that all of the people affected by government policies shared the same feelings and the same fate.

In the 1997 Bringing them home report, one confidential submission from a victim summed up the systematic discrimination of the policies well when the victim said: ‘Lots of white kids do get taken away, but that’s for a reason—not like us. We just got taken away because we was black kids, I suppose—half-caste kids. If they wouldn’t like it, they shouldn’t do it to Aboriginal families.’ It has been argued by some that the children who were taken away were better off in the hands of white people than with their own families. How on earth can you define ‘better off’, let alone use it as some justification for wrenching families apart? Who can say that kids who were sent to a ‘home for half-castes’ or to places like Colebrook House in South Australia were better off because they were taught how to cook and clean for non-Indigenous Australians? Only the children and the families of the children who were removed can decide whether or not they were better off. While some Indigenous children may have been removed on genuine welfare grounds during this time, those children are not considered the stolen generation. The stolen generation is the children who were removed solely because of their race, and their forced removal did not leave them better off.

Many reports from victims of the stolen generation speak of incredible mistreatment, extending from inadequate clothing to outright abuse. Almost a quarter of witnesses to one inquiry who were fostered or adopted reported being physically abused. One in five reported sexual abuse. One in six children who were sent to institutions reported physical abuse and one in 10 reported sexual abuse. Claims that the state and federal governments of the day had the best of intentions are hard to swallow. The various legislation that led to the stolen generation was racist and should never have been written. The Bringing them home report followed the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families. That report made 54 recommendations. A key recommendation was that reparation be made to Indigenous people affected by policies of forced removal and that this reparation should include an acknowledgement of responsibility and an apology from all Australian governments. Since then, apologies have been forthcoming. All state and territory governments, whether conservative or Labor, have apologised, but, until now, not the Commonwealth. The Bringing them home report recommended that the first step in healing is the acknowledgement of truth and the delivery of an apology. It is the responsibility of the Australian government, on behalf of previous Australian governments that administered this wrongful policy, to acknowledge what was done and to say that we are sorry.

There is another excuse used for not supporting an apology, and that is that today’s Australians are not responsible for what happened. The motion that was passed in this chamber today makes it clear that it is this parliament and this Commonwealth government providing the apology in recognition of the wrongs perpetrated by past parliaments and governments. The apology is not an expression of personal responsibility or guilt by individual Australians. Those individuals who do believe or who know they had a part to play in what happened to the stolen generations are still at liberty to apologise or not, as they see fit. Government cannot and will not do it for us.

I am very pleased that today we have shown the world that we are prepared to acknowledge the wrongs of the past and move to the future. There was some discussion from those initially opposed to, or quibbling about, supporting a motion such as the one we passed today, along the lines that there are more important things for the government to be addressing. I do not think there is anything more important than making an effort to redress the wrongs of the past and to plan for and bring to fruition a better future for all Australians. Is that not what we try and do here, every day, in this parliament? Whatever motion we are debating, whatever legislation we are considering, a better future for everyone is surely the goal.

I also would like to thank everyone who travelled here to Canberra today to witness the national apology. To those of the stolen generation: I am just sorry you had to wait so long for it. Now that the acknowledgement has been made, I look forward to building a better future for all Australians, especially our Indigenous brothers and sisters.