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

I present the report of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee on former forced adoption policies and practices.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I present this report with great pleasure. I say 'pleasure' but it is pleasure in terms of finally having this issue addressed. The time I have to speak now will not do justice to the report and the evidence we have been given, so I urge members of the community to read the report.

I would like to start by quoting Ms Charlotte Smith, who we quote in our report. She said:

A mother whose child has been stolen does not only remember in her mind, she remembers with every fibre of her being.

I would like to acknowledge all the mothers, fathers, adoptees and family members who are in the galleries today. Some have for the first time shared their experience of their forced adoption with the committee and the community. I know how much it took for them to do that and what a toll it has taken. I would also like to quote from a mother who wanted her name withheld. She said:

I'd lie in bed every night with my arms wrapped around my baby inside of me knowing that I would never hold him after birth. I'd feel his feet and hands through my own stomach as he moved around, knowing that I wasn't ever going to feel them after he was born. I'd talk to him and tell him that I would find him again one day and that I and his father loved him and always would. I'd pray to God every night for him to send [someone] to get me out of there and show me a way to keep my baby, but no one did. I'd think of running away, but where would I run to, who would I run to.

That typifies so many of the stories that we heard from women who thought they could do nothing else but not consent. People did not always consent, but nothing else was going to happen than having their baby taken.

On behalf of the committee, I acknowledge and sincerely thank the mothers, fathers, adoptees and family members who contributed to this inquiry and shared their accounts—and these were accounts, not stories, of their experience; that was very clearly said during the inquiry—as I said, sometimes for the first time. These accounts had a profound effect on committee members and, I am sure, on all who heard them.

It is undoubted that past policies and practices have caused great harm and hurt to mothers, fathers, adoptees and their family members. You cannot come to any other conclusion when you are listening to the evidence. We received hundreds and hundreds of submissions, we spoke to dozens and dozens of witnesses—not everybody, because we just could not—and we received thousands and thousands of pages of submissions and evidence. We also had access to national archives and archives from various government departments. The evidence tells the accounts of mothers and fathers who were pressured into giving up their babies by their families, institutions—both state and territory and private institutions—social workers, doctors, nurses and those who they rightly expected to help them. There was evidence of consent not properly taken. There was evidence of coercion. All the pressure, practices and policies have had lifelong impacts on mothers, fathers, adoptees and family members.

To the adoptees I would like to say: we know that your mothers did not abandon you. You were not thrown away. This is what we have received evidence about as well: the babies who were adopted, who are now adults, felt that they had been abandoned. Mothers have told us that they do not want their now adult children to feel that. I quote from the report:

The committee received evidence from hundreds of women who gave birth in hospitals and other institutions between the late 1950s and the 1970s. Overwhelmingly, these women alleged that laws were broken or that there was unethical behaviour on the part of staff in those institutions. The common failings included applying pressure to women to sign consents, seeking consent earlier than permitted by the legislation, failing to get a consent signature or obtaining it by fraudulent means, and denial of reasonable requests, particularly for a mother to have access to her child. As explained—

in our report—

certainly after new laws were enacted in the mid-1960s, actions of these types would in some cases have been illegal. Other experiences that reflected unethical practices included failure to provide information, and failure to take a professional approach to a woman's care. It is time for governments and institutions involved to accept that such actions were wrong not merely by today's values, but by the values and laws of the time. Formal apologies must acknowledge this and not equivocate.

The committee believes that governments and institutions need to take a more credible approach to the former forced adoption practices. The committee does not express a view on any particular cases or on the prevalence of illegal or unethical actions, but apologies that deny them altogether lack credibility in the face of the weight of evidence. The committee agrees that official apologies should also identify the key wrongs that vulnerable mothers were not given the care and respect that they needed during this difficult period of their lives, that mothers were poorly advised, that they were stigmatised by professionals and institutions and that organisations and their staff in positions of authority stood in judgment of these women instead of respecting them.

The committee recommends that the Commonwealth government issue a formal statement of apology that identifies the actions and policies that resulted in forced adoption and acknowledges, on behalf of the nation, the harm suffered by many parents whose children were forcibly removed and by the children who were separated from their parents. The committee recommends that state and territory governments and non-government institutions that administered adoption should issue formal statements of apology that acknowledge practices that were illegal or unethical as well as other practices that contributed to the harm suffered by many parents whose children were forcibly removed and by the children who were separated from their parents.

We have heard it said that what happened reflected the standards and the views of the time. We believe that is in fact not true. The committee concludes—

An incident having occurred in the gallery—

The committee concludes that the government and institutions in the 1960s and 1970s were presented with a range of professional advice about adoption. Little of it challenged adoption as a practice; however, a great deal of it cautioned against placing pressures on mothers to encourage the surrender of babies for adoption, and some of it explicitly drew attention to the requirements of the law and the risks of it being violated. The evidence presented to us also shows that adoption should not have been treated as inevitable. We recommend that official apologies should include statements that take responsibility for the past policy choices made by institutions, leaders and staff and not be qualified by reference to values or professional practice during the period in question.

I am going to run out of time to address all of the 20 recommendations that are contained in this report. It also refers to the need for a national framework to address issues of reparation around the provision of professional support and counselling services, access to data and grievance procedures. I urge every member of this chamber and the community to read the report. I would like to specifically acknowledge in the time I have available the very hard work of my fellow committee members. This was a really, really hard inquiry. It was a very emotional inquiry. You could not help but take to heart the stories of the people, many of whom are in the gallery today. I would also very strongly like to thank the work of the committee secretariat: Dr Ian Holland, Dr Tim Kendall, Mr Gerry McInally, Ms Janice Webster and Mr Tim Hillman. These people went above and beyond the call of duty in order for us to get this report finished, particularly as our committee has a very heavy workload. We wanted as a committee to do justice to the accounts and experiences of the mothers, the fathers, the adoptees and the families who gave us so much evidence. For us, the evidence is overwhelming. The damage caused by these past policies and practices is overwhelming. It happened. We cannot deny it happened, and we need to apologise and put in place a framework that addresses it. (Time expired)

An incident having occurred in the gallery—

Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before Senator Moore commences, I know that this is a very emotional issue, but I just remind people in the gallery that, whilst it was tolerated the first time and the second time, it would be nice if you would refrain from applauding. I understand that the emotional aspect is there, but we do need to maintain that decorum in the Senate. Thank you, and I hope you understand.

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

Thank you, Mr Deputy President. To the people in the gallery, to the people who are listening to this and to the people who have given us their lives, this is your report. Take it, read it and be proud, because none of this would have happened without each of you who have given us the incredible honour and the responsibility of putting on paper and putting into the community knowledge your histories.

Five years ago in my office in Brisbane, three women came to see me. They brought some pictures and a couple of books that they had written, and they brought their pain and their anger and their disgust, because no-one had believed what had happened to them. I was sitting listening to them at that time and I personally could not believe that in my country, in places that I knew, to people with whom I had worked, the experiences that they told me about had happened. In some ways, I was a bit fortunate because I live in Brisbane, and the first formal acknowledgement of the work that had happened and the horror that had occurred was made by the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, a hospital I knew well. I think it is important that we recognise here that a number of people over the last five years have begun to formally acknowledge the horrors that occurred in our community.

That is not to say that people did not know beforehand. No-one can pretend that what appears in our report was completely unknown in this country. It was known. Either it was ignored or it was explained away that the way these women were treated was somehow for their good. They were looking to—and I quote this with great emphasis—'the best interests of the child'. When I heard the women who gave evidence to the inquiry, and when I heard particularly the children of those women who gave evidence, I could accept that some people in the past thought that they were acting in the best interests of the child. However, I challenge those people now, wherever they are, whatever their values base was and whatever their explanations were, to ask those children: was it actually in the best interests of the children, who had no choice? Was it actually in the best interests of the mothers, who were in some cases—and I do qualify it by saying 'in some cases'—given no choice? Was it actually in the best interests of the fathers, many of whom could not come to our inquiry because they did not know what had happened?

So often we found out during the process that fathers were dismissed and the knowledge that they were going to be parents was kept from them. In many cases the mothers and fathers were separated, but my particular horror was the fact that in many cases they were threatened with the law of the day so that if the mother gave the name of the father and they were under age their whole freedom, their legal record and their chance to have any future were all threatened. That they would know they were going to have a child was a risk.

What we have been able to do in this place is important, but it is only the first step. Sometimes, in the wonderful job we have in the Senate, we can be part of something that has real potential to change lives and to change our community. I think today is one of those days. We can share in the Senate with the people for whom it is most important an opportunity to take a step forward. We have 20 recommendations. They will go through the processes and go to governments. However, the key aspect is that the history of what happened in our country, what happened to women, what happened to men and what happened to the children—who are now adults but I say at this stage 'the children'—over a long period of time will now be known and acknowledged.

One of the most poignant moments of our whole inquiry was when a woman stood before us and said: 'I just want to make sure that my child knows that I loved him. I want to make sure that he'—she had found out through the system that her child had been born and was a boy—'knows that I did not give him away.' Every family deserves to know their own history.

Different senators will talk about different things and this discussion will go on, but I want to talk about knowing who you are and knowing that you have a birth certificate that indicates who you are. One of our key recommendations in this report is that people be able to seek and have true documents of identification—I almost gave a little clap there as well. I am not negating the role of adoptive parents. I am not negating the role of adoptive families. However, every person in this country has the right to know exactly who their birth parents are. There needs to be a genuine proof of identity for all purposes in our country. One of our key recom­mendations in 2012 is that that documen­tation should be available anywhere you live in this country. It should be there so you know who your mother was and who your father was—if that is known. People know, when original birth certificates are issued, there is no way you can separate a mother from a child. When a woman gives birth anywhere in this country at any time, you can have no mistake about who has given birth to a child. That is something we can certainly achieve in 2012 through the registry process and across the different areas.

I know that people will read this report. Sometimes you write a report in this place and you know it is going to go onto a shelf and someone will look at it in the future or it will be on some kind of record. I have no fear that people will read this report because of all of you—you will make sure that people read the report. What we need to do together, though, is move forward with the recommendations. Senator Siewert has pointed out clearly that we need to ensure there is a national apology to every one of you: the mothers, the fathers, the children, anyone who was adopted and all the people who were caught up in this horror of our history. We now can say that it is a horror of our history and not pretend that it did not happen. We have also said that that kind of knowledge should be entrenched in some way so that people outside the immediate community will know what happened. We are going to rely on everybody to see what is the best way we can do that.

There will be things that need to happen such as trained professional support for all of those who have been damaged by the process. There needs to be an acknowledgement in our history that this happened. There needs to be consideration for what the people who have been hurt need to have in their own lives, and we need to ensure that people can find one another and if we can help in any way.

I put on record as well my acknowledgement of the secretariat. We have a document here that, perhaps for the first time, looks at what happened as the rules were changed in our country about adoption and adoptive processes.

I say to all of you that this has changed so much in my own life. I say to all of you: I am sorry. I am sorry for your hurt; I am sorry for your pain. I have been made stronger by hearing of the lives you have led and I want to work with each of you into the future to make sure that we have effective processes for people who have been so damaged and so hurt for so long.

Sue Boyce (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The report of the Community Affairs References Committee entitled Common­wealth contribution to former forced adoption policies and practices is a unanimous report from the Labor Party, the Greens and the coalition. We worked very hard to achieve this outcome because this is such an important issue. It was not an issue where there should be any dissent. I add my thanks to those of Senator Siewert and Senator Moore: the people who travelled to be here today, all the submitters, the many dozens of people who appeared as witnesses and particularly the secretariat, who really did go above and beyond. When you get emails that are timed at 1.45 am from people trying to get drafts exactly right so that we could be here to release this report today, you know they are caring just as much as we are. There are, as we have said, 20 recommendations in this report, and seven of those 20 specifically deal with apology. They set out not only who should make formal apologies—the Commonwealth, the states, the territories, the organisations, the hospitals and the institutions that were involved in the forced adoption industry—but also how to make them. We thought this was very important. It is perhaps not uncommon now for general apologies to be made to people who have been harmed by behaviours of the past—but there are apologies and there are apologies. It is very important to acknowledge that, whether you think people were doing what they thought was the right thing at the time, you know it was not the right thing—to acknowledge that people need reparation, they need redress, to get on and to move on from the issues.

This inquiry took us 18 months. We started in November 2010. We were intending to report much earlier than this but there were the sheer volume of information, the type of information and the need to, in most cases, have a community forum. We had nine hearings; we went to every capital city and in most cases we had a community forum as part of our inquiry system. It was so important to give as many people as possible the chance to tell their story. As Senator Siewert said, there were a lot of people who had not told their story until this inquiry was held, and many found it very helpful to be able to give their account of what had happened to them.

Before we started this inquiry I knew of five people, three of them within my extended family, who had been affected by what I now call forced adoptions. It was not a term I had even thought about, and thank you for giving me that opportunity. Since we have started this inquiry, it is not just the hundreds of submitters but people who you meet in everyday life who tell you that this happened to them. I was even talking to an adviser to a senior politician yesterday and she said, 'My mother was one of those people' She has an older sibling that they cannot find.

Perhaps my first experience of the problems of forced adoption was a woman who worked for me many years ago. This was just on the cusp of the internet and she was looking for her son whom she knew had been adopted to the UK. She was 17 when she became pregnant with him. She put that child up for adoption because her parents told her to, but she went on to marry the father and have two more children with that man. She was looking for the full brother or sister of her existing children, and it was something that got to her every day. She said: 'I was 17 and my mother said to me, "Come home without that thing or don't come home at all". I did not know what to do.' So she came home without 'the thing'. Luckily, she had repaired her relationship with her mother, but she had not at that time found her son.

In some ways that is a mild form of the stories that we heard around forced adoption. There were so many more violent stories about people being literally held down, being drugged and being smacked across the face in front of policemen. As Senator Moore said, some were threatened with their partner being jailed for carnal knowledge if they were to reveal his name, even though the two of them were teenagers together. Even amongst all of this, we cannot claim that we did not know what was going on, and there was quite a lot of evidence that we received around what was known at the time about what was the right way to go about it. I would like to quote briefly from Marie Coleman, who I think is probably well known to many people here as a great advocate for women. She said:

We had a situation where women who became pregnant outside of a marital relationship fundamentally had three options. One was a shotgun wedding, one was an illegal abortion and one was adoption. There were no benefits or supports to enable women to keep their children with them. When one looks at some of the other literature … the state of orphanages and children's homes through the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s was pretty shocking.

She was dead right; it was pretty shocking.

As we have said before, this inquiry is about forced adoption. We attempted to flesh out and tease out some of the reasons why adoption became, I guess, the flavour of the decade. Adoptions in Australia peaked in 1971 and 1972. There were 9,798 adoptions in 1971-72. Last year there were 412. That gives you an idea of how we got very excited about adoption and how we have learned some of the lessons about the problems with adoption. Forced adoption is defined as meaning 'adoption where a child's natural parent or parents were compelled to relinquish a child for adoption'. So we are not talking about situations where an adoption may have been willingly entered into knowledgeably and in an informed way by people who did genuinely consent to having their child adopted, whether they were married or not. We are talking about where people were forced into the situation.

We talked also about the area of knowledge that was held at the time and the types of accounts that we have. The Royal Women's Hospital, for instance, has been criticised at some length in our report. We did not do this because we think it was a particularly bad example but simply because we have quite a lot of evidence from people who were affected by what happened at the Royal Women's Hospital. Perhaps I should clarify: it is an awful example but it is no worse than many, many others and perhaps better than some. We had a lot of evidence about it. The Royal Women's Hospital had 5,000 adoptions between 1940 and 1987, and we have significant evidence from some of the people there. Yet they could say in a report that they found 'no evidence of illegal practices' at the RWH and 'no evidence of hospital-wide policies that discriminated specifically against single mothers'. We go on to outline nine witness accounts—and there were many more that we could have used—which would suggest that there had been policy-wide practices and that there was knowledge at the time about the brutality of what was happening. One nurse who worked in the Royal Women's Hospital in the 1960s and 1970s, who has apologised herself, said:

Yes, we had taken babies from their mothers at birth, without them holding or even seeing their child. The mothers were then admitted into wards without their babies and ostracised in many different ways, finally being discharged about 1 week later … I felt very sorry for what I had done even though at the time we believed what we were doing was "right" for the child and the mother. However I now believe that the process was very cruel, unjust and very dehumanising to both mother and child.

These are eyewitness accounts that the Royal Women's Hospital could use to perhaps re-examine the idea that they could find no evidence that forced adoption practices occurred in their hospital in the fifties, sixties and seventies. I hope that what our report does is add to what should already exist: the legitimacy of these eyewitness accounts of the treatment that went on not just of the women but of their children and the fathers of those children.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on this very important inquiry by the Senate Community Affairs References Committee into the Commonwealth contribution to former forced adoption policies and practices. This inquiry has been a very emotional and traumatic journey and has involved a large number of personal stories which would have been very difficult to share. I would like to place on record my thanks and appreciation to all those people who have recounted their painful stories. Many of these stories had not been told before. You have all made a personal sacrifice, but it is a sacrifice that means your experiences can no longer be ignored. I would also like to acknowledge that, very understandably, some women found giving evidence too distressing and have yet to tell their story.

Since the beginning of the inquiry in November 2010, the committee has received hundreds of individual submissions and submissions from organisations, including boxes and boxes of archival material. Also obtained was a range of additional information, correspondence and answers to questions placed on notice with witnesses. A range of documentary records were also used. The committee held 10 public hearings and visited every capital city except Darwin. I will talk particularly about the hearing in my own home state of Tasmania a little later on. I would like to give my sincere thanks to the committee secretariat for their support and research for this important inquiry. Their hard work is evident, I believe, in the quality of the final report.

The term 'forced adoption' is as cruel as it sounds. For a period of time from the late 1940s up until, in some cases, the late 1980s, single mothers were made to give up their babies. This fact is indisputable. They were forced to do this through a range of different means, including being coerced, being drugged, being tricked into signing adoption papers or being physically shackled to beds. I think I can speak for all members of the committee when I say that the pain these young women must have experienced, and still continue to experience, is unimaginable for those of us who have not been through it.

As evidenced by the stories told in the report, these women were also treated appallingly throughout their pregnancies by the very institutions that were meant to be caring for them. There are allegations of unethical or even unlawful practice. In some cases doctors, nurses, social workers and midwives showed no respect to these frightened and often very young women. There are also descriptions of poor medical treatment being provided to these mothers during the birth, with medical staff taunting them about their unwed status and not providing proper pain relief or proper treatment. Some of the behaviour towards these mothers can only be described as unethical. One of the mothers who made a submission recalls:

I was treated inhumanely. A nurse even told me the pain I was experiencing was punishment for getting pregnant before marriage. I was ignored and left alone with the contractions until the birthing began. I had no idea what to expect. They shouted at me, and then pushed a gas mask onto my face. They made comments about me, but didn't talk to me at all.

To add to the pressure being exerted to adopt their child out, vital information was also withheld. Single pregnant women were not told of the social security benefits available to them were they to keep their baby; they were pushed towards adoption as their only legitimate choice. Added to this, many families sent women away to unfamiliar surroundings with no family or friends for support. Once babies were born, the 'clean break' theory on many occasions was implemented. The 'clean break' theory meant that mothers were often denied the right to hold or even see their child before it was taken away. They were given drugs to dry up their milk, their breasts were bandaged up and they were not told the gender of their child. When they asked to see their babies they were told it was in the best interests of their children that they were sent somewhere else and they were selfish to not want the best for their child.

At the hearing in Hobart I heard one of the mothers describe her experience in the hospital in an eloquent and powerful way. She said:

They created an unbalance of power: the power of hospital staff was lined up alongside that of married prospective adoptive parents who wanted a baby—my baby. Staff allegiance was to them, not to me. They did not hear or see me. I was nothing and no-one. I was in a place where I was supposed to be cared for—hospital—but I was ignored. I was guilty of nothing, yet I was made to feel ashamed, guilty, inferior and bad.

The Salvation Army representative at the hearing in Hobart also supported these descriptions. He spoke of recalling the great distress of mothers in hospitals at not being able to see their babies and of mothers not recalling signing consent forms and not being able to revoke the consent even within the legal consent period. Many, I have to say, never knew that revoking consent was even an option.

Many more similar stories were told. We heard that the ripple effect from these forced adoptions is huge and includes the mothers, their children and some of the nurses and social workers who look back on the practices with anxiety. We heard firsthand from mothers how the ongoing trauma of having their baby forcibly removed is still impacting on their lives. They also spoke of the successful and unsuccessful attempts to reunite with their children who were taken away and the anger that many of the children who were adopted still felt. The former chair of the joint select committee of the Tasmanian parliament that looked into adoption between the years of 1950 and 1988 told a story of a 17-year-old woman who had a loving supportive boyfriend and a grandmother she lived with and who was going to look after the baby so the girl could resume her work and study. Despite having all this, the baby was forcibly adopted because she was unwed.

In light of these practices that I have just outlined and the many submissions made to the inquiry, the report handed down today outlines some very clear recommendations. Perhaps the strongest of these recommen­dations is the call for the Commonwealth to issue a formal statement of apology that identifies the actions and policies that resulted in forced adoptions and that acknowledges the harm suffered by the many parents and children who suffered from forced adoptions. This is because, despite adoption coming under individual state and territory jurisdiction, the Commonwealth is the only body that can legitimately encompass the states and territories in an apology, and the report finds it cannot completely absolve itself of responsibility.

Related recommendations advise that the apology should include statements that take responsibility for the past policy choices made by institutions' leaders and staff and not be qualified by references to values or professional practice during the period in question. The report also states that this apology should be presented in a wide range of forms and be widely published. There is acknowledgment of the other apologies that have already been made, such as the apology from the Western Australian state govern­ment and a handful of other institutions, and the recommendation that other state and territory governments and non-government institutions that administered adoptions should issue formal statements of apology. The development of a national framework through the Community and Disability Services Ministers Conference to address the consequences of forced adoption is also a recommendation.

Other recommendations are about ensuring greater access to records, making these searches easier, and that any institutions that hold records have the undertaking to identify all records and make the information available. The report also recommends that the Commonwealth commission an exhibition so that the experience of those affected by forced adoption practices are documented and not forgotten.

Finally, I would like to note that there is a recommendation that the Commonwealth establish as a matter of urgency affordable and regionally available specialised professional support and counselling services to address the specific needs of those affected by forced adoption as well as the establishment of Commonwealth funded peer support groups. Due to the lack of records, we cannot accurately say the number of forced adoptions that occurred in Australia, but we can estimate that the figure is many thousands. It is made very clear in the report that the practice of forced adoption was wrong, not just by today's values, but by the values and standards of the time. This report cannot change what happened, but it can go a small way towards recognising and righting the wrongs of the past.

I would like to extend my gratitude to all those who shared their accounts with us. It is only through hearing your stories that we can properly understand and acknowledge the practice of forced adoption. It will enable all Australians to know your stories, to understand the wrongs that were carried out on young mothers and young fathers and their children and that these unethical practices shattered lives and did happen. I commend the report to the Senate. I think a fitting way for me to conclude is by using the poignant words of one of the mothers who gave evidence to the inquiry. She said, 'Last but not least, I want people to know that I loved my baby, that she was wanted, and that I am her mother.'

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Between the 1930s and the 1970s, there were about 10,000 babies adopted in Australia each year. In 1971 there were 9,798 adoptions. Twenty years later, by 1991, this had declined to a little over 1,000, and in 2006 a little over 500. Today the average is about three per every 100 live births. Something just does not add up.

The Senate Community Affairs References Committee report, Common­wealth contribution to former forced adoption policies and practices, is a massive report. The issues have been complex and we have worked with a large volume of evidence—and it has been a privilege. The committee heard 418 submissions, many from individuals and others from organisations. The accounts received by the committee dated from the 1950s to as recently as 1987. The reports were very detailed, including a large number of accounts that clearly outlined that babies were taken for adoption against their mother's will.

Many women told us they were pressured, deceived or threatened in order to secure signatures on adoption consent forms—actions that were likely in breach of the policies and laws of the time. For many mothers, their experiences were harrowing. The accounts were very personal and traumatic for the mothers and the children involved. According to the Royal Women's Hospital, up to 45 per cent of Victorian unmarried mothers relinquished their babies for adoption between 1945 and 1975, a period often referred to as the 'heyday of adoption'—and many of these were forced. The dilemma facing the single mother was exacerbated by community attitudes and social values that embraced adoption as the solution to illegitimacy and infertility, and failed to provide viable alternatives.

As a result of the strong community interest and media coverage in this story and the number of submissions, we have taken 18 months to get today. I particularly thank the committee members, who worked extremely hard. Some of them cannot be with us today—and I think particularly of Senator Judith Adams and Senator Coonan, who both contributed to the production of this report. We also considered archival material from the 1950s to the 1970s and worked to shed more light on the Commonwealth's role in past adoption practices. We investigated the roles of the states and territories and the adoption information laws.

Nobody has the right to take a child from its mother. What happened in hospitals throughout Australia was wrong. Most of the 400 or more submissions heard by the committee were harrowing tales of regret, abuse, neglect and loss. People out there may be thinking, 'Not all children who were adopted had a harrowing experience,' and they are right. Given the thousands of babies who were adopted, the committee was not looking for and did not get submissions from happy families. We had a clear reference to look at, talk about and expose forced adoptions. Still, the practice was and remains misguided. Thousands of babies were taken from their mothers, and while there were probably many who had very ordinary childhoods, when you take a child by force or coercion you change a life journey. In many cases you take a part of the mother's soul, and you take the child's heritage. There is loss. I would like to briefly tell two stories of women who had their children taken without consent. Both women were from regional towns in New South Wales, just over the border from Victoria where I am from.

About 45 years ago, Joan discovered she was expecting a baby. She had not realised how babies were made, and when she told her boyfriend he ended the relationship. This was not unusual. In fear and trepidation, she gave her parents the news and asked if, with their help, she might keep the baby. They quickly organised a hospital appointment in Melbourne and she was very clearly told that it would not be possible for her to keep the baby. By the time the baby was born, Joan had a new boyfriend who was courageously prepared to accept the baby as his own. Sadly, the grandparents and the hospital refused to allow it. The baby arrived; the boyfriend held her for a few minutes and the mother was given the forms to sign before the little girl was taken away. The couple were married and had two children of their own. No-one knew, including the couple's children.

Thirty years later, the child sent her mother a letter. She had been part of a loving family but her adopted parents had died and she was ready to learn about her own family history. After searching in Victoria for nearly 10 years, she thought to search the New South Wales registry and, with luck, the two names were connected. Sadly, Joan was very ill with cancer and she died just six months later. And I can tell you that there were some shocked whisperings in the Catholic Church that day when three children, rather than two, gave the eulogy.

In this case, the little girl could easily have been raised by her mother. Before she died, Joan explained that the hospital forced her to sign the adoption documents. The social workers were of the belief that the obstacles facing single mothers were insurmountable and that she could not be sure the young man would marry her now that she had delivered a baby. She was told that adoption was the best possible solution and that it would allow her to 'get on with her life' and 'pretend it hadn't happened'. This position was supported by the nurses and unanimously upheld by her parents. Joan felt enormous pressure to 'do the right thing'. Explaining this to her daughter so many years later and with only months to live, she felt enormous regret. The loss had been so great that she had not known how to explain it to her other children, who were now adults.

The daughter has been closely following the committee inquiry. She might even be here today. I know that she feels an enormous sense of loss for the life she might have led. She wanted more time with her natural mother. She expected the adoption system would keep the details of her birth and make them accessible when she needed them. She felt let down that the details about her arrival were so difficult to find. She is devastated that the system did not support her request to find her mother sooner than she did.

She still does not know anything about her natural father. There is nothing on the record. She does, however, have a brother and sister and a second chance to get to know the man who held her during those first few minutes of life.

The second mother had a relationship with a pilot towards the end of the Second World War. She was more determined than the first. She and the baby's grandmother travelled to Victoria to visit an ageing aunt, and they stayed for six months. When the baby was born, the mother flatly refused to sign the adoption documents. After much coercion, she finally agreed to sign a form that allowed the baby girl to be fostered—with an option to collect her later. The little girl was given to a foster family in Melbourne. They indulged her with love and kindness, opportunities and education until the natural grandmother decided it was time the child was returned to her mother. Sadly, the child was six.

At 65, she often talks about the trauma, confusion and loss of losing her foster family and being handed to the nuns in black on a train at Southern Cross Station on a Sunday afternoon. She was taken to a small country town and given to a mother who was humiliated and a grandfather who would not own her. She would argue that she should have stayed where she was.

I expect that these stories are similar to many thousands of stories where the outcome was not as harrowing or as despicable as the tales we heard during the committee inquiry. Many are contained within the report. Each and every one of these Australians needs our sincere apologies and our acknowledgement. We need to acknowledge that, whatever the intentions and beliefs of the time, past adoption practices caused lasting consequences for many relinquishing mothers, and sometimes also for their children and their extended families. Irrespective of the mores of the time, the committee does not accept that it was legal or ethical to take a child from its mother for the purpose of adoption.

Today we recognise that this action was both illegal and unethical. I understand that many relinquishing mothers experienced, and continue to experience, feelings of grief, pain, anger, helplessness and loss, and for this I apologise unreservedly.

I would like to thank all the women and their children and all the professionals involved for telling us their stories. As the newest member of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee, I would like to thank the committee for its track record in bringing to light the issues of our nation, putting them on the table and exposing the things that we need to take a good, hard look at if we want to be serious about being true to ourselves as a forward-looking nation. It is a testament to the women involved on the committee. I commend the report to the Senate.

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As someone who was not a member of the committee and was not able to participate in this inquiry, I would like to congratulate all on the Community Affairs References Committee and everyone who participated in the inquiry. This was an incredibly disturbing Senate inquiry and an incredibly powerful report, entitled Commonwealth contribution to former forced adoption policies and practices. Only recently I became aware of the expression 'the baby scoop era', which is used to describe what has happened to these people. It is an awful expression, isn't it? It is quite visually challenging, the notion of wrenching a child from its mother's arms, but it is what happened, not just here in Australia but also in Canada, the US and the UK, and it was very much the method of the times. I have read many of the stories documented and I have read many of the submissions, and I am sure they are quite traumatising for everyone.

I have known other stories, personally, and I remember very vividly when I was growing up a young woman being sent to Brisbane. She left town as a wide-eyed, bright young thing and came back six months later distressed and depressed, and eventually she attempted to take her own life. At the same time, girls from an orphanage came to my school, and I remember a discussion in fifth form when one of the girls did not come back to school. There were lots of stories about what had happened to her, told with great fear and trepidation by her friends, and we were just gobsmacked that something like this could be happening. Not long ago, at a school reunion, the issue was raised again as three former classmates revealed to me something of the experiences of forced adoption within their families, which was really quite a shock to me.

As we have heard from the other speakers, the inquiry has received horrible testimony to dreadful evidence. The callousness is gut-wrenching. That is what really comes through. The personal accounts that we saw, and the practices revealed, on the Four Corners program this week really do attest to the courage of the women who are able to tell their story. They did that on behalf of those who could not, and I congratulate them for their courage and their grace.

In 2002 there was a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry into adoption practices, where many similar stories were told of threats made, promises given and the sense of powerlessness and ensuing heartache. Dr Merryl Moor, at the beginning of her 2005 PhD thesis on the subject, to which she gave the title Silent Violence: Australia's White Stolen Children, quoted Jigsaw, that fantastic organisation from Brisbane:

In relation to adoption the question needs to be asked: In what other period of human history did young mothers willingly defy nature and give away their babies en masse to strangers?

It was an unspeakable act of cruelty. We know when we speak of forced adoption that we are talking about something that is culturally imposed and, as we have heard from Senator Boyce, this is very different from someone who makes the tough decision to have a child adopted.

The work of the Community Affairs References Committee is exemplary and so potent and powerful. Since 2007 we have seen acts of injustice recognised. The apology to the stolen generations was, I think, a potent moment in the healing of the Australian psyche. The apology to the forgotten Australians, children raised in institutional care, also helped to ease the pain and hurt of lost childhoods and identities. Today, through this report, I do not just hope but know that we are giving hope to the thousands of young women—and in many cases their parents, families, partners and children—who were forced to relinquish their babies that there can be some redress, some formal acknowledgement of their hurt and pain and some sense that governments, churches, communities and institutions were all wrong.

We all know that many of those involved in removing Aboriginal children from their homes did so in the belief that it was for the greater good. No doubt the same applies to those who thought adoption into a two-parent family was automatically a more desirable outcome than life with an unmarried mother. But the fact that a practice was followed in good faith does not necessarily make it right, and that is what we have heard today. This is the evidence, the culmination. The Four Corners program showed just how much this weighed on the minds of social workers, hospital staff and, I am sure, many adoptive parents.

In 1492, when 'Columbus sailed the ocean blue', as I remember it from my school days, one of the things he did when he got to America was to basically kidnap a Native American child. He later adopted him, had him baptised and called him Diego in order, he said, to save his immortal soul. It might have suited Christopher Columbus very well to have a local translator whom he could control, but I am also prepared to believe that he genuinely thought young Diego would be better off with him than with his own family. However, the sincerity of his belief certainly did not and does not justify the actions. The forced removal of babies in Australia may have been seen by many as an act of kindness intended to save those children from harmful environments but, just as in the case of Christopher Columbus, we know that is simply not good enough.

What we have seen in this Senate report is nothing less than a catalogue of human rights violations, and that is the truth. These were violations of the rights of mothers such as the wonderfully outspoken Christine Cole, whose experience as a 16-year-old inspired her to research the issue and to write her doctoral thesis. It is difficult to convey to people living in a society that values and enforces an individual's civil and human rights what life was actually like 40 or 60 years ago for vulnerable young women who lacked knowledge, support and resources—and, frankly, even for those who did not. Girls were not instructed about pregnancy, labour and delivery. Pregnant girls were hidden away or sent away, to the eternal shame of their families. They were isolated and not provided with information, as we have heard already this afternoon. In short, they were not recognised as legitimate mothers and, when their babies were forcibly removed, nor were they recognised as legitimate mourners.

The work of psychologists such as John Bowlby and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has taught us a lot about love and loss and grief, and the pages of this report bring those psychological theories vividly to life. It is not only the mothers whose human rights were violated; so were the rights of countless children who were denied access to their natural heritage. I would use the term 'ill-conceived' to describe the practice of forced adoption. It was ill-conceived because of the absence of integrity and respect. These values are fundamental to how a society should work: integrity is being forthright, accurate and honest with all partners involved in decisions; and respect is recognising each person's right to autonomous decision making, or what some people call the ethic of self-determination. Adoption is a lifelong process, not a one-time event. When engaging in such a process the innate dignity of human beings—and this, of course, includes the children—must be considered.

Columbus might not have realised this, but we do. The report makes it abundantly clear that human dignity was not a consideration in the case of these young women and their babies. The dominant themes were of raw emotions—betrayal, humiliation, condemnation, abandonment, trickery, grief and, of course, abject loss. The report brings great heartbreak into the light from the shadows of the past—the not too distant past. And although, as Senator Siewert has said, this makes harrowing reading, it is always a good thing when the truth is revealed, even when the truth is what psychiatrist Geoff Rickarby has rightly described as 'a stain on our history'.

Nothing can heal the experience of love and loss of these women, who carry it with them every day. But I sincerely hope that, through this report and the recommendations, we can help remove their sense of shame and restore their dignity and self-worth. My favourite poet, Leonard Cohen, would surely say of this report, 'Nothing's perfect, there's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.' I hope the light shines brightly.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call Senator Pratt, I remind the people in the gallery that we have a limited time to speak about this report. Senator Pratt has only a couple of minutes. But I want you to know that, at the end of her speech, she will move a motion to ensure that the report remains on our Notice Paper. That means tomorrow and the next time we come back for sittings other senators can stand up and add their contribution on this report. Senator Pratt.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to pay tribute to all the people who have given evidence to this inquiry and to thank the committee for its work. This is not an inquiry that I have been able to participate in but it is an issue I have followed closely over many years, having reviewed the Western Australian Adoption Act in the early 2000s. One of the issues that came to light then, and which still causes me distress, is the continuing existence of contact vetoes that are legally enforceable and have criminal offences attached to them. The idea that, in this day and age, we continue to criminalise the desire to contact your kin seems quite extraordinary to me.

I would like to thank all the brave people who have given evidence to this inquiry. I am sorry you even had to ask for an apology because I think the evidence speaks for itself. I certainly apologise. I am truly sorry for your experiences. I would like to pay tribute to brave women like Sue Macdonald, who came to speak to me in my office in West Australia about her experiences and about the need for the Western Australian government to apologise. I am very proud of my home state for having moved that apology and having led the nation in that regard, and it is time for the federal parliament to follow suit.

People deserve to know about their origins, and we need to be very careful that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. Frankly, we are still in danger of repeating many of those mistakes. Adoption acts are certainly much tighter today, and we do realise what an extraordinary thing it is to separate someone from their kin.

I know that there will be a great deal of visibility towards this report today. I had many friends who were adopted, and I know many of them will not yet have reconciled their origins. I would like the visibility of this report to be a cause for all of those people to think about perhaps making contact and using this as that opportunity. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Senate, I thank those people who have come into the chamber this afternoon. Senator Pratt has been given leave to continue her remarks later. That simply means this report will stay on the Notice Paper so that other senators can talk to it in the days and weeks ahead. The report will stay on the Notice Paper as a reminder to us to pick it up, and other people might want to provide a contribution.