Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to add my comments to the national apology on forced adoptions. I commend both our Prime Minister and our opposition leader for their very wise and thoughtful words on that day. I will quote a few paragraphs from the Prime Minister's speech. She said:

We deplore the shameful practices that denied you, the mothers, your fundamental rights and responsibilities to love and care for your children.

… … …

To you, the fathers, who were excluded from the lives of your children and deprived of the dignity of recognition on your children’s birth records, we say sorry. We acknowledge your loss and grief.

… … …

To each of you who were adopted or removed, who were led to believe your mother had rejected you and who were denied the opportunity to grow up with your family and community of origin and to connect with your culture, we say sorry.

… … …

We offer this apology in the hope that it will assist your healing and in order to shine a light on a dark period of our nation’s history.

… … …

To redress the shameful mistakes of the past, we are committed to ensuring that all those affected get the help they need, including access to specialist counselling services and support, the ability to find the truth in freely available records and assistance in reconnecting with lost family.

Finally, the Prime Minister said:

We resolve, as a nation, to do all in our power to make sure these practices are never repeated. In facing future challenges, we will remember the lessons of family separation.

Never to be repeated. But the root cause of those problems and past mistakes was an over-reaching state, well-meaning bureaucrats engaged in social engineering, who struck at the most primal and sacred bond there is—that between a mother and her child—and the bullying arrogance of meddling bureaucrats who believed that they knew best.

While we say the words 'This should never be repeated', I would like to use this opportunity to highlight two situations in our society where those mistakes of the past are being repeated. The first is in our child protection agency. Currently, we have over 39,000 children who are in the care of the state. In Australia today we have more children who have been removed from their parents than we have people in prisons. This has developed into a $3 billion industry.

Currently there is a child protection inquiry in Queensland, conducted by Commissioner Tim Carmody. I think some of his comments are very enlightening. Commissioner Carmody has accused some child protection officers of 'over-reacting', by taking children away from parents instead of giving families the help that they need. Commissioner Carmody said:

There are some children in very dysfunctional homes but the answer is not to just take them out. Removing a child at any age from a loved environment—even if it is inadequate or even risky—can give long term problems to that child. The impact on some children will be the same as the stolen generation.

Commissioner Carmody went on to criticise an 'over-reaction' in reporting cases of neglect and abuse and said that our child protection system should not be about 'social engineering' or supposedly 'giving them a better chance in life'. He said the 'system is over-responding to over-estimated risks' and said that children must be removed if there is a danger at the home, but he criticised removal on so-called 'emotional abuse'.

Commissioner Carmody noted that in Queensland today 70 per cent of children removed from their homes are removed due to so-called neglect or emotional harm. He said that the definition of 'emotional harm' was subjective and that there is not even consensus among child welfare professionals. Commissioner Carmody concluded:

If the answer is taking that child away from a loved parent, even if it's a violent home, and putting them with someone they don't know in someone else's home, how is that the right answer?

We seem to have lost the point of the emotional harm that is caused to a child who is removed from their family—from their mother or from their father. Child protection agencies seem not to consider the emotional harm that is done to a child who is taken from his or her parents.

I have had many cases of parents coming to my office and telling me stories of child protection officers chasing children like common criminals through the street, catching them and locking them up as though it was something from a Starsky and Hutch movie. I have heard stories about child protection officers telling children that their parents had abused them, alienating the child from their parents. We need to take a close look at this. Our children are most special and they must be protected. But if we today have more children being taken from their families than we have people in prisons I say that we have something drastically wrong and we need to look at it.

The second area is in our family courts. I know the family courts sometimes need the wisdom of Solomon to work out how to handle disputes between parents. But many cases have come to me in my office from both mothers and fathers, and I think that our family courts are failing badly and that we are making those same mistakes that our Prime Minister said should not be repeated. I would like to make a little comparison. There is a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia law where, if a female alleges that she is raped, when she goes before the courts she must produce four male eyewitnesses. Of course, when going to the courts and making the allegation of rape they are in fact making a statement that they have engaged in a sexual act. Unless that person is able to provide the four adult male witnesses, the case is reversed on them. They are shown to have made it up, to have fabricated it. And then, because they have made an admission of sexual intercourse, they face being charged with adultery if they are married or with fornication if they are not married, which in itself carries the punishment of death by stoning.

We nod our heads and say what a travesty of justice such a situation is. According to the National Commission on the Status of Women, an estimated 80 per cent of women currently in jail in Pakistan are there because they failed to prove rape charges and were consequently convicted of adultery. We say that is wrong but we have a similar situation occurring today in our family courts.

What is happening in our family courts is if a parent makes an allegation that their child has been the victim of abuse, and that can be either a mother or a father—it is not about mothers' rights or fathers' rights but about the rights of children—when they go before our family law courts the bar is so high it is impossible to prove. So we are seeing a similar situation to what we see under Islamic sharia law, where the burden of proof on the parent who the child has made the allegation against is reversed, and the courts find that the child has been coached to say those things. Without the evidence, the parent that has through good intentions been concerned about the child being abused and often sexually abused finds the courts are turning against them and they are having their child taken from them. This is not an isolated incident. I have many cases. I have spoken to Emeritus Professor Freda Briggs, who brought this to my attention.

We do have a serious problem with the way our laws are being interpreted in the family courts. It is something we need to have a close look at because we do not want to be here in this parliament in 10 or 20 years time making the same apology after seeing the hardship and suffering that has been inflicted upon many parents of children in our society. We do not want to be making that same apology again. We must learn from our mistakes in the past and ensure that we honour the Prime Minister's words—that we resolve as a nation to do all in our power to make sure these practices are never repeated—and make sure they come true.

Debate adjourned.

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