Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary Assisting the Prime Minister for Social Inclusion) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great joy and pleasure to contribute to the debate on the apology to the stolen generations because yesterday, as we all know—we all heard—Australia turned a new page in its history. Australians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, embraced a new era of forgiveness and inclusion. The Prime Minister’s articulation of such a sensitive apology to the stolen generation for their past suffering and injustices has been overwhelmingly endorsed across the nation, and in fact across the world. It has been made on behalf of the government and on behalf of the Australian federal parliament and comes after significant consultation with Indigenous people. Denial of the past is no longer an option for our nation. Truths can no longer be swept under the carpet. We, as the government of the day, can no longer take the easy option.

Yesterday’s events remind us of just how important ‘sorry’ is in the reconciliation process. It is a shame that the apology has taken so long—that former governments ignored the evidence and denied the opportunity for the forgiveness, healing and hope that has been so clearly articulated by the people who yesterday were here in the chamber and in Parliament House. But it has happened now and it brings me great happiness. It is such a great honour that I am overwhelmed that I was here and was able to vote for it happening. Several other people in the chamber have expressed that view too—they were overwhelmed yesterday by the significance of the motion that we passed here in the Senate and in the House of Representatives.

The Bringing them home report reduced me to tears. It exposed the enduring impact and the horrific consequences of successive governments’ policies on the stolen generations, their families and their descendants. From the contributions of other colleagues, I know it had the same effect on them. We have heard so many stories from people in our own constituencies who were affected. The one that really caught my eye was a confidential submission to the Bringing them home inquiry from a New South Wales woman who was taken to the Cootamundra Girls Home, not far from where I live. I know a little of the home’s history. That woman had such profound evidence for us. In her submission she said:

Most of us girls were thinking white in the head but were feeling black inside. We weren’t black or white. We were a very lonely, lost and sad displaced group of people.

We were taught to think and act like a white person, but we didn’t know how to think and act like an Aboriginal. We didn’t know anything about our culture. We were completely brainwashed to think only like a white person.

When they went to mix in white society, they found they were not accepted [because] they were Aboriginal. When they went and mixed with Aborigines, some found they couldn’t identify with them either, because they had too much white ways in them.

So that they were neither black nor white. They were simply a lost generation of children. I know I was one of them.

Those stories of the enduring impacts and the sense of isolation and dispossession make up much of the evidence that we have heard and they have been reiterated over the last few days by the people who are most intimately connected to the stolen generations or are members of the stolen generations. They really bring the significance of this vote and this national apology home to us all.

The history of removing Aboriginal children from their homes is one of great complexity. We have had some arguments about that in the chamber as well. I noted Cape York Indigenous leader Noel Pearson’s comments in Monday’s Australian newspaper. I think he captured the complexity of the debate. He wrote:

People were stolen, people were rescued; people were brought in chains, people were brought in by their parents; mixed-blood children were in danger from their tribal step-fathers, 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—government and missions—ranged from cruel to caring, malign to loving, well-intentioned to evil.

And so, to my mind, we have to look at the forced removal of Indigenous children in terms of its lasting overall cultural impact. I know many of my colleagues here in the chamber know that I spent some of my happiest years working in the Northern Territory and saw firsthand, in school and in special education there, just how damaging government policy can be when it fails to recognise Indigenous culture. It was an extraordinary time living there. I have the fondest memories of times, for example, when my children would play with the Aboriginal children who visited the hospital and the outpatients clinic there and of the times when we all pitched in when there was an outbreak of chickenpox and the children’s ward was overflowing with young mothers and their babies. We all just pitched in and helped out with those little ones, and that was a great time. It really brought home to me the abject poverty in which people live but also the cultural richness of their communities and the extent to which those children are loved and cherished.

So, when we in this Rudd Labor government talk about a new beginning, we talk about social inclusion, which is something that is very close to my heart. We know that one of the biggest and first commitments that this government is going to make is to transform the living conditions and the opportunities of Indigenous people in contemporary Australia. We need to do this because, as the healing process continues, we have to start to address the disadvantage that is engulfing Indigenous Australians. It is disadvantage that spans generations.

The Indigenous people, who have been marginalised since European settlement, continue to endure living standards, life expectancy, employment rates and school completion rates that are so far below those of non-Indigenous Australians. As we enter our 17th year of economic growth, with the lowest unemployment rates in 30 years, we still have an Indigenous population that are suffering entrenched disadvantage and that extraordinary 17-year life expectancy gap—an unacceptable life expectancy gap. We have to close that, and I am so proud that Kevin Rudd as the Prime Minister has said, ‘We are going to do it.’ He has set it down as the task for all of us, in government and in opposition, to do. We are going to say that these realities can no longer be swept under the carpet. We have a commitment that there is going to be the substantial spending needed to create a future that is full of hope, safety and equality of opportunity, health and wellbeing for Indigenous Australians.

The idea is that we have a bipartisan approach to Indigenous issues through the establishment of a war cabinet. How heartening it is that Dr Nelson has graciously agreed to co-chair that. This is just new ground for Australia. It is new ground for Australia in terms of public policy, and it is certainly new ground for Australia in terms of politics. It is a wonderful commitment—it is a fantastic commitment—that we are going to set ourselves the challenge, and we are going to meet the challenge, of halving the gap in mortality rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children under the age of five. What a profoundly important thing we have to start with. During that time we are going to do the same thing: we are going to halve that gap in reading, writing and numeracy through a package that focuses on early childhood development and early intervention.

We are going to revisit the recommendations of the Bringing them home report, particularly the need to provide counselling and health services and, of course, to continue to support tracing lost families and lost children and reuniting them—and how important and significant an effort that is. We have given a commitment to ensure that those services can be provided to the stolen generations. We are going to work to have every Indigenous four-year-old in every remote Aboriginal community enrolled in preschool or an early childhood education centre. Then we are going to set some targets that we are going to be held to as a government: to build future educational opportunities for Indigenous children; to provide primary and preventative health care; to begin reducing the obscene infant mortality rates in remote Aboriginal communities. That is what it is all about: a social inclusion agenda. (Time expired)