Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about a very dear friend of mine, Debra Hocking, who passed away recently from throat cancer. Deb is not a household name, but she certainly deserves to be for all that she achieved in life and for the challenges she overcame to get there. I think that over 14 years this is the speech I've edited the most. I started off with an hour's worth of speech, with funny stories and things to say about her, and you'll understand as I get into my speech why I did that. But I've got limited time. I know I'm going to miss something, but 50 years of friendship—let alone Deb's amazing achievements—are really hard to get into 10 minutes.

Deb was never one to trumpet her own successes or take credit for her work. She was quiet. She was a humble achiever. But she did have—and this is probably why we were such good friends—a very colourful vocabulary. Deb believed in forgiveness but not in forgetting, and that was critical to a change in Deb's life and what she went on to do. We've all heard of the stolen generation, and it's to this country's great shame that Aboriginal children were removed from their families as late as the 1960s. Deb was a member of the stolen generation, removed from her family at the age of 18 months in 1961. Growing up, she faced incredible adversity. At primary school she was bullied and referred to as 'the gutter child', even though she was fair skinned. At home she was discriminated against and physically and sexually abused by members of her foster family. At least when she got to high school—which is where I met Deb—she established some valuable lifelong friendships, but it wasn't until we were adults that Deb actually opened up to us about her former life and the issues she had gone through. There are about 10 of us who have kept in contact for over 40 years, and she did tell us that school was her safe place. She felt safe at school, and I'm really honoured to have been part of the group that helped Deb to feel safe.

There are a couple of funny stories that I'll tell before I get on to what an amazing person she was. Deb loved music. She could play the guitar, and my lasting memory of Deb involves three songs that I don't think will ever get out of my head. In high school we'd get to school early and grab the guitars, which were locked up. Because Deb was only this high and quite petite, we'd send her over the wall—there was a gap like this—she would unlock the door and we would be able to get the musical instruments. By grade 10 the staff had decided we were probably pretty safe with the instruments and gave us the keys, but this is what we did until then. A lot of us would sit around singing or doing whatever, and Deb was one of the guitar players. The three songs are 'House of the Rising Sun'—which shows my age—'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' and 'Everything I Own', by Bread. I will never be able to hear those songs without thinking of Deb.

Although Deb felt safe at school, she was unable to escape the abuse. The welfare authorities would check on her and she would lie and tell them she was happy because if she didn't—if she reported otherwise—she was physically punished by her foster parents. She also accepted her treatment at home as the norm because she didn't have anything else to compare it to. Deb made repeated requests to see her biological family but she was told they didn't want her. After 15 years in a foster home, Deb ran away and lived on the streets. She survived by scavenging for food out of skip bins so she didn't starve. It's quite a serious issue, obviously, but she would tell us lots of funny stories about how, because she was so small, she was the one who had to get into the skip and was left there when the police came around. But Deb eventually decided that wasn't the way to live, so she walked into one of the banks—this is what you could do back in the seventies—she asked for a job and she got a job.

All through her life Deb was tenacious in seeking information about her family, and when the authorities refused to give access to her file she staged a daily sit-in in the department. Eventually a public servant felt sorry for her and gave her access to her file illegally. She was given half an hour in a room with her file, a notepad and a pen, and amazingly it turned out that her mother lived not five minutes away from her and there were letters in that file from her mother, begging to get her back. Her other siblings went back to her mother eventually; Deb never did. Deb's mum was really ill when she found her. She had a visit with her mother—obviously it was hugely emotional; you can just imagine what it was like—and didn't get to have a real proper dialogue through all the emotion and tears, and just shortly after that visit Deb received a call from hospital to say her mum was dying. Her mother died two minutes after Deb arrived to see her, so twice she saw her mother since she was 18 months old.

Deb searched out other members of her biological family. But she had been separated from them for 20 years by then, so it was a hard adjustment for her. She told me that she suffered this kind of identity crisis that a lot of members of the stolen generations experience—that of existing in a space between two worlds but not feeling like you fully belong anywhere. Despite all of this—you would think it would be very easy for Deb to give up on life—Deb worked hard to connect with her Aboriginal culture and ancestors and to reclaim her identity as an Aboriginal woman. Deb's life experience motivated her to take a strong interest in Aboriginal affairs, and after the end of her first marriage, after more than 20 years—she had worked in the family business but predominantly been a stay-at-home mum to four beautiful kids—Deb enrolled at university to pursue her interests. She had left Tasmania. She studied Aboriginal health, which gave her an insight into the disadvantage suffered by Aboriginal people in not just areas such as health, housing and economic participation but the loss of their spiritual and cultural identity.

Deb's life featured in the 2018 documentary Risking Light, which followed three people from around the world as they explored the journey from grief to compassion to forgiveness, and I attended a screening of Risking Light in the Hobart Town Hall a couple of years ago and was deeply moved by all three stories but particularly by Deb's, given the friendship I have with her. On 9 August there's going to be another screening of that documentary as a memorial to Deb in Hobart. Despite the turmoil of Deb's upbringing she achieved incredible success in education, work and life. Shortly before her death Charles Sturt University offered her an honorary professorship, so she was Professor Hocking. She put extensive energy into helping and representing Aboriginal people and was a driving force behind progress towards truth-telling and reconciliation in Tasmania. Deb served as the chair of the Stolen Generations Alliance, an organisation which liaises with stolen generations survivors around Australia to advance their issues, and this organisation also helped reunite families that had been torn apart by the removal of Aboriginal children. She led the committee that organises Sorry Day events in Tasmania, and in this role she also travelled around visiting schools to explain to schoolchildren the importance and significance of Sorry Day and saying sorry.

Over the years Deb formed strong, productive relationships with political leaders, including with former Tasmanian Premier Paul Lennon and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and in 2006 Mr Lennon delivered an apology in the Tasmanian parliament to the stolen generations and established a redress scheme. Deb was very involved in the discussions with the Premier about the wording of the apology and details of the redress scheme. She also participated in discussions with the Commonwealth around the wording of the National Apology delivered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008, and earlier this year when Deb was dying, when she was actually in palliative care, I spoke to Kevin and he sent her a personal video to thank her for all her hard work.

I've got pages of what Deb did. I've adlibbed and I've missed the plot. I've lost a lot of time with that, so I might continue this in the adjournment next week. But I do just want to say that Deb made an incredible contribution to the task of reconciliation, and I know that she would have been ecstatic to see the election of a federal Labor government that's committed to implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart. We still have a long way to go. Deb, I haven't finished with you yet. I miss you. I'll come back and finish another time.