Julian McGauran (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I speak to the motion before the Senate on our national apology, which both houses of parliament supported today, accompanied by the great national fanfare and feeling. I accept that the Australian people in the great majority want this parliament to come together to settle this longstanding matter. To this end, I express my heartfelt support for the words and feelings in the national apology which in part reads:

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

…            …            …

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

…            …            …

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

The national apology, while accepted as important symbolism, will nevertheless we trust have the very practical effect of healing much of the hurt, pain and anger of those that say that they or their family members were taken from their family origins at a young age for no other reason than race. That is what we are apologising for today; that is what we are sorry for today. Therefore it is worthy to note, as has been recognised by previous speakers, that the national apology in no way must blanket the history of the good work and good intentions of so many churches and welfare groups that helped Aboriginal children from settlements who were in dire need of help. The distinction ought to be made between the two. It in no way dims the apology but sets out the differences in what is a complex issue. It is probably best put by Noel Pearson, an Aboriginal elder known to all in this chamber, in a very fine and thoughtful piece which he wrote in the Australian on Tuesday, February 12. I quote that part of the article, which I recommend to everyone in the Senate, that relates to the point I am making here about the churches. Noel Pearson said:

The truth is the removal of Aboriginal children and the breaking up of Aboriginal families is a history of complexity and great variety. People were stolen, people were rescued; people were brought in chains, people were brought by their parents; mixed-blood children were in danger from their tribal stepfathers, while others were loved and treated as their own; people were in danger from whites, and people were protected by whites. The motivations and actions of those whites involved in this history—governments and missions—ranged from cruel to caring, malign to loving, well-intentioned to evil.

Noel Pearson went on to say:

The 19-year-old Bavarian missionary who came to the year-old Lutheran mission at Cape Bedford in Cape York Peninsula in 1887, and who would spend more than 50 years of his life underwriting the future of—

Noel Pearson’s people, in Noel Pearson’s words—

cannot but be a hero to me and to my people. We owe an unrepayable debt to Georg ... Schwartz and the white people who supported my grandparents and others to rebuild their lives after they arrived at the mission as young children in 1910.

What Noel Pearson said makes a most significant point about an issue that we all concede is a complex one, and it is more eloquently put than what, I thought, was the Prime Minister’s very smart alec remark in the chamber today—he said that it was a very crude, post-reformation, theological way of resolving the differences in the churches. It was nothing of the sort; it had nothing to do with theological differences or the post-reformation. It was either a tongue-in-cheek remark or a smart alec remark by the Prime Minister. It was unwarranted on a day like this, and it was a cheap shot at the churches.

Equally, on the subject of cheap shots, I am informed that many of the staffers of the Labor Party—no doubt it was caught on film—turned their backs on Brendan Nelson during his speech.