Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today the Senate and the parliament as a whole have done their job, and we have heard that from previous speakers in this place. In terms of what has occurred in this area, we have had a group of Australian citizens who were wronged. What happened was that they came to their state and federal parliamentarians and said that something had gone wrong, they had been hurt and someone should do something about it. This struggle has been going on since the 1960s, when the women first started saying that what had happened was incorrect. What had happened in that period up until when we first got this reference in 2011 was that there had been a series of state inquiries, as far back as 1999 in Tasmania, and also in Victoria and New South Wales. The sad thing, amongst so many sad things, is that each of those inquiries reported back, identified the wrongs, showed that these issues were in place and heard lots of sad stories, and nothing happened. That is the true sadness of what has happened since 1999.

But, in this case, finally women from across this country—every state—spoke out in that period. Every single state and territory had women who had been carrying the hurt for years but moved forward and never gave up. They came to their Senate and said there should be an inquiry. After a lot of discussion—because I have to admit that the first time the request came there was not an immediate response, which is sometimes what occurs—and ongoing effort, there was an agreement from every group in this place that there should be a Senate inquiry into the area, and then the process began.

We travelled the country. We talked with women. We listened to women. We listened to young people who identified that they had been adopted and had not met their parents. I am not going to go back through all the accounts that Senator Siewert has mentioned. The important thing is that people should read the inquiry. They should read the report, which is not that large, and they should not have people telling them what was said; they should read it themselves. They should hear from the people who had the courage, the commitment and the anger to come forward and tell us what was wrong and what should be done about it. They were not backward in coming forward. In fact, they gave us chapter and verse about how long they had been speaking about these issues and how their anger and betrayal were made worse because no action had been taken previously. It was as though we were the court of last resort when they came to see us, and no-one could be unaffected by what we heard. But there was more than that: they wanted action taken.

I also want to commend all the senators who took part in this event. Sometimes at the committee itself it is just given as a matter of course that senators do their job, as we do, and come up with reports, some of which are read and some of which are not, and recommendations, some of which are picked up and some of which are not. However, in this case, as in many in the community affairs committee, there was more than just coming and listening and putting our report together; there was a personal connection and a personal commitment that we had work to do and that it was important that it should happen. So naturally I acknowledge Senator Siewert, who chaired through the whole process; the late Senator Judith Adams, who actually attended two of these inquiries and at one stage really should not have been there but was determined to be there; Senator Sue Boyce, who is unable to be with us today because she is unwell but has emailed all of us to say she wants to be here—and I can guarantee that many times in the Senate in the future we will hear from Senator Boyce on this issue; Senator Carol Brown; Senator Bridget McKenzie, who is going to speak in this discussion; Senator Helen Coonan, who attended one committee hearing in Sydney and also read many of the submissions; and also Senator Catryna Bilyk, who came to a couple of the committee hearings, particularly in her home state of Tasmania. That group of senators were able to work with our amazing secretariat. As Senator Siewert pointed out, there was lots of emotion and lots of tissues at all these hearings—because there had to be; because we were sharing. It was not a matter of someone giving evidence and people on the other side of the table listening to that evidence and people recording and then for that evidence to go away into the ether. This was a discussion with people who cared.

I want to particularly acknowledge the secretariat, because it is sometimes forgotten that the emotion, the passion and the strain is shared fully by the secretariat members—all of them. The secretary of the committee is Ian Holland, and I acknowledge him and all the members of that team. What happens in these inquiries is that people who want to talk with us find a need to consistently ring up and email and find someone on the other end of the phone with whom they can talk and just make sure that things are happening and things are being done correctly. Often it is not the senators but the secretariat who are the ones who can tell you whether, for example, a woman from Victoria who was promised that she would have extra time to put in her submission but was unwell and too scared to come would have a chance to talk with us at another time.

People would send in inches of paper. I know when the Archives are looking at it there will not just be some small areas put aside for the work that happened in this committee, because there will be boxes. That was the way that people gave their evidence. They were not very often small, typed letters in the form with which we are familiar; there were boxes of photocopied documents that went back, in some cases, to 1953. People had photocopied things that were important to them and which showed clear evidence for them that they existed. One of the elements of this inquiry was that people wanted to make the statement that they existed and that their pain happened—and they wanted the world to know that.

I particularly also want to acknowledge the work of Professor Mushin, who took on the job from the then Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, to move this process forward. What happens so often in this place is that we have inquiries and recommendations and then there is that little gap between when we have the process and when action takes place. The then Attorney-General, Nicola Roxon, was caught up in this process, because so many of the elements of the recommendations talked about basic things, like proof of identity, Births, Deaths and Marriages, whose name was going to be on certificates and legal responsibilities.

We know that while these processes were often shameful and painful, they were also illegal. They were illegal, and we needed to have that focused through the Attorneys-General of states and territories and through our federal Attorney-General. Then Attorney-General Roxon gave the job to Professor Mushin to move forward, and he and his team from the Attorney-General's Department brought the same commitment, passion and care to this whole process. The comments that I made about our secretariat I share with the people who worked on this process in terms of the linkages they made.

We heard powerful words this morning and we heard commitments about future actions. We will continue to watch those future actions to ensure that they fulfil the challenge that was given to us by the people who trusted us to take this issue forward. I particularly want to acknowledge the women, the men and all the families who have been caught up in this journey—and it is a journey—and I especially want to thank the women who gave their trust to their parliamentarians, their senators. They shared with us painful and special parts of their lives. I also want to commend them for their resilience, their anger and their determination that this was going to be a Senate process that would not just disappear into the realms of academic research or onto the shelves to gather dust—that the 20 recommendations that came out of this report were going to have some response and action was going to be taken to the right the wrongs, of which there were many.

But still the most poignant for me is the statement that I have repeated many times: 'I want my child to know that I love them.' Whilst we will not be able to personally go to the unknown numbers—again, one of our shames is that we will never know exactly how many women, children and families were caught up in this horror—through this process, through our parliament we will be able to ensure that our government has said, 'We're sorry,' our government has said, 'We believe you,' and our government has said, 'We share your pain.' For all the children who did not know their mother or their father, know one thing: they loved you.