Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to recognise and acknowledge the pain and suffering inflicted upon more than 500,000 forgotten Australians in institutional care over the past century. I also rise to offer my support for a formal apology to the forgotten Australians, which the Minister for Families and Communities, Jennifer Macklin, has indicated will occur before the end of 2009. I know how welcome that apology would be to those women and girls who were incarcerated as girls in the Parramatta Girls Home in my electorate. For all those whose lives were diminished by government actions in these institutions an apology is long overdue.

The history of the forgotten Australians is particularly significant in the electorate of Parramatta, particularly for women. The historical precinct on the bank of the Parramatta River, which was home to the Parramatta Girls Home, is known as the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct and it has been a site of incarceration and institutionalisation of women from 1804 to the present day, which is over 200 years. It was the home of the Parramatta Girls Home last century but institutions of various types have been housed there, opened and closed, rebuilt, expanded or added to.

It is undoubtedly one of Australia’s most significant historical sites yet, like the stories of the children imprisoned there, it remains largely neglected and unknown. It was home to the first female convict factory in Australia, later an institution known as the Industrial School for Girls, then the Girls Training School, then the infamous Parramatta Girls Home and its current use is as a prison for women. The female factory at Parramatta was originally built in 1804 and acted as a workhouse, jail and a holding area for newly arrived female convicts and their children. It was the first of the 12 convict factories built around Australia.

In 1841 an orphanage was built adjoining the site and in 1844 with the arrival of children from a Catholic orphanage in Waverley it was renamed the Roman Catholic Orphans School. In 1886 the school was asked to vacate the building and the forerunner of the Parramatta Girls Home, the Industrial School for Females, was declared on 1 April 1887 with the transfer of girls from Biloela. Children were held there under one of two classifications. Firstly, there were those considered destitute, abandoned or orphaned, who were not deemed as corrupt; and, secondly, those who were deemed as having tendencies towards criminal behaviour. But for both it was very much an institution. In 1897 additional isolation cells were built and in the following year there was a number of riots because of a lack of food. By 1910 there was a growing awareness that not all the girls sentenced to the Parramatta Industrial School were corrupt and this saw the establishment of a training home on the adjacent acre. The school was intended for girls of uncontrollable character but not of immoral tendencies but a few years later again trends changed and the schools were merged and renamed the Parramatta Girls Home. Even more isolation cells were built in 1834.

In 1961 there was a repeat of the riots and a derelict jail at Hay in regional New South Wales was gazetted as a maximum security annex of the Parramatta Girls Home and was named the Hay Girls Institution. Remember that these girls were not necessarily in the home because of any criminal tendencies. Tales were told by the Parra girls and the Hay girls of deprivation, of harsh discipline, of life behind walls, of keeping their eyes down, of beatings and of rape. Most of these girls had not committed any offence but had merely been placed in institutions under child welfare legislation. Their crimes included being neglected, being exposed to moral danger, being homeless or being uncontrollable. Many had run away from home because of violence and many were there simply for being Indigenous children who later became known as the stolen generation.

In 1973 a series of protests called for the closure of welfare institutions and in October 1974 the Parramatta Girls Home was not closed but was renamed Kamballa and continued to operate under the management of the child welfare department. In 1980 the Department of Corrective Services took over part of the site and established the periodic detention centre for women. It was closed in 1986, some 99 years after it was opened under a different name. Given that the Parramatta Girls Training School was the principal institution and remand centre for all girls aged between 11 and 18 years in the state of New South Wales until 1966, it is likely that possibly more than 50,000 girls passed through this institution. Of this somewhere between seven and 10 per cent would have been girls of Aboriginal descent.

The rich but tragic history of the site and the appalling stories of abuse and intimidation and its connection to so many contemporary women is told by Bonney Djuric in a recently completed history of the Parramatta Girls Home, Abandon All Hope. Bonney is the driving force behind the Parra girls, an extraordinary group of women who are still putting their lives together after a childhood in one of the most notorious institutions, the infamous Parramatta Girls Home. They are extraordinary women, the Parra girls, raising the profile of women who have similar histories but also of the site itself, a site of 200 years of the incarceration of women and ironically built on the sacred women’s site of the Barramatugal clan of the Darug nation. Bonney’s history is based on extensive research and the first accounts of survivors contributes to a broader understanding of how a system of care for girls was shaped and defined by many factors that would challenge societal perceptions and have shamed and silenced the Parramatta girls for far too long. Bonney describes the experience of the Parramatta girls:

‘Parramatta Training and Industrial School for Girls like its earlier counterpart, the Female Factory, was known for its notoriety and the control it exerted over the lives of all females who did not conform to whatever moral standards society expected of them. Its history is that of routine brutality, generalized ill-treatment and the denial of basic human rights where the principle of legal duty of care was entirely unknown or unrecognised.’

‘Operating under the guise of a “School”, Parramatta’s regime was in stark contrast to that of philosophies of education. Its intent was uniformity, non-flexibility and the provision of the same “training” in the same way, at the same time and place, for groups of individuals of disparate age, capacity and physique to be moulded and compressed into mass produced performance units, exhibiting uniform requirements of compliance and subjugation of personality.’

‘… unlike mainstream schools which seek to maximise student achievement, “training” resulted in a suppression of achievement and a generation of near unemployability, and unsuitability for parenthood and family life.’

‘The sexual experience of some inmates was often enforced criminally by rape at the hands of employees paid to “care” for their wellbeing. This only served to reinforce girl’s sexual experience as one of violence, powerlessness and shame.’

So speaks Bonney Djuric of the Parramatta Girls Home.

I am lending my support to those trying to elevate the experiences of the forgotten Australians in the minds and hearts of Australians and to recognise the history of women, in this case, that was played out on this site, firstly as the Female Factory and then through the Parramatta Industrial School for Girls and finally the Parramatta Girls Home and Kamballa. It is an ugly story but it is a history that we should not back away from. It is a history that needs to be told. As many as one in five Australians today are descended from women who were once incarcerated in the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct, and members should consider that for a moment: 20 per cent of all Australians, over four million people, have a direct family link to women who were incarcerated on that site over its two-century history. Many others have a link to its use as a traditional sacred women’s site by the Burramattagal clan of the Dharug nation.

Children experienced these horrors—serious and often criminal physical, sexual and emotional abuse, neglect and assault—in the places that were supposed to care for them. As adult survivors they deserve acknowledgement of and an apology for that harm. The forgotten Australians already have an apology from all states and will soon have an apology from the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister will acknowledge and apologise for the failure of federal governments of all persuasions to protect these children and young women. Nothing is fixed by being forgotten, but the many stories of survival and overcoming deserve to have a great light shone upon them. They deserve prime location at the front of every Australian’s mind and they deserve to be valued as great Australian stories of tenacity and endurance. As Helen Keller said:

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved.

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