Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services) Share this | Hansard source

Limited time means that I only briefly cite the emotional aspects of last week and recognise the Prime Minister and the new government’s action on this matter. The only statistic I would like to cite in regard to Aboriginal deprivation, because so many other speakers have talked about that issue, is a comment by Mark Davis in the Sydney Morning Herald last week, which perhaps put it in a different context. He said:

If the Aboriginal unemployment rate applied to the whole country, the ranks of the jobless would number well over 1.4 million.

In 2006, 1262 babies died in Australia. If the Aboriginal infant mortality rate applied to the whole population, that number would have been 3155.

One of the other important aspects of the Indigenous question in this country is that their condition leads to further discrimination and marginalisation. It is the same around the world, no matter where you look. In Copenhagen at the waterfront, you will see Inuit people from Greenland heavily inebriated, marginalised and discriminated against in society. In the Netherlands, you will find that Surinamese people are very overrepresented in their prison system. It even happens in New Zealand—which we hold up as a model. A recent article in the Guardian made these points:

Maori are three times more likely to die from a violent assault (and four times as likely to be arrested for violent assault) than non-Maori. They account for over 40 % of all convictions in the courts and 50 % of the New Zealand prison population. Maori are nearly three times as likely to be unemployed, and their household income is roughly 70 % of the national average. Health wise, Maori life expectancy is nearly 10 times lower than non-Maori.

The point I am making is that the condition of Indigenous people in this country leads people to further denigrate them, to say that it is their fault and it is because of their blood et cetera. The reality is that, internationally, suppressed people have this experience. Even in the United States, where we see huge moneys gained by casinos because of a technicality in the US law, if you go beyond the communities involved you will find great deprivation, suffering, health problems, imprisonment and unemployment. So it is important to stress that the condition of Aboriginals in this country really furthers the problem in the views of many people. These people further underestimate Aboriginals, their accomplishments and their ability because of the very suffering and discrimination they suffer in the first place.

I do not want to dwell on what others have previously covered. I want to cite work done by Kim O’Grady with regard to the experience of members of my wife’s wider family. I quote as to the seizure of some members of her family:

It was 7.00 am and Kitty … and Jimmy, the two eldest, were in the car before anyone really knew what was happening. The police roughly pushed them into the car and demanded that—

the—

two remain there or they would take their mother and put her in jail. They went and grabbed Mary from Nellie’s arms and tossed her in the back of the car with her siblings. Nellie began to plead with the police not to take her baby, Mary. Nellie then turned and told Annie, her six-year-old daughter, to run and get her grandfather. Before Annie could do this she was caught by the station manager who placed her in the car. Nellie pleaded for the police to deliver up her children and all the time the children were crying and yelling for their mother. All the police did was wave a piece of paper in front of Nellie saying it was the law.

In this work it is furthermore said:

The wife of—

the—

station master appeared with the infant, Francis, later known as Phillip … Nellie was crying wildly. Then a voice came from the rear of the … car. It was Catherine—

one of her children—

and she said, “Mummy don’t cry. Don’t cry mummy ”. These were to be some of the last words that Nellie heard from her daughter.

It is further commented that it should be mentioned that at the same time this was occurring to another relative’s child, ‘Denis, who was living at Bathurst Street, Singleton’ being ‘some 150 miles’ and ‘south of Walcha’. He was ‘taken on the same day’, probably at about the same hour. In her experience, the relative’s children were placed together in a house in east Maitland. The work said:

It was here that the children had a terrible time with the “foster” mother … This woman made the girls sleep on the floor and gave them nothing to eat except bread and jam.

…       …            …

It has been discovered by the author that—

the mother—

… had made numerous attempts to see her girls but the powers that be at the time refused to let Nellie anywhere near her children. They often gave the excuse that the girls were in hospital and were in the contagious ward and therefore allowed no visitors.

Furthermore, it is said of the child Kitty:

It was also about this time, probably in 1926, that she was told by a doctor in the orphanage that her mother Nellie had been to hospital to have an operation and had died. In truth Nellie did not die until 1970.

It is stated further along:

It was also the time when her gaolers attempted to brainwash her into believing that she was born in Ireland and had come … with her mother by ship.

It said of another one of the sisters:

Mary had been initially sent to the infants home but now was with her eldest sister again. They were both caught by the police about 20 miles … from Singleton and returned to the home. Here, as was the custom, the nuns thrashed both girls and placed them in a room similar to a broom closet.

…       …            …

About 1926—

the mother—

made it to see two of her children who were, apart from Mary and Kitty, split up all around the state of New South Wales … the brainwashing had taken an enormous effect—

on the children.

When Nellie told them that she was their mother the children refused to believe her. Nellie said in a sobbing voice, “yes, I am your mummie and I love you both very much”. Kitty remembers that the nuns and the doctors immediately upon Nellie’s departure began to reinforce that Nellie was not their mother, that their real mother was dead and that they were white girls … born in Ireland.

They would say that this woman Nellie was mad. Furthermore, it is said that of Kitty, given her whole existence, that by the time she gave this testimony in her 90s to a family member she apparently talked very lucidly, with great memory of events. She spoke of an unknown person called ‘Rosemary’, who had given her a toy dog as a child. It said:

To this day—

and remember that this woman by now was in her 90s—

has a dog which she keeps with her at all times and she calls Prince.

It is not unreasonable to appreciate that this toy given to her by Rosemary may well have—

been—

the only toy that Kitty could call her own in the entire childhood. How depressing this childhood must have been for the Walsh children. It seems to the author that Kitty has stayed in this world just to make contact with her kin, and to ensure that this story is related to as many others as possible so that this may not happen again.

That is a brief extract from a very reliable firsthand account of one person’s experiences in the system. I appreciate, as some speakers have said, that in many cases people did this with good motivation. However, we can also quote—and these quotes are publicly available—health officials, politicians and welfare workers that this was also a process to possibly eliminate the Aboriginal race in this country by basically breeding it out and by isolating members of the community.

As I say, it is very appropriate that an apology was made last week, but I am hopeful that both sides of politics, in a bipartisan way, will work together to try to combat the obvious problems in health, education et cetera. As well as citing those quotes, I want to say that the  seizure of four children in my wife’s family in that account was also accompanied by the seizure of about three other children. I will not go through their details, but the stories are fairly similar.

But, perhaps a little bit differently from other members, at this stage I also want to talk on a local basis of people that have striven to accomplish what happened last week. As early as 1997, after the receipt of the Bringing them home report, Parramatta City Council was one of the first councils in Australia to say sorry. This motion was moved by then Councillor Phil Russo, a long-time campaigner on these matters. My wife, Maureen, was a proud member of that council. The current Lord Mayor, Paul Barber, continues a strong tradition of commitment on these matters. This simple action led the council to being one of the first to officially fly the Aboriginal flag in acknowledgement of the dispossession of Aboriginal lands. These actions led to the Parramatta City Council forming the Parramatta Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Committee. To this day, the committee is very active in every aspect of council’s life. With members such as Doug Desjardines and Bruce Gale, the commitment of the council is assured. I must note that, after initial reticence, Liberal and independent members of the council have joined over the past decade in being supportive of these actions. I would also mention that, sadly, Auburn council in my municipality was amongst the last councils in Sydney to fly the flag. So we have the two extremes of that process.

I also acknowledge the work of local activists such as Lyn Leerson, Annie Neilson and Phil Bradley who, with other members of the Reconciliation for Western Sydney group, have persistently conducted a diverse range of activities to promote Aboriginal identity and acknowledge their suffering. Local Aboriginal identities like Frank Towney, a former shearer, long-term member of the AWU and president of my local Granville East ALP branch sadly did not live to witness last week’s events. However, he knew that the mainstream community was reaching knowledge that a terrible wrong had been committed. For these people, there was no turning back and the recalcitrance of the previous Prime Minister has now been superseded by bipartisan agreement to help right the wrong.

Similarly, the adjacent Holroyd City Council led the way in the acknowledgement that we as a community must work together to better serve the most disenfranchised in our society. To their honour, they have produced widely respected educational tools, highlighting the original Darug people. Former mayor Mal Tulloch fought tenaciously to have the new suburb in the area named after the famed warrior Pemulway. This council’s NAIDOC events are highly successful and represent a continuing commitment by council, its officers and councillors. I make the point that the Labor Party has only had control of that council for about two years in its 100 years of existence, but these measures are universally supported by all councillors of all political persuasions and there is activity by them.

I want to also briefly take the opportunity to highlight Aboriginal people’s diverse contributions to society in my area. Former local councillor Phillip Gordon’s son Phillip is a renowned museum expert in Indigenous matters, representing Australia at many international conferences in respect of museums and heritage. Leicla Brown retrained as a nurse at a stage when many would be retiring, to make a contribution to society. Her family are the backbone of Blaxcell Street Public School’s Indigenous unit, providing opportunities for cultural enrichment for the disproportionate number of Aboriginals attending that school. Roy Mundine, the father of Warren Mundine, the national president of the Labor Party, is also a local—a man who had his dog tag until the day he died and had it buried with him to make sure that there was continuing recognition of the suffering that Aboriginals endured in this country.

These are people making a local contribution. There are many other Aboriginal people in my area who possess tertiary qualifications. I hope that last week was not only the beginning of a symbolic recognition of what has been borne by Aboriginal people in this country but also the beginning of a recognition that we really do have to have a common purpose to alleviate their condition.

Internationally, you can see this no matter where you are. I talked about the Netherlands and Denmark. The indigenous people in Taiwan, who are predominately Christian, are marginalised. All we see there is the ability of the tourists to see a few folk dances. They are very much outside society. Japan’s Ainu people are also ostracised in a fashion that is perhaps comparable to the Indian caste system. These are all examples of the reality of the world, and it is happening today in Brazil as the demands of soya bean manufacturers and ranchers mean that lands of indigeneous people are seized.

The main point I would like to get across is that the conditions of Aboriginal people in this country—the fact that their educational accomplishment is so low and that one in three Aboriginal women in this country is abused—historically lead people to be further negative towards Aboriginal people because they see these conditions as somehow intrinsic to their nature rather than as part of their suppression. It does not matter what country you are in; wherever suppression occurs that is the long-term experience of people. Who knows, when the Normans conquered Britain it was probably the reality of the Saxon people. They were marginalised and they endured similar deprivation and discrimination for many centuries afterwards. You can go to Spain and France and understand that until the last 50 to 100 years the Celtic people of Galicia and Brittany had the same experience of marginalisation. You will probably also find statistics and demography that point to the same deprivation as that experienced by the Australian Aboriginal people.

I congratulate the government for its initiative on this matter. I congratulate the Leader of the Opposition for associating himself with it and hope that we can go forward on these matters.

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