Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Evans: I want to follow up on the government’s apology to Indigenous Australians taken into care—known as the stolen generation—which was an apology I strongly supported. Is the minister aware that there were over 500,000 children taken or put into care last century? Is the minister aware they constituted between 7,000 and 10,000 child migrants from Britain, Ireland and Malta, 30,000 to 50,000 Indigenous Australian children and over 450,000 non-Indigenous Australian children? Does the government agree that the rape or abuse of an Indigenous child or of a non-Indigenous or foreign child in an institution or in care is horrific? Does the government agree that taking an Indigenous child, or a non-Indigenous child or foreign child, from their family and home was appalling if it ended up putting them in situations of neglect or abuse? Does the government plan to also deliver an apology to former child migrants and non-Indigenous Australians raised in institutional care last century?