Danna Vale (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this moving issue of the forgotten Australians and I thank the member for Gilmore for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. The first part of this amended motion is:

That the House:… recognises the extent of abuse and neglect inflicted on Australian children who were placed in the care of the Government in institutions or out of home care during the last century …

It is one of the darkest chapters of our nation’s history that, between the 1920s and 1990s, upwards of possibly more than 500,000 young Australians experienced care in an orphanage, home or another form of home care. These innocent children experienced abandonment and loss of family, neglect, exploitation, brutality, sexual assault, poor health care, poor education and loss of identity. We can only imagine the daily experience of utter grief and desolation that they as children would have endured.

The legacy of their childhood experiences for far too many has been low self-esteem, lack of confidence, depression, fear, anger, shame, guilt, possessiveness, social anxieties, phobias and recurring nightmares. Unfortunately, many forgotten Australians have tried to block the pain of their past by resorting to substance abuse through lifelong alcohol and drug addictions. Some have also turned to illegal practices such as prostitution or more serious law-breaking offences that have resulted in a percentage of the prison population being care leavers.

An inquiry by the Senate Community Affairs References Committee began in 2004 and allowed many of these innocent children, who were now adults, to express their concerns and their experiences of being in the institutional care system. They were able to tell their personal stories and, in their telling, members of the committee were immensely moved and touched by their grieving, because the grief was very clear and present and unresolved. The committee received over 440 public submissions and 174 confidential submissions. The extensive nature of the inquiry is evident from the submissions received. Stories were received from care leavers who had been in government and nongovernment institutions or foster homes across all states in Australia spanning those 70 years.

Many hundreds of people opened their lives and the memories of traumatic childhood abuse and punishment to the committee in their public submissions and at the hearings. Some people were actually telling their story for the first time. Some of these stories remain so distressing that they asked for their name to be withheld or to be identified only by their first name. Many others, who for a range of reasons preferred that their identity remain undisclosed, provided confidential submissions. But all these people desperately wanted the committee to read and to hear what they had experienced in childhood and the impact that those events have had throughout their lives. They wanted their voice to be heard. The first recommendation from the report was:

That the Commonwealth Government issue a formal statement acknowledging, on behalf of the nation, the hurt and distress suffered by many children in institutional care, particularly the children who were victims of abuse and assault; and apologising for the harm caused to these children.

The government has announced that it will implement this recommendation and apologise to the forgotten Australians before the end of the year, and the opposition supports this important step forward.

Tomorrow is the inaugural meeting of Parliamentary Friends of the Forgotten Australians. I am advised that the minister will brief us on the details for the national apology and there will be representatives from the organisations that represent these forgotten Australians. I would like to take this opportunity to commend the work of the Alliance for Forgotten Australians, established in 2006 and formally launched by former Senator Andrew Murray on 16 October 2007. The Alliance for Forgotten Australians brought together existing funded and unfunded organisations that supported forgotten Australians to form a new national advocacy. The apology that will be given to these forgotten Australians will be like the apology to the Stolen Generation, but it is only a very small step in a very long journey for our forgotten Australians, the government and, most importantly, the ordinary people of Australia. It is a moral imperative that we must all share to carry the burden of sadness that has been the dominant aspect of the lives of so many of these deserving fellow human beings. They deserve our love, our compassion and our practical support. I commend this amendment to the House.

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