Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Greens support the intent of the Stolen Generation Compensation Bill 2008. We strongly believe that all the recommendations of the Bringing them home report should be implemented, including the provision of financial compensation, because, as people will be aware, the Bringing them home report had a number of recommendations around reparation. One of those was financial compensation, and we believe this is essential in recognising the harm suffered by those Indigenous people who were taken from their families.

The Greens support the findings of the majority report. We think that it provided good detail of the evidence that was presented to the inquiry. However, we are disappointed that the majority report did not recommend that the bill—or, in fact, an amended version of the bill—be supported. We believe that the Prime Minister, when he gave the apology, did half the job. A very important part is saying sorry to the stolen generations, but, to complete that and to make it a whole, sincere approach, we do need to ensure that financial compensation, as well as other reparations recommended in the Bringing them home report, happens. We are disappointed that the committee did not recommend that a form of this bill go ahead. I think the Greens are already on the record as articulating our concerns about putting a $20,000 cap on compensation, which is articulated in the current bill, and we have also expressed that opinion to Senator Bartlett.

Evidence was presented to the committee from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre and the Australian Human Rights Centre. They presented a slightly different model which we think probably improves the current bill that was before the committee and is before the Senate. They recommend a reparations tribunal which has three key functions—that is, to provide a forum for Indigenous peoples affected by forcible removal policies, to enable them to tell their story, have their experience acknowledged and be offered an apology; to provide reparation measures in response to applications through appropriate reparations packages; and to make recommendations about government and church activities that affect contemporary Indigenous child separation and measures that might be taken to heal the past. We were particularly taken with the proposal that a specific function of the tribunal would be to provide a forum for stories and the sharing of experiences, and to have those acknowledged.

We do believe, as I said, that an important part of that tribunal that we believe should be set up under legislation would be to make appropriate responses to and assessments of applications for appropriate financial reparations, so we are going to be looking at those particular suggestions very closely. It should be noted that there was a lot of consultation with the stolen generation and people affected by that series of policies; so it seems to us that that tribunal approach and those recommendations have a lot of support from the community. In the Greens’ additional comments, our recommendation was:

That the Government moves as a matter of urgency to introduce legislation providing for full reparations, including financial compensation, to members of the Stolen Generations.

The Greens will continue to pursue this matter, and we will continue to pursue the issue of financial compensation, because we will not have dealt with this issue adequately until members of the stolen generation are financially compensated and the other recommendations of the Bringing them home report are, in fact, implemented in full.