Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is an honour to participate in this debate and to wholeheartedly endorse the comments made by the Prime Minister and so many members of parliament expressing our formal sorrow as a nation to the Aboriginal and Islander people against whom unspeakable atrocities were committed by order of the state and under the authority of the state. I think the Prime Minister’s speech will truly stand the test of time. The events of last week are something that people will look back on in years to come and in so doing they will want to see what the leaders of Australia in 2008 had to say about this matter. I really did find the comments in the speech by the Prime Minister to be uplifting and to be of the highest calibre. I am pleased to associate myself with those words.

I had not realised until later that day, when watching the television, that so many Australians were so keen to participate, not just to watch. To see the news that night with school assembly halls and community halls dotted around Australia, in large cities, in parks and in communities throughout the country, where so many Australians were wanting to participate, to listen to the words being spoken here and to feel part of that process was also a great thing. It was reflected in what we saw outside the parliament. After the formal proceedings, along with my wife, Cathy, I went outside to the lawns between Old Parliament House and the current Parliament House to join the people and the celebrations. I do not think I have felt a sense of universal goodwill and euphoria like that in all of my time in public life or political campaigning, or any other activity with public involvement. There was a genuine feeling of goodwill and that we had reached a watershed.

I suppose we should have realised that because it is not that long ago that we saw sorry marches in our major capital cities, where hundreds of thousands of Australians marched. I participated with my family in the march in Brisbane and I know many members of parliament on both sides of the chamber did likewise. I have been to quite a few demonstrations in Brisbane over the years. I do not think I have been to a bigger demonstration. It was a family outing. Unlike a lot of other demonstrations, there was no nasty chanting and nobody pointing fingers. It was just an expression of goodwill on the part of so many Australians. Perhaps I should have not been surprised last week to see the outpouring of goodwill.

I was moved last week to revisit the Bringing them home report that Justice Ronald Wilson prepared at the request of the then Labor government prior to the 1996 election and delivered in 1997. I remember reading it when it was tabled and I remember my emotions. I could not actually remember the detail of the stories—although I could remember how I felt—so I wanted to go back and look at some of the things that I read then. It was instructive because in his speech the Prime Minister quite rightly pointed out that, whatever people might say about good intent and goodwill—and no doubt for some that was true—the apparatus of the state singled people out by virtue of their race and colour to be dealt with in what I regard as abominable ways. When you read the accounts of the people concerned, you cannot help but be moved.

I just want to read two or three of the accounts that were contained in Justice Wilson’s report. One is from a woman who experienced these problems as a child many years ago. We might like to think they do not apply any more, but this was her account:

When anybody come to pick up a worker they used to line us up and they’d make you flex your muscles. If you were big and strong they’d pick you - like a slave market. I was sent out at 11. I worked there for seven and a half years, never got paid anything, all that time. We used to bring the cattle in … we didn’t get nothing. So I had to join the army to survive.

Can you imagine, Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, our children being taken when they were young and, at the age of 11, primary school student age, being sent out to work without so much as a cent being given to them for their hard labour? No doubt they got board, lodging and food; otherwise they would not have been able to turn up for work the next day. When I read that, it reminded me of those terrible movies we watch about the southern states of America a couple of hundred years ago and the way that slaves were treated. It is abominable to think that it could happen in this country; it is abominable to think that it could happen in the 20th century. It did, and we should not be blind to it.

A couple of other accounts are from the 1960s. The 1960s are far too recent for these sorts of accounts, but they are true. There is the account of a child talking about the way she felt with the foster parents she was given to. She said:

All the teachings that we received from our (foster) family when we were little, that black people were bad … I wanted my skin to be white.

What a terrible thing it is for a young person growing up to be told that they are less worthy and for them to actually dislike their own identity so much because of what their foster parents had said. Another account said:

She [foster mother] would say I was dumb all the time and my mother and father were lazy dirty people who couldn’t feed me or the other brothers and sister.

The final account I want to quote says:

When I was 14 years old and going to these foster people, I remember the welfare officer sitting down and they were having a cup of tea and talking about how they was hoping our race would die out. And that I was fair enough, I was a half-caste and I would automatically live with a white person and get married. Because the system would make sure that no-one would marry an Aborigine person anyhow. And then my children would automatically be fairer, quarter-caste, and then the next generation would be white and we would be bred out. I remember when she was discussing this with my foster people, I remember thinking - because I had no concept of what it all meant - I remember thinking, ‘That’s a good idea, because all the Aborigines are poor’.

These were the people working in the field who were called the helpers and the supervisors and they were talking about ‘breeding them out’.

That reminded me of a more recent experience in my own employment in the early 1980s when I was an officer in the teachers union and I visited the communities on the Cape and the gulf and in the Torres Strait Islands. I can remember around 1981 or 1982 standing on the jetty at Thursday Island with one of the senior teachers as we watched these boats ferry the young teenage girls out to a boat. The boat was the state government’s ship. The government owned the ship; the government crewed the ship. It was there supposedly to provide supplies and, as I was told by the locals, the teachers, it was common practice when the boat came into harbour for the crew to ferry the young girls out onto the boat at night for a party—not the young men, just the young girls. This was the state government in 1981 or 1982. I saw it with my own eyes. It was mind-boggling to think that such things could occur in the 1980s, but they did.

I would like to think that the events of this last week or so have genuinely turned a page in the thinking of all of us in leadership roles and that we will take a leadership role in the community on this matter. It is sadly the case that not all Australians share my enthusiasm for the comments made by the Prime Minister. Our role here is to do what is right. It is clear, I am sure, to the overwhelming number of us in this parliament, whatever our politics and background, that the course set by the Prime Minister in relation to this matter is right.

I am reminded, though, of the problems we had on this with short-term, competing political influences. I well remember when Sir Ronald Wilson’s report was tabled in this parliament. The then government in 1997 refused to allow the parliament to take note of the report. The parliament was denied the opportunity to discuss it by a conscious decision of the then government. In fact, I can remember the whips office organising opposition speakers to read sections of this report into the Hansard for the next two weeks in the adjournment debate because it was the only way the parliament could record what went on. That was a decade ago. Ten years ago the government refused to allow the parliament to even discuss this document. I do not think that too many members of the opposition today would look back on that with great pride. I am sure there are many on the opposition bench now who will be surprised to know that that is what others who were occupying their seats did 10 years ago, but it happens to be the case. It is about time we got over that sort of short-term vision and looked at the longer-term issues.

I have been here long enough to see that sort of sentiment repeated a couple of times. I can remember, when the High Court made its decision on Mabo, the hotly contested debate that ensued. There were many members of the parliament who were then and are again in opposition who took exception to the proposals of the government and a number who actually attacked the High Court decision and thought that the question of Indigenous land title was fundamentally wrong and that the High Court was stepping beyond its bounds. I do not propose to refer to names of members, but indicative of some of the sentiments was a speech made on 5 October 1993 by a member of parliament who was then in opposition and is still a member of parliament. They said:

Land-holders throughout the country are worried about their title. Uncertainty has been introduced into land title in Australia through the decision brought down in June 1992 by six High Court judges. We need to bring certainty back into the land law.

The problem is that the parliament introduced the Racial Discrimination Act in 1975. We should be rolling back the Racial Discrimination Act and returning land tenure to the states. States would then be able to decide the question of land rights in accordance with their own laws and values.

I do not think too many people today would subscribe to the view that, in respect of land title or race rights, the provisions of the antidiscrimination act need to be rolled back.

That was not an isolated view being expressed by members of the parliament at that time—nor was the attitude when I first came into parliament after the 1990 election, to my amazement, towards race relations in another place called South Africa. There were a number of speeches made at that time about the evils of Nelson Mandela. I do not propose to mention the name of the member of parliament at that time who put a question on notice encapsulating this sentiment:

Is the ANC (a) no more than a political party, (b) not the largest political party in South Africa and (c) affiliated with the South African Communist Party.

This was because the government at the time had invited Nelson Mandela to come to Australia. The Prime Minister’s reply in part said:

In the Government’s view the ANC is not merely a political party but is a major partner in the political process currently underway in South Africa. At the same time it has no right to contest elections and it has no formal status within the existing political structures in South Africa.

I do not think many people today would deny the important role the ANC played. These are all related to the same question, I think, of the central equality of life on this planet and our duty as leaders to do what we know is right. I think the events last week and the sentiment broadly agreed on both sides of the chamber have advanced that goodwill. The task we all have is to try and turn that goodwill into genuine and concrete improvements for the lot of Indigenous Australians. I think the steps that were taken by the overwhelming majority of us last week are in keeping with the overwhelming wish of the people, and I hope that that goodwill extends to good deeds as we move forward.

Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I strongly support this motion in the bipartisan spirit in which it was moved in the House and is being discussed here in the Main Committee. As a nation, we say sorry to those Aboriginal people forcibly removed from their families as a consequence of the state and national policies and laws which operated until around 1970. The apology will help the healing. It will not solve every problem—we all know that—but it will help. It will remove a roadblock. It will allow our nation and Aboriginal people to move on together as one. It will build reconciliation.

All of us in this parliament want a better future for Aboriginal people. All of us want to tackle and win the war against the appalling disadvantage that affects so much of Aboriginal Australia. Governments of both political persuasions over many decades have endeavoured to make huge progress and take great steps forward. There have been pockets of success but, on the scale of things, the progress has been minimal. The bold goals that were set by successive governments over the last 40 or 50 years have not been met and the policies pursued have not succeeded.

All of us here and around Australia want to know that one day Australia will conquer Aboriginal disadvantage. We want to know that Australia, one day, will look back at the plight so many Aboriginals face today in terms of life expectancy, education and all the other indicators so many members have referred to in this debate and talk of how progress was made and how the disadvantage was conquered—a day when Australia can look back on Aboriginal disadvantage as history.

We all know that day is a long way off, but if we are ever to see it we need to confront all of the issues that are barriers on the road to that destination. Just as the bipartisan nature of this motion will play a significant role in healing and unifying, we must rededicate ourselves to the practical intervention policies that were introduced by the previous government under the former Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough. They also had bipartisan support. We have to face and confront the problems and deal with the causes of disadvantage in a practical, tangible and determined way.

There will be many speakers in this debate who will have had great experience in their roles as members of parliament and, indeed, in some cases in their preparliamentary life, meeting and visiting Aboriginal communities and seeing firsthand the daily struggles and trials that our Aboriginal and Indigenous Australians face across Australia. I do not hold myself out as being one of those people. I do not pretend to be. I do not bring to this debate years and years of on-the-ground experience. I do not pretend for a minute that I am an expert on all of the complex issues involved. But I know that this motion, which has attracted bipartisan support—and that is very important—will now, at this time, attract wide support in the Australian community. The motion deals with a major blemish in our history. But, in acknowledging that the practice of removing Aboriginal children from their parents in our past was wrong, we need to make sure we acknowledge all the history. In this regard I do support wholeheartedly the statements of the Leader of the Opposition, in his speech in the House of Representatives, recognising and acknowledging that what was done in many, but certainly not all, cases was done with the best of intentions.

The parliamentary speeches of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, as the previous member indicated, were watched in every corner of Australia. They were watched in capital cities, in many of our schools and in many of our communities and city squares right across Australia. I want to make mention of one group of people watching in the electorate of Casey that I represent. The Swinburne University Indigenous Programs Unit, in partnership with the Shire of Yarra Ranges, held a breakfast at the Balluk Yilam Learning Centre on the Swinburne campus in Lilydale. The event was, by all accounts, well attended by more than 100 people, including the mayor, local councillors, community members and, most importantly, Indigenous members of Swinburne’s Indigenous Programs Unit and community elders. They all watched the speeches from parliament, which was a very emotional experience for those in attendance.

I am told by the shire that the speeches from our parliament were received with both elation and sorrow by the Aboriginal people there in particular—elation that the wrongs of the past had been finally apologised for and sorrow at the grief that many had experienced in their lives as a consequence of those policies. The organisers tell me that there was a strong sense from the Indigenous people present, including local senior elders, that this had been a big step forward and a very big day for them. I particularly acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands within the shire of Yarra Ranges, the Wurundjeri people, who have been active supporters of the apology in our local area. Here in this parliament I thank some of those organisers: Anne Jenkins, Shane Charles, Miranda Madwick from the Swinburne Indigenous Programs Unit for organising the event, and Garry Detez from the Shire of Yarra Ranges.

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand here this afternoon to support the Prime Minister’s motion on the apology to Australia ‘s Indigenous peoples. Last Wednesday in this place we honoured the Indigenous people of our land. We honoured their past and looked with hope to the future. It was also a unique day to reflect on the blemished chapter in our nation’s history and the imperfect attempts over the years to right the wrongs of the past. It is almost 17 years since this House passed the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation Bill. That was a bill which set in train more than any other act the process of reconciliation in our country. It was a bill which brought about unprecedented bipartisan support for the cause of reconciliation.

Many members would recall the handshake between the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Robert Tickner, and the opposition spokesman, Michael Wooldridge, across the House of Representatives dispatch box. That was an important moment. It was a moment when parliamentarians, irrespective of their political persuasion, optimistically chose a path to reconciliation—a path that would heal the wounds of the past and recognise the tragic history of white settlement; a path that would acknowledge the dispossession of our Indigenous brothers and sisters of their land and their families. That act of parliament, that handshake, provided hope that matters of the heart and soul would be addressed once and for all. As Mr Tickner would tell the House, reconciliation was a process which was:

… intended to be substantially completed by the time of our most important national anniversary, the centenary of the establishment of the Australian nation. It is a process deliberately intended to shape the kind of country we will be in 2001 …

It is now 2008, seven years since the Centenary of Federation. Many Australians would agree that substantial reconciliation has not been achieved. Nonetheless, we will all again commit ourselves to succeeding in a test which we have so far failed.

Reconciliation cannot be measured solely in terms of resource allocation, the number of government interventions or the provision of welfare. Material progress is undoubtedly important; however, reconciliation necessarily demands much more than that. It involves matters of the heart. It involves matters of the mind, matters of the spirit. It is not hard to see why. Relations between numerous Australian governments and our Indigenous community have often been characterised by dysfunction, distrust and despair. Dysfunction, distrust and despair are understandable sentiments from members of a stolen generation that endured humiliating and degrading treatment at the hands of their government. At a conference of federal and state ministers and officials responsible for Aboriginal affairs in 1937, the Western Australian chief protector said: ‘The different states are creating institutions for the welfare of the native race and as a result of this policy the native race is increasing. What is to be the limit? Are we going to have a population of one million blacks in the Commonwealth or are we going to merge them into our white community and eventually forget that there were ever any Aboriginals in Australia?’

Linda Burney, a good friend and the first Indigenous member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, has previously stated that history for Aboriginal people is not something that is dead and gone. Given the magnitude of some of the atrocities committed, we must understand that many incidents that are of mere historical significance to us are living, breathing burdens that many Indigenous people carry every day of their lives. We acknowledge that distrust and despair is a historical experience of our Indigenous community. The heart of genuine reconciliation cried out for an apology for past wrongs—an apology for the indignity and degradation imposed on a proud people and proud culture, an apology for the systemic breaking up of families and communities and an apology for policies which did not rest on a need to prove children were actually in harm but saw the mere fact of Aboriginality as a source of harm.

In his Redfern speech, former Prime Minister Paul Keating articulated the prerequisites of reconciliation with great clarity. He said:

… the starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians.

It begins, I think, with that act of recognition.

Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing.

We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.

We brought the diseases. The alcohol.

We committed the murders.

We took the children from their mothers.

We practised discrimination and exclusion.

It was our ignorance and our prejudice.

And our failure to imagine these things being done to us.

We have now progressed beyond mere recognition of past wrongs. The Prime Minister on behalf of the Commonwealth government has now rightly apologised—and what a proud day for our nation in this place last Wednesday. Without an apology there would be no healing. Without healing there would be no reconciliation. The importance of the Prime Minister’s apology, from the very institution which enacted statutes that made the forced removal of children on racial grounds legal, cannot be emphasised enough.

The consequences of the previous parliament’s stubborn refusal to apologise are for all to see. Despite many efforts, we have been unable to tackle the many challenges that Indigenous Australians face, including those in health, education and housing. Prior to the Prime Minister’s apology, there had only ever been a weak foundation for moving forward together, a weak foundation for building a future based on mutual respect, mutual resolve and mutual responsibility, and a weak foundation for genuine attempts at so-called ‘practical reconciliation’.

Sorry is a simple word, yet it means so much in the pursuit of true reconciliation. By confronting the uncomfortable truth of the past and apologising unreservedly we can move the reconciliation process forward to practical, tangible outcomes. We could not separate an apology to the stolen generation from reconciliation. To think otherwise displays a complete lack of understanding of the appalling treatment handed out to many Indigenous people. That is why last Wednesday was such an important day for all Australians. That is why last Wednesday was a momentous occasion in this House. The truth is that we could not arrive at practical and tangible outcomes with fists clenched. Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians can only do it hand in hand. Coming to grips with our history honestly and apologetically allows us to join hands and to open up new opportunities for the future. This is the lesson learnt much, much too late. With the spirit and warmth that has been shown during the debate on this motion, I am confident that we can heal the wounds of the past and move forward together.

Before concluding, I wish to say something about the concerns that current generations of Australians ought not apologise for past actions and policies over which they had no control. Recognising and apologising for past mistreatment is not concomitant with attributing current generations of Australians with guilt for those actions. We did not ask current generations of Australians to assume responsibility. Nonetheless, just as we honour and express our pride in Anzacs, who fought for freedom and liberty, we can express shame in relation to other periods in our history. Let there be no doubt that there is a lot we as a nation can be proud of. However, there is a lot in our past to make us uncomfortable. It would be abominable to suggest that only those with a black armband approach to Australia’s history should feel a need to apologise to the stolen generation. I say to them: look at our nation’s history through the eyes of the stolen generations, through the eyes of mothers who had children ripped from their arms for no reason other than their colour, through the eyes of crying children whose last image of their mothers would be one of desperation and helplessness, on hands and knees pleading for the return of their children.

Picture ourselves as parents. Can we imagine going through those experiences? Can we imagine subjecting our children to such treatment without cause? To deny these facts about dispossession is to deny our history. To refuse to apologise, despite being armed with the facts, is hard-hearted. There is nothing unpatriotic about uncovering the truth, wearing our hearts on our sleeves and apologising. To retreat from this challenge is not a sign of patriotism; it is a sign of weakness.

As the Prime Minister has stated, we are the bearers of many blessings from our ancestors. Therefore, we must be the bearers of their burdens as well. We rightly expect the descendants of our diggers to continue honouring the Anzac legacy through annual marches and other events. As members of this House, we apologise on behalf of our predecessors who cannot. We commit ourselves to ensuring that the injustices of the past never happen again.

The previous parliament’s refusal to offer an apology has cast a dark shadow over the cause of reconciliation. However, just like the handshake across the House of Representatives dispatch box 17 years ago, we trust that the handshake between Prime Minister Rudd and the Leader of the Opposition will result in uncompromising approaches to address the many and serious issues engulfing our Indigenous Australians.

I am confident of the sincerity of the Leader of the Opposition in his resolve to work with the Prime Minister to achieve practical reconciliation. Now that the shadow has been lifted, all Australians can go forward together and achieve those goals laid down by the Prime Minister and supported by the Leader of the Opposition in this place last Wednesday. I know I speak for all Australians when we wish them well in those endeavours and I commend the motion to the House.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome discussion on the Prime Minister’s motion of an apology. The one thing most speakers have in common is their recognition that this is a complex issue. I agree with them and applaud any real attempt to improve the lives of Aboriginal people and abused or neglected children whether Indigenous or non-Indigenous. Further, the complexity of this situation was not best served by the secrecy of the Labor government in the formation of this motion, whether it be the fact that members, senators and the Australian people were not able to see the wording of the motion a mere 16 hours before debate began, or the fact that the government did not release its legal advice regarding compensation claims that may flow as a result of the apology. A truly open and accountable government would not have been afraid to take the Australian public into its confidence.

This motion of apology sets a worrying precedent. Noel Pearson spoke of his concern that the apology:

… will sanction a view of history that cements a detrimental psychology of victimhood, rather than a stronger one of defiance, survival and agency.

This motion of apology was marketed as being the first step towards ending the disadvantage. In essence, it will do very little to resolve the ingrained dysfunction within some Aboriginal communities.

The Aboriginal people of this land have had a tragic history since white settlement. In Australian history there have been successive policies that have been detrimental to Aboriginal Australians—the policies that ensconced the welfare mentality and dependency into the subculture; the failure to confront the harsh truths of life in Indigenous communities; the misguided paternalism which did nothing to right the wrongs of past decades; and the damaging mindset of the victim mentality, which pervaded the psyche of Indigenous affairs and made coming face to face with the more pressing problems of Aboriginal communities nigh on impossible.

When the Howard government announced the gutsy and groundbreaking Northern Territory intervention, the critics came out in full force. The Age reported then of Prime Minister Howard pulling a ‘black rabbit’ out of the hat, that the intervention was a ‘black children overboard’ moment, and that John Howard had ‘done a Robert Mugabe on our citizens’—and the hyperbole did not stop there. However, this was the first time that entrenched failure in Indigenous affairs and the ugly, detrimental, dysfunctional nature of Aboriginal communities was confronted head on. I do not believe for one moment that, had the Labor Party been in power on the reception of the report of the Northern Territory board of inquiry, they would have made the difficult decision to intervene in Northern Territory Aboriginal affairs; in fact, Labor is now backtracking and reintroducing the permit system, effectively closing many troubled communities to the outside world and to proper scrutiny.

This apology flows from recommendations in the 1997 Bringing them home report. This report not only called for a motion of apology but recommended that:

. . . ‘compensation’ be widely defined to mean ‘reparation’—

which could—

consist of,

1. acknowledgment and apology,

2. guarantees against repetition,

3. measures of restitution,

4. measures of rehabilitation, and

5. monetary compensation—

and that reparations were to be made not only to individuals but to family members, entire communities and their descendants.

The problem with the Bringing them home report upon which the apology and claims for financial compensation are based is described by well-known Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson when he states that the report:

… is not a rigorous history of the removal of Aboriginal children and the breaking up of families … it does not represent a defensible history.

Yet this is the very report upon which this apology motion is based.

If we accept that an apology is important, then why shouldn’t we get it right? The very term ‘stolen generations’ is not defined, is not qualified and, as such, is troublesome. It is a direct lift from the Bringing them home report. It is a term that is too simplistic and has become an unqualified phrase. In purely legal terms, the word ‘stolen’ has specific meaning denoting criminality. This gives rise to a host of troubling scenarios, not least of which is the question of whether welfare officers and other government employees are, by implication, to be held liable in some way for their involvement in saving children at risk of harm in local communities.

To some, this may seem like semantics, but the parliament has a responsibility to get things as right as possible. Every day in Australia there are children being separated from a parent because someone has deemed it to be in the child’s best interests. Are these children stolen? Some of the reasons that Aboriginal children were taken from their families in decades past are the same reasons that Aboriginal children are sadly taken away today. It sickens me that young Aboriginal children are still being diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases or identified as being in some other danger, yet some people would say removing them from such perilous environments would be creating the next stolen generation. The protection of children is far more important than any individual’s political agenda, including that of the Prime Minister, whose own staff led a back-turning campaign in Parliament House when the Leader of the Opposition was speaking in support of this motion.

The most recent report that highlights the level of Indigenous disadvantage is the Little children are sacred report. This is the report that led to the Howard government’s emergency intervention in the Northern Territory. The two authors of the Little children are sacred report made visits to 45 communities in the Northern Territory. Tragically, they found instances of sexual abuse in each one of those 45 communities. Similarly, each one of these 45 sites ‘indicated that alcohol was having an extremely significant detrimental effect on almost every aspect of community life, including the safety of children’. The former Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Mal Brough, said in his speech to the House on the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007:

When confronted with a failed society where basic standards of law and order and behaviour have broken down and where women and children are unsafe, how should we respond? Do we respond with more of what we have done in the past? Or do we radically change direction with an intervention strategy matched to the magnitude of the problem?

Thankfully, the Howard government changed direction to confront these harsh and, at times, unpalatable truths. The Northern Territory intervention included more police, restrictions on alcohol, audits on computers to stamp out pornography, acquisition of five-year leases, improving living conditions, carrying out health checks and changing the way communities are governed. All these things challenge the mindset of those who refuse to condemn the decades-old failed approach of paternalism and dependency, which has offered such dispiriting outcomes to Indigenous Australia. Mal Brough and John Howard challenged that, and we need the groundbreaking Northern Territory intervention to continue and certainly not be watered down.

The measures in such an intervention do far more to advance the cause of Indigenous disadvantage than this apology. The problem with this issue is its complexity, which is not solved simply with glib sloganeering and cushy sound bites. We do the Aboriginal people an injustice because this apology falsely purports to offer hope that the entrenched disadvantage will now be remedied simply by debate on the motion in the House.

Some people have said that we should all simply go along with the apology because it is only symbolic and, although imperfect, we should just give it our support in order to move on. This sets a dangerous precedent and trivialises the very nature of what we do in this place. The hurried and frenzied nature of the dissemination of the wording of the motion is a case in point. Any parliamentary motion has a significant implication; therefore, why hide the wording? Why only release it some 15 hours before it is to be debated? Why should we as parliamentarians be refused access to the legal advice that the government sought to allegedly protect it from compensation claims? It was either rushed or deliberately withheld from debate. There was no chance to analyse the wording and its implications, much less to proffer a differing or alternative point of view and wording.

I could not, in all conscience, allow myself to be stampeded into de facto support for a motion which attempts to neatly and glibly rule a line under an impossibly complex issue with little regard for the possible consequences for Aboriginal Australians and for the nation as a whole. Many who have dared offer an alternative viewpoint, expressed a contrary opinion on the wording of the motion or called for more debate have been called uncompassionate, callous and racist, as if compassion is strictly limited to those who endorse the Prime Minister’s ‘sorry’ motion—as if they have an exclusive monopoly on compassion. This clearly shows that we are not dealing with a unifying motion, no matter how well intentioned it has been.

The ill-defined ‘sorry’ motion is now the basis for compensation claims, which is to be expected as this was also recommended in the Bringing them home report. Tasmanian Aboriginal lawyer and activist Michael Mansell said:

. . . we won’t rest until we get that compensation package.

Former Administrator of the Northern Territory Ted Egan said the government should consider compensation. Pat Dodson called for a compensation fund in his speech at the National Press Club. One local Bangerang representative stated on local radio in my electorate a couple of weeks ago that this apology was the first step towards compensation. Just two days after the apology, the front page of the Herald Sun carried the news of a class action against the government for multimillion dollar compensation claims for members of what were referred to as ‘the stolen generation’.

These are the unintended consequences of the apology. Already the claims have come in thick and fast. It is not compensation that will fix the problems in Aboriginal communities. We all want to see an end to substance abuse, child sexual abuse, the neglect of young children, the dissemination of pornography and the cycle of welfare dependency. Children’s health, infant mortality rates, Indigenous schooling and housing—none of these issues are easy to fix, but we all want to see improvement. It is just that some of us disagree about how we are going to get there and how to bring all other non-Indigenous Australians with us.

It is important to note that Indigenous affairs spending on health programs more than quadrupled in the decade from 1996 under the Howard government. However, the allocation of money to remedy the ingrained sociocultural dysfunction within some Aboriginal communities is of itself not enough. This apology will entrench the notion of Aboriginal disillusionment and more firmly ensconce the victim mentality right throughout Indigenous Australia, as was noted by Noel Pearson in his moving and eloquent piece in the Australian on the day prior to the motion’s presentation in parliament. Pearson wrote:

One of my misgivings about the apology has been my belief that nothing good will come from viewing ourselves, and making our case on the basis of our status, as victims.

It is far more simple to offer apologies than give proper recognition of the more heartbreaking, unpalatable realities of life in Indigenous communities—two-year-olds with gonorrhoea, children as victims of gang rape, squalid living conditions, young minds diminished by an ugly mixture of booze and porn and all the other sorts of unutterable miseries that run rife and unencumbered. An apology will not fix this, but a new mindset and better policy will go a long way. To be lastingly compassionate is to make the hard, sometimes unpopular, decisions to tackle the horrific problems of systemic sexual abuse, substance dependence and lawlessness in Aboriginal communities.

For my part, it would have been much easier to take the path of least resistance, stay silent on the matter and go along with the wave of feelgood across the parliament. But I could not in all conscience be railroaded, for the reasons I have already stated above, into supporting this hastily put together motion. I accept that many agree with my stand and many do not. It is worth noting, however, that some who have disagreed with the position I have taken have been very swift in serving a tirade of abuse, which only highlights how quickly calm debate and analysis can be replaced with rigid and inflexible views where one is not even allowed to question, let alone challenge, conventional wisdom.

To all those people in my electorate, to all those people in Australia who may be afraid of expressing their point of view out of fear of being labelled callous, uncompassionate and racist, I say: ‘Fear not. We live in a democracy, a very vibrant democracy. And, although from time to time conventional wisdom and political correctness may try to silence what you truly feel in your heart, please do not give in and please ensure that your voice is heard.’ With the change of government we have been transported back to the suffocating and stifling political correctness of the Keating era. This phenomenon itself will have consequences on every corner, down every street and down every track of mainstream Australia. Indigenous Australians deserve better than this glib debate. They deserve an open and courageous debate, as do all non-Indigenous Australians.

Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment Participation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This evening I would like to join my colleagues and the people of Australia in marking the historic day when the parliament finally responded to the recommendation of the Bringing them home report and apologised to the Indigenous people of Australia for the policies of successive governments. The report found that across the nation between one in three and one in 10 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970. It found that those Indigenous children were placed in institutions, church missions, adopted or fostered and, as a result, were at risk of physical and sexual abuse. These are staggering figures whose shocking effect has not dimmed in the long years since the report was first tabled 11 years ago; neither have the hurt and suffering of each generation dimmed,  as they carry this shame—and, of course, this spills over into the rest of their lives.

As a result of placement in institutions or unstable fostering situations, many children were so often raised with inadequate education, either in the basics of literacy or in the culture and traditions of their own country and people. They were excluded from not only the opportunity to better their situation that education brings but also the knowledge and traditions that only come with a living connection to country and culture. Some say those whose actions resulted in this suffering did so with the best of intentions. Indeed, this was repeated by the Leader of the Opposition in his speech on this motion last week. That may be so, but it is not good enough to say that they meant well. Some undoubtedly did, but lives were destroyed despite good intentions. If no harm was intended, harm was still done. Some say that those who acted with good intentions could not have known of the effect of their actions on those they attempted to help. I say to the House: our predecessors should have known. They should have understood the hurt that was caused. Their common humanity demanded that they understand the lack of common humanity in their actions.

Some reply that, as the current generation did not do it, the Prime Minister has no right apologising in their name. But no-one can deny that it was done by people acting in our name. We elected successive governments which created the laws that enabled them to do these things. It is entirely right that the government and the parliament apologise on behalf of the Australian people because it was elected governments who drew up the laws to allow these criminal actions to be done without criminal penalty. It was done in our names.

Interestingly, some years ago, the then Prime Minister John Howard apologised to the Vietnam veterans for the treatment they received after returning from the war. I was too young to have abused Vietnam veterans myself, but I have no objection to the then Prime Minister seeking to redress this historical wrong on my behalf. To those older Australians whose memories of the Second World War are still acute, I pose a hypothetical: if the government of present-day Japan were to apologise to those Australians imprisoned under appalling conditions during the war, would you object on the grounds that the people of Japan cannot be held accountable for the actions of the past? When considering this question, keep in mind that actions by government agencies which led to the suffering of the stolen generations were going on well into the living memory of most members of this chamber.

Some object that these actions were technically legal, but should we really excuse the reality of this dispossession for legalistic reasons? Many thought or were told that the absence of their child was a temporary measure, only to lose them permanently in the welfare machine. Many children were able to retrace their lost years with the help of discovered records or relatives, only to grieve again for the loss of parents who died never knowing what became of their offspring. In his historic Redfern speech, then Prime Minister Paul Keating noted that the nation had failed to enter into the hearts and minds of Aboriginal people by simply imagining that these things were done to us. Echoing Mr Keating, the Prime Minister last week challenged those Australians who see no need to apologise to imagine that it was done to us, to imagine how crippling that would be, how difficult it would be to forgive.

And we have no right to ask for forgiveness without acknowledgement that wrong was done. Some claim that an apology is empty symbolism, that what we need are practical outcomes. I could not agree more. Despite economic pressures, the change in government presents Australia with valuable opportunities to improve Indigenous economic development and social inclusion—opportunities Labor will be eager to foster.

As Minister for Employment Participation, I certainly want to work with the government to assist in fulfilling some of these concrete aims. Employment is one of the foundations of social inclusion. It creates opportunities for financial independence and personal fulfilment. Unfortunately, the unemployment rate for Indigenous Australians is about three times higher than for others. Employment participation rates are also almost 20 per cent lower than for the non-Indigenous population. The government is committed to closing this gap within 10 years. By fostering economic development, governments create opportunities to overcome these levels of social disadvantage. But development can only occur on a foundation of sound education and training, opportunities for real employment and regional consultation and partnership. More flexible and specific mentoring and work related learning opportunities ensure Indigenous people can access paths to career development in conjunction with mainstream employment services where they exist. We want to close the gap between demand and supply of skilled workers by using industry strategies with the pastoral and forestry industries, including of course initiatives like the memorandum of understanding with the Minerals Council of Australia. We will place industry demand at the heart of the skills training system. We want to create jobs for CDEP participants in government service delivery, delivering on an election promise of $90 million over five years to train and employ an additional 300 rangers in areas where CDEP cross-subsidisation remains.

We will announce future directions on the Northern Territory emergency response after the review is released in September, but the government will continue to work with service providers to ensure that projects are developed in consultation with communities, that activities have a strong work based skills focus and that the range of activities developed meets the needs of local communities.

Acknowledgement of white Australia’s conduct towards Aboriginal people was among the very first concerns that I raised in this place. In my first speech, I called upon the government to apologise to our original owners for the atrocities inflicted upon them. ‘Seeing one’s own history, warts and all,’ I said at the time, ‘was not to wear a black armband. We have more to fear from a blindfold than a black armband.’ Acknowledgement of our history, warts and all, is a sign of maturity and of a better and more conscious society. I feel privileged more than six years on to have been in the chamber to hear what I thought was a rather forlorn hope come to pass.

I am a parent to a very young daughter, and I can barely imagine what it would feel like to have her taken from me. But my imagination fails when I try to conceive of what future she could have without her parents, without her identity, without the love and guidance and support of her family. When I imagine these things, I try to put myself in the shoes of the stolen generations and the humanity we share—it is impossible to deny. But we as a nation have denied it and last week it was time to put an end to such denial.

Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week, the first sitting week of the 42nd federal parliament, was a historic week in the life of our parliament, in the life of our nation, in the lives of millions of individual Australians and, more profoundly, in the lives of the Indigenous people of our great country. It was historic because the Australian parliament, as a body of men and women elected to represent their constituencies, made peace with another body of men and women, the Indigenous peoples of our country, in a way that is essential for our country to move forward together and in a way that is essential to fundamentally advance the cause and wellbeing of the Indigenous peoples of Australia. It was historic because, however uncomfortable it is for some members and senators, the national parliament confronted a dark side of our history. It was historic because we agreed to accept that a specific dark chapter of our history had to be met head-on and challenged in this first decade of the 21st century. It was historic because we said a policy adopted and embraced by former governments of Labor and Liberal persuasions made mistakes based on the issue of race which, in our time, is unacceptable and reprehensible.

As the elected representative for the people of Ryan, it was a very special moment to be sitting in the House of Representatives being a part of history but even more so as a witness to greater history. Indeed, it will be an occasion that I will remember for a very long time to come. As a citizen of our country, as the federal member for Ryan and as a member of the opposition, I wish to formally place on record my deep regret and my deep sorrow to individual members of the stolen generation and to them as members collectively of the stolen generation for the terrible loss, pain and suffering which they endured due to the actions and conduct of white Australians.

I do not claim to be well briefed or well informed or to be an expert in Indigenous issues. I do not claim to be well read in the history of the relationship between our Indigenous peoples and our first settlers, but I do not think one has to be an expert or a so-called expert to know the terrible pain and loss which must have been felt by the young children in particular who were forcibly removed, who were, to put it bluntly, stolen from their parents, their loved ones and their community. As other colleagues have said, and as the Prime Minister indicated in the chamber when he spoke on this motion, I personally could not imagine my 19-month-old son, who is everything to me, who is the whole world to me, being taken from me in similar circumstances because of his ethnic make-up. Therefore, this reason alone is sufficient for us to extend this apology.

I want to speak very briefly on the question of intergenerational responsibility. The primary reason I understand for not giving an apology by those who seek not to do so or have great difficulty in extending an apology is that our generation is not responsible for the conduct which harmed the spirit and soul of those who were removed against their will. With all due respect to those who hold this view—and there are some on my side of parliament—surely we can give an apology or say sorry for something that was fundamentally wrong, without feeling any guilt whatsoever for that conduct. We do not have to be personally involved in the actions, deeds or conduct to be sorry that they happened.

Last month, my wife’s father died suddenly and unexpectedly. So many of our family friends and my wife’s family’s friends and so many people who did not know me, my wife or my wife’s father expressed their sadness at the sorrow that my wife felt. They used the word ‘sorry’ to us both and to my wife in particular because they felt her personal loss and pain. They expressed their humanity and the emotion of sadness at the sorrow which another human being felt. It is for this reason as well that I find no difficulty whatsoever in supporting this motion. How can it be that our migrants, for instance, should feel any personal guilt for the deeds of white Australians? How can it be, for instance, that today’s young Australians should feel personal guilt or responsibility for the terrible pain inflicted on the first Australians? Of course they cannot. They were not citizens at the time we talk about. I personally feel no guilt or responsibility whatsoever. However, that is not inconsistent with the sentiment I now express in this presentation to the parliament. I was not of that generation, but that does not prevent me from feeling sadness and sorrow for those hurt by the policies of the time.

I think Greg Craven put it well in his piece in last Friday’s Australian Financial Review. I do not agree with everything that Mr Craven writes, nor do I support the claim for compensation which—if I read his piece accurately—he seeks to argue for. But in terms of his comment on intergenerational discomfort, he does put it well, and I wish to read into Hansard for the benefit of my constituents what he wrote on 15 February in relation to the notion that ‘people cannot be sorry for something done in the past and in which they themselves played no part’:

There are two obvious answers to this. First, I surely can be sorry over something that I did not personally do but out of which I reap continuing benefit. It was Arthur Phillip, not me, who took possession of this continent and displaced its original inhabitants, but I owe my present comfortable plot of dirt directly to his act.

Second, how is it that we can feel immense pride in historical actions in which we had no part, but apparently cannot feel sorrow or regret? If I am proud of the founding fathers at federation, the diggers at Gallipoli, and Carlton in the 1945 premiership, then I similarly can feel sorry for Australian acts of brutality and discrimination occurring before I was born.

I should say for the record that I am not necessarily a supporter of Carlton and know nothing or very little about Australian Rules football, but as an Australian I am very proud of the founding fathers and the way in which they put together our country in its present form. I am also very proud of those who have worn the uniform and served in the name of our country in many, many parts of the world and so many of whom ultimately gave the greatest sacrifice—namely, their lives. I am proud of this because my father wore the uniform, and my grandfather also wore the uniform and made the ultimate sacrifice.

Having tabled this motion in the House, the Rudd government now faces the challenge of proving it is serious about the cause of reconciliation in a very meaningful way. We all know there is a vast gap between the health and social wellbeing of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The Productivity Commission chairman, Mr Gary Banks, summed it up aptly in his 2007 report, Overcoming Indigenous disadvantage, when he said that the report revealed:

… that many Indigenous people have shared in Australia’s recent economic prosperity, with improved employment outcomes and higher incomes. There have also been welcome improvements in some education and health outcomes for Indigenous children. Yet, even where improvements have occurred, Indigenous people continue to do worse than other Australians.

That Productivity Commission report showed that there are still large gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in virtually every social area.

In the area of health the report concluded that the life expectancy of Indigenous people is estimated to be around 17 years lower than that for the total Australian population. The most recent estimates indicate that life expectancy at birth is 59 years for Indigenous males compared with 77 years for males in the total population, and 65 years for Indigenous females compared with 82 years for females in the total population. Infant mortality rates, though they have improved in recent years, are still two to three times as high as those for the total population of infants. The Indigenous rates of kidney disease are 10 times as high as the non-Indigenous rates.

In the area of education, Indigenous students are half as likely as non-Indigenous students to continue to year 12. In 2006, 21 per cent, nearly a quarter, of 15-year-old Indigenous people were not participating in school education, compared to only five per cent of non-Indigenous 15-year-olds in our communities. In the area of employment, the unemployment rate for Indigenous people is approximately three times the rate for non-Indigenous people. Indeed, in 2004-05, over half of Indigenous people still received most of their individual income from government pensions and allowances.

In a wealthy country such as Australia, there is no reason why our first Australians should be denied access to the 21st century opportunities and services that the rest of Australia can enjoy. It is only by empowering today’s generation of Indigenous Australians with vital skills and qualifications that they will be able to fully engage in the benefits that our wonderful country has to deliver. Yet that kind of comprehensive education is only possible once the fundamentals of individual safety, family security, good health and shelter are met.

It must now be the absolute policy focus of the new Rudd Labor government, and its ministers, to turn its election rhetoric and criticism of the Howard government into real, measurable achievements to fix the equality gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Now the hard part starts. On this front—the practical, as opposed to the symbolic—the Rudd government has already acted in a way which surely must leave questions in the minds of the public about the extent to which it is able to find practical solutions. Going against the Little children are sacred report, against the views of so many Indigenous leaders, against prominent individuals in the Labor Party itself, against overwhelming case evidence and, seemingly, against common sense and rational thought, the Rudd government has acted to resurrect the permit system which restricts access to Aboriginal land in the Northern Territory.

I hope that I am not saying sorry and apologising again in a decade’s time because the new Labor government failed to deliver outcomes when it had the absolute power, circumstance and goodwill of the Australian people to deliver real change. I hope that I am not saying sorry that the government focused on the symbolism and words but ignored the profound problems of the health deficit, the education deficit and the opportunity deficit. The permit system served only to protect child abusers and shelter rampant alcoholism within these communities. Indigenous leader and former National President of the Labor Party, Warren Mundine, recognised this and made public comments to that effect in the Australian. Just as important, he also recognised that, to see real improvement in the social wellbeing of remote communities, it is important to promote free trade and commerce, which, at their most basic, require the free flow of people and ideas to create commercial activities. Noel Pearson has enormous respect in the wider Australian community and is far more in touch with the Indigenous community and its challenges than probably any member of the Australian parliament sitting on the Labor benches and the coalition benches. He has long advocated a move from passive welfare to conditional welfare and the need for substantial and meaningful reform.

I congratulate the Prime Minister for his leadership on this motion. I commend his initiative and much of the way in which he has handled the apology motion. However, I was most disappointed that the Prime Minister did not release the full text of his motion well before the time he did so. Especially, I am terribly disappointed that he has elected not to release the legal advice that the Commonwealth government has received in relation to the apology motion. I cannot understand why he would not want to release this legal advice. Indeed, as an Australian taxpayer, as an Australian citizen and as the federal member for Ryan, I should have a right to know what that legal advice says in relation to compensation.

I also commend very warmly the Leader of the Opposition for the way in which he responded and the way in which he conducted himself. All those of us on the Liberal side of politics know that he is a great admirer of Senator Neville Bonner. I am proud to say that Senator Neville Bonner, Australia’s first Indigenous member of parliament, was also a member of the party that I am a member of.

When black and white Australians can live together in the suburbs, towns and cities of Australia and look each other in the eye with mutual admiration and respect then we really will have compensated the stolen generation and the Indigenous peoples of Australia. Australia is a great country and Australians are a great people. Whilst every country has its dark side—chapters and moments which, in hindsight, successive generations would prefer it had not had—there also comes a time when we can move on. The history of nation states and sovereignty is replete with such examples. But, for all that, we can look forward with anticipation, confidence, faith and optimism that Australia’s sunniest days are still ahead of us.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Bevis, it is a pleasure to see you in the chair. I am sure you will give good rulings and keep the parliament in good order. It is great to be back. This is my first speech since being re-elected. To my parliamentary colleagues on the other side and to the clerks and attendants who keep us all going: it is a pleasure to be back and I thank you for looking after us.

It was a special day when the apology was given last week. I want to touch on the first paragraph of the Prime Minister’s apology motion. It stated:

… today we honour the Indigenous peoples of this land, the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

When you think about it, all those different clans that make up the Indigenous people of Australia are incredible cultures. I will never forget visiting Wybalena on Flinders Island in the Bass Strait. It is the place to which Australian Aborigines were taken after they were gathered up by Reverend Robinson. Many of them perished as a result of the changes in their lifestyle—through not being able to live their natural life on the Tasmanian mainland. I remember that that was a very moving experience for me some years ago.

In responding to the motion of apology to the stolen generation, I firstly want to acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Ngunawal people, and recognise their ancestors and elders for caring for this country for many centuries. I also want to acknowledge the traditional owners in my electorate of Lyons, in Tasmania, and thank them for looking after that most beautiful part of Australia. I grew up on a small farm of 300 acres which had the unusual name of ‘Canara’. I remember as I gazed at the Great Western Tiers, the mountains which ran not far from that farm where I grew up, asking my father what that name meant. He told me it was a Tasmanian Aboriginal word that meant ‘a small band or clan’. I have not been able to prove that or find it anywhere, and I guess that, to a great degree, that is because of the loss of the Tasmanian Aboriginal language.

I was so pleased to witness the welcome to country that formed part of the opening of this parliament. It is vital that the institution of parliament recognise the importance of these processions and events that demonstrate respect for the first people of this country. Respect is the primary value that we should demonstrate in all our relationships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. We need to respect their history as much as ours and respect their cultures and languages as we at the same time nurse our own diverse community cultures, languages and traditions. Respect must be at the heart of engagement with the first Australians. When we design and implement government policies that affect Indigenous peoples, and when we make agreements with traditional owners to access the lands and waters for resource development, we need to demonstrate a level of respect for the aspirations of Indigenous peoples which has been lacking on many occasions so far. The welcome to country ceremony is the first step in this journey.

As I watched the speakers and dancers at the welcome to country ceremony, I thought about other amendments we might be able to make to our traditions at the opening of parliament. Given that these formal occasions draw heavily on the rules of the mother parliament of the United Kingdom, it is time to reconsider these traditions. Some we might want to keep and others we could change. My first suggestion is that we involve Indigenous people even more in the opening processes of parliament. We could probably do away with the buckles and bows of the Usher of the Black Rod and include an Indigenous owner and a didgeridoo or clap sticks to lead the House through a more Indigenous and distinctly Australian parliamentary process. Indeed, it is a sign of maturity that this government is able to embrace the cultural welcome of the traditional owners of this Parliament House and thereby within the notion of parliamentary sovereignty.

Traditional owners often assert their prior sovereignty over this country, and it is undeniable that Indigenous peoples were here long before my family, which started with the Second Fleet into Sydney, and many others who have arrived since. I hope that we can engage Indigenous peoples on an equal footing to acknowledge past wrongs as well as celebrate continuing successes. In this way we will demonstrate respect for the traditional owners and build trust into our relationships with the first people, and from this basis we can work together on improving the health and wellbeing of Indigenous peoples in all parts of the country.

One of my longstanding priorities has been to invest in the education and training of young people in Lyons, the electorate that I represent in Tasmania, and of young people generally. It is an extreme wrong that some Indigenous kids do not attend school, not just in remote locations but in the regions and cities—even here in Canberra. We need to work harder and smarter to engage Indigenous families in education and training. I am optimistic about the capacity of the new Labor government to deliver on this need. With greater engagement in education and training come the opportunities for employment, housing and life choices that fit with the aspirations of Indigenous people. We are all diminished while the wellbeing of Indigenous people is so much worse than that of the vast majority of Australians.

I endorse the apology outlined by the Prime Minister and urge this House to work with purpose and energy to demonstrate respect for and to build trust with Indigenous peoples so that we can bridge the gap of disadvantage as quickly as possible. We must work hard so that last week’s achievements are not lost. We must all work harder in this parliament to achieve much more. We must assist the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in their coming together in their so-called ‘war cabinet’ to look at Indigenous housing. Indigenous housing can play an important role in improving the health of Indigenous people. We must all endeavour to make those things happen, and it is incumbent upon all of us to do so. We must narrow the gap between life expectancies or eliminate it altogether. As I said, housing will be one of the great beginnings in that area. The social indicators in relation to Indigenous Australians are very bad. There is a difference of 17 years in the life expectancy of white and Indigenous Australia. That is a very bad figure, and it is incumbent on all of us to eliminate it.

In the area of education, we must continue to improve. We must continue to bring education to Indigenous people. I understand that, in some parts of the Northern Territory, there are hardly enough schools and there are kids who do not go to school or who go to school for half a year. That is not good enough, either, and we have to work to improve that with the Indigenous people. Just imagine what apprenticeships could do for Indigenous people. Just imagine the next generations coming on that do get into training, that can get into apprenticeships, that can go on to get diplomas and that can go on to get degrees. These are the hopes and aspirations in the motion by the Prime Minister last week in that moving ceremony that we were all part of at the opening of this parliament. I certainly hope that it does move us all, that it gives us all aspiration and inspiration to go on and, as I said, work hard in this parliament to achieve many of those things that we set out to do and that we are going to strive for.

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation and Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to indicate my support for this motion in a generous spirit and in the hope that we will see further concrete improvements in the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. In 1924 the United Aborigines Mission opened a mission facility in Oodnadatta. This facility later moved to Quorn, in the lower Flinders Ranges, and after that to Eden Hills, in my electorate, in 1944. It was known as the Colebrook Home. Matron Ruby Hyde and Sister Rutter ran the Colebrook Home for most of its early 30 years. They were well regarded, and this was their life’s work.

Originally, the children taken to this home were Arrernte, Arabana, Antakirinja or Pitjantjatjara in background. The children attended school on site because the local primary and secondary school would not accept the Colebrook children. Later, older girls attended Mitcham Girls Technical High School and the boys went to Goodwood Technical High School. Between 1943 and 1972 some 350 children lived at this site. The home produced nurses, schoolteachers, kindergarten directors, social workers, welfare and liaison officers, missionaries and tradesmen. Amy Levai was the first primary schoolteacher of Aboriginal descent in South Australia, in 1963. She was from the Colebrook Home. Lois O’Donoghue was the first Aboriginal nurse trainee in South Australia, at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in 1954, and Australian of the Year in 1985.

The Colebrook Home was closed in 1972. It was razed in 1973. There is now a memorial in remembrance of the Aboriginal children who lived at the Colebrook Home. So in the electorate of Boothby there is an understanding of the events of this generation of Aboriginal children. In fact, in 1997 the local community held a barbecue for former residents of the Colebrook Home, expecting 500 people to attend. It was attended by over 2,000 people.

But in reading the history of this home there are a number of different threads that one can take. Firstly, as I mentioned, there are positives and negatives here. That the children were removed from their families from the point of view of race is something we find distasteful and unacceptable today, but there were positives which came out of this experience as well. As I mentioned, this was the lifework of the people who ran this home. They were very much focused on seeing that the Aboriginal children who attended the home would have careers, jobs and a place in society.

So let us take the opportunity presented by this motion to move forward on a whole number of areas in Aboriginal affairs. I welcome the comments by Noel Pearson and the work that is done by the Cape York Institute in recognising the problems of welfare dependency and passive reliance, which have bedevilled many of our Indigenous communities. I think his thoughts are a very welcome contribution to the debate.

I also note that, in the Productivity Commission’s 2007 report Overcoming indigenous disadvantage, there are a number of key indicators in Aboriginal communities which are improving. For example, in the 10 years leading up to 2004-05 there were large falls in unemployment rates for Indigenous men and women. The unemployment rate fell from 30 per cent in 1994 to 13 per cent in 2004-05—still too high, but a dramatic fall from where we were. Also, the proportion of Indigenous adults living in homes that they owned or were purchasing increased. The number of Indigenous adults with a certificate III level or above qualification increased from eight per cent to 21 per cent over that 10-year period.

Child health has improved over this period, but infant mortality rates are still too high, at two to three times the level of the non-Indigenous population. But, less encouraging, there are a number of areas where there has been no change. There has been no change in the incidence of low birth weight babies and there has been no change in the prevalence of hearing problems. And there are a couple of areas where there has actually been, on the basis of the Productivity Commission’s 2007 report, a deterioration, including a whole range of crime statistics and also domestic abuse.

I remember well, as a medical student, seeing an infant from Ernabella—from what were then called the Pitlands, I think, and are now called the AP lands—with whooping cough. That is a disease that is preventable by vaccination and yet is far too common in our Indigenous communities. That was probably, as a medical student, the first Aboriginal patient I was involved in the care of. Later, as a doctor, I remember having many Aboriginal patients from South Australia and the Northern Territory—patients with kidney disease, patients with vascular disease.

We do see, and it is well known in a whole range of areas, that the health of Aboriginal people is much worse than that of the rest of our community. We see a greatly increased rate of kidney disease, and there are indications that the rate of kidney disease is actually increasing amongst Indigenous people. We have seen in recent times increased hospitalisation of older Indigenous people, and that is actually associated with poor environmental health, including housing and sanitation.

As previous speakers have said, the life expectancy for Aborigines is 17 years less than for the total Australian population. It is 18 years less for Indigenous males, who have a life expectancy of 59, compared with 77 for non-Indigenous males. Indigenous females have a life expectancy of 65, compared with 82 for non-Indigenous females. These have been mentioned as areas which need to be addressed, and they will be able to tell us if we are getting anywhere. Diabetes is three times more common amongst the Indigenous population.

In the area of education, I welcome the Prime Minister’s comments about preschool education. I do make the observation though that for over 30 years Aboriginal three-year-olds in South Australia have been able to access state kindergartens and this is actually given as a great example of something that works in that 2007 report of the state of play in Indigenous affairs by the Productivity Commission. Across Australia, only about a quarter of Indigenous children currently attend a preschool. So it is an area where great improvements can be made. But, as I said, in my own state there has been provision for that for over 30 years.

In the area of employment, labour force participation rates for Aborigines is 58.5 per cent compared with 78.1 per cent for non-Indigenous people—still way too low. The unemployment rate is 13 per cent—still three times the rate for non-Indigenous people, but the participation rate has increased over the last 10 years. In recent times, we have seen a number of positive examples of companies taking their own initiative to increase the number of Indigenous people in their workforce. I think of Rio Tinto, one of the corporate leaders for the Indigenous Employment Program. There are a number of other corporate leaders in this program. In the mid-1990s at Rio Tinto fewer than one in 200 of their workforce was Indigenous; now approximately seven per cent of their workforce is Indigenous. Their subsidiary Argyle Diamonds want to see their Indigenous workforce increase to 40 per cent by 2010.

The Prime Minister in his remarks also identified housing as an important area for improvement which needs to be addressed by this commission. It is well known and it has been well known for over 100 years that housing plays a critical role in health. A recent article in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health entitled ‘The state of health hardware in Aboriginal communities in rural and remote Australia’, by Paul Torzillo and others, describes a survey of over 4,000 homes in the Territory and in four states over an eight-year period. What they found was a disgraceful state of housing in Indigenous communities. They found only 11 per cent of houses passed an electricity safety check. In 50 per cent of houses, a child or baby could not be washed in a tub or bath. There was a functioning shower in only 35 per cent of houses and only six per cent of houses had adequate facilities to store, prepare and cook meals.

In the areas of health, education, employment and housing, while there are positive signs that we can point to, there are also a lot of improvements to be made. I take this opportunity to say that it is critical that we as a federal parliament continue to work so that we do see improvements in the health, education, employment and housing of our Indigenous communities.

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

Andrew Robb (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in strong support of this motion to offer a formal apology to our Aboriginal people. I have had a longstanding involvement with members of Indigenous communities in various remote areas of Australia and I feel very strongly about the need to address the totally unacceptable situation which characterises the circumstances of so many of our Indigenous people.

This apology is a symbolic gesture which cannot stand alone. Yet symbols are important. Symbols convey a state of mind. Symbols often convey the essence of complex situations. Symbols can soar above the preoccupations of our everyday life, and by doing so often become powerful, immutable statements.

The formal apology issued to our Indigenous Australians on 13 February was a powerful symbol, a symbol for good and an immutable and broad acknowledgement of the greatest blemish on our past, namely, the treatment of our Indigenous people. For my part, the apology is a heartfelt acknowledgement not of any one act but, as my friend and colleague Scott Morrison so eloquently implied in his maiden speech last Thursday, of the result of ‘more than 200 years of shared ignorance, failed policies and failed communities’. In many respects government paternalism and welfare has done so much to enfeeble and marginalise our Indigenous people. I have had exposure to that again and again, and it is a situation which is of great urgency and great need.

If the apology allows some closure for so many with a disadvantaged and unhappy past, if it allows them to put aside a sense of injustice, to move on, to gain confidence and resolve to improve their own lives, then this is a wonderful thing. However, a true sense of balance will only be fully achieved in Australia when we complete the unfinished business of providing Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Australia with a shared destiny. Until we effectively tackle the hopelessness, the substance abuse, the violence and welfare dependency that unfettered welfare or sit-down money has entrenched in so many of our Indigenous communities, there can be no shared destiny.

In the name of compassion and a well-placed sense of guilt we have ironically locked in disadvantage and a state of mind which works against many of our Indigenous people seeing how, or wanting, to take control of their own lives. Hopefully, the apology lays an important psychological foundation to empower and encourage individuals and communities to seek to improve their own lives. Hopefully, the apology raises the expectation and the accountability of our governments to apply a large measure of originality, common sense and resolve. I say originality, because so much of what we have done, despite good intent, has failed. The policy approaches of state and federal governments and successive governments have failed comprehensively. So we need to apply a large measure of originality, common sense and resolve in seeking to address the critical health, education, employment and housing issues confronting so many Indigenous communities. In doing so, the policies and approach of our governments must seek to empower individuals to foster a sense of self-worth, a sense of defiance, in many respects, and self-responsibility. It is only this state of mind among our Indigenous Australians that will be associated with any sustainable achievement of the quality of life and the quality of opportunity that will mark the achievement of a shared destiny with all other Australians. And for that reason, I see the apology as a very important starting point.

Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I strongly support this apology. It is a decade late but its lateness makes it all the more welcome. State and territory governments apologised following the delivery of the Bringing them home report in 1997. The Australian Labor Party, in opposition in 1997, moved to apologise in this place but the motion was lost. It gives me a particular personal satisfaction to stand in this House and see the fulfilment of a promise made by the Australian Labor Party to offer the apology that was made last Wednesday, 13 February, 2008, which will be a historic day for our country.

This is a matter of particular personal significance for me as well because, along with a dedicated team of lawyers, I worked for some four years on the stolen generations case in the Northern Territory, between 1998 and 2002. Last Wednesday was a poignant day for me not just because of its historic significance but also because one of the members of the stolen generation for whom I acted in that case as counsel was present on the floor of the House of Representatives to hear the apology offered by the Prime Minister. I am speaking of Lorna Cubillo. The case was fought on her behalf, and on behalf of the late Kumanjai Gunner. It was founded on actions by the Commonwealth in administering the Northern Territory until the 1960s. In that time, the administration of the Northern Territory removed Indigenous children from their families and communities. Children were taken long distances from the communities of their birth and they were made to live among strangers in a strange place—in institutions which bore no resemblance to a home. They lost the chance to grow among the warmth of their own families, to speak in their people’s language and to learn about their country. They were treated as orphans when they were not orphans. They lost the culture and tradition of their families.

Like the case in which I appeared which was decided by the Federal Court in 2000, the Bringing them home report of 1997 is filled with stories of great sadness—not just the stories of Lorna Cubillo and Kumanjai Gunner but those of the many witnesses who appeared in the litigation in the Northern Territory, adding to those that we have read in the Bringing them home report. Some are stories of people who were forcibly removed from their families as children. Others are stories of old women whose children were taken away from them. These are stories of decades of sorrow: the sorrow of being separated from family and country, the sorrow of a mother never seeing her child again, the sorrow of never knowing your mother or your family or the sorrow of lost opportunity in meeting up with family decades after removal, knowing there is no real way to make up for lost time together.

I should give a bit of context to these events. Several of the speakers in this debate have reminded the House of Paul Keating’s 1992 Redfern Park speech when, in acknowledging the many wrongs done to Aboriginal people, he used the phrase ‘We took the children from their mothers’. It was known then that there had been removal of Aboriginal children right through the 20th century, but the extent of it was not well understood. The Going Home Conference in Darwin in 1993 was attended by several hundred Aboriginal people. It was that conference which led to, first, Robert Tickner, as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in the Keating government, and, later, Michael Lavarch, as Attorney-General, commissioning the inquiry conducted by Sir Ronald Wilson and Mick Dodson that produced the Bringing them home report. They of course reported to this parliament in May 1997. Unfortunately, by then the government which had commissioned their report had been replaced by the Howard government in March 1996.

There was an overwhelming response to the tabling of the Bringing them home report. Members of the then opposition read stories from the report into Hansard. Some parliamentarians were moved to tears during their speeches. There was extensive media coverage and tremendous public debate. Unfortunately, the overwhelming public response was not matched by the Howard government’s response. As Lowitja O’Donoghue reminded us in her speech marking the 10th anniversary of the report, 35 of the 54 recommendations in the Bringing them home report were ignored.

The Howard government did not act on most of the recommendations when the report was delivered and still had not acted on the recommendations when the Australian people voted it out of office last year. It was an extraordinary missed opportunity, and, notoriously, the Howard government did not act on the recommendation of an apology. Indeed, the then Prime Minister marked the 10th anniversary by telling parliament that he would not say sorry and that there would be no formal apology to Aboriginal people. He said:

My view has not changed in relation to that, and it will not change.

The decision of the Federal Court in August 2000 that there would be no extension of the time needed to extend the limitations period that both Lorna Cubillo and Kumanjai Gunner faced in the litigation was seized on by the Howard government as proof that there was no stolen generation and that the Bringing them home report was a mistake. In other words, the defeat of the litigation was made to serve a political purpose.

But it is worth remembering that in the same year, 2000, there were huge marches across bridges in Sydney, Melbourne and other capital cities. Hundreds of thousands of Australians marched for reconciliation. The marches were seen at the time as tremendous popular support for reconciliation and the Aboriginal cause but, in some senses, these marches marked an end to reconciliation and not its beginning. Regrettably, until 24 November 2007, reconciliation has limped along, wounded by the Howard government’s failure to apologise and wounded by the Howard government’s failure to even recognise the unrighted wrong of the stolen generation. I have to say that the Howard government’s response to the case left me with a sense of shame, but it made me work with all the more vigour for a change of government. What we now have from the new government is the apology that was offered last Wednesday, which is, I must say, a tremendous step forward. It is a great first step to reconciliation of Aboriginal people with the nation, and what we saw in the lead-up to the apology last week and on the offering of the apology in this parliament was an outpouring of support for Aboriginal people, a real sense that there had been a turning of the page, a change of direction and the taking of a fresh direction on behalf of the whole nation, something on which we can build.

I received in my electorate office in the lead-up to and after the apology—and this is a demonstration of the outpouring of support that there has been for the apology and the national mood that has been created by its offering—a large number of emails supporting it. They are only representative, but I want to share some of them with the House to make clear just what sentiments have been elicited by the offering of the apology.

Peter Dibbs wrote: ‘We were very proud to be Australians yesterday when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd took the first step in rectifying the injustice suffered by our Indigenous population.’ Stephen McPhail wrote: ‘Congratulations on being part of the government that today made an enormously courageous and important symbolic gesture on behalf of our people.’ Lisa Hill, another of my constituents, wrote to say, ‘I have not felt proud of this country for a very long time but now I feel different. Thank you to everyone involved.’ Wendy Russell, another constituent, wrote:

Thank you for being part of and supporting a government that has at last given the Aboriginal people a sense of dignity and a feeling that they are believed in the stories they have told in relation to the stolen children.

The offering of the apology last Wednesday was a truly important day in the history of this country because it marked a very clear recognition on behalf of the whole of our nation that we have put the kind of approach that was bound up in the taking of children—which was, and it needs to be stated clearly, an approach that was based upon race—directly and squarely behind us. We now have the opportunity for what I would describe as a common future for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

I have in mind a future as one people, a future in which Indigenous people are a valued part. It is a common future which is not only about improving living standards and closing the gap in life expectancy, in health and education levels between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians but also about a common future as a distinctive Australian people—an Australian people who are grounded in the land, an Australian people who can draw on the ancient traditions of the people of this land who are, as we know, the people who can link us to the beginnings of human existence in our continent.

Finally, it is important that we treat the apology that was offered as a beginning. It marks a closing of a shameful chapter in Australia’s history where the production of the report in 1997 was met with virtual denials by the government of this country that the report had accurately described events which had happened.

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Wednesday, 13 February, was a very special day in many ways. If I could personalise a little: it was the 16th birthday of my younger son, and that was special to our family. A number of our family were here on a very special day. In the chamber were his brother, who is 26, and his mother, my wife—and I will not divulge her age! The 26-year-old son spent part of Thursday, 14 February, at the War Memorial and, with modern communications and a few buttons to push, he was able to trace the history of his grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s military service. That was a special thing that he could do. Last Wednesday was about recognising that many Aboriginal people are not able and have not been able to make that connection because policies of many years ago physically removed some children from their parents for no other reason than their Aboriginality.

I fully understand that there were young people who were removed for welfare reasons, and today there are people of various nationalities who are removed from their families for quite legitimate reasons. But those people who were taken away and, as I think Laurie Ferguson mentioned, treated as orphans have not had and do not have the capacity to do as my sons have been able to do—to trace their forebears. We are what our forebears are; they are part of us. And to remove that deliberately from any human being is something I think we should apologise for. I was very proud, as a member of the parliament but also as an individual, to be here on such a very special occasion. I do not think anybody who was in the chamber or in the gallery would not have been touched by a number of moments that occurred during the ceremony.

I congratulate the Prime Minister for moving the motion, and I think the words were quite appropriate. I was in the New South Wales parliament in the late nineties when a sorry motion was introduced there. I was supportive of the motion then and obviously I was supportive of the motion here last Thursday. I also congratulate the Leader of the Opposition, Brendan Nelson. I know he has been pilloried in the press on a number of occasions in relation to some of his choices of words and, on reflection, he might well have reflected on some of the topics he branched into. But going back to last Tuesday, when we had the welcome to country ceremony, I thought both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition gave very, very good speeches. There was no doubt in my mind, on the Tuesday and the Wednesday, that Brendan Nelson was very sincere in his apology. I do not think there was any politics in his personal demeanour and body language in relation to the apology. Quite rightly, he supported the substantive motion of the Prime Minister and he has joined with the Prime Minister on the joint council that is being set up to try and reconcile some of the problems, now that the apology has been formally given.

I thought the moment that the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition shook hands across the chamber was very special. It is something that I will remember from this parliament. And I thought the moment that the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition walked together towards the back of the chamber encapsulated the day for me in a sense because, as they were walking towards the back of the chamber to see some of the elders who were in the chamber as guests, a voice came out of the back gallery—I assume it was an Aboriginal woman speaking—and said these very simple words: ‘Thank you.’

I know there is a debate about some of what the Leader of the Opposition said, but the substantive motion was endorsed. The way the two leaders conducted themselves and the way it was received by the people in the gallery, particularly the Aboriginal people, I thought made it a very special day. I think anybody who spent some time outside with that group knows that the emotion that was in that room was quite incredible. The only time I have experienced that sort of emotive unity of purpose—and it might seem quite strange to liken that function to the one I am about to mention—was when farmers had a rally here in 1985, when 50,000 farmers came together in a sense of unity of purpose. There was a real feeling within that group, and I experienced a similar feeling here the other day. People who did not know one another were congratulating one another and offering their sympathies and goodwill to others. Again, I thought that was a very special moment on that day.

I emphasise my congratulations to both Kevin Rudd and Brendan Nelson. I do not doubt the sincerity of either man in the apology and sense of unity that should lead out of this motion in coming to grips with the future. It has been the politics of division that has stopped any resolution to some of these problems. There must be a united approach, not just with the white community and the Aboriginal community but in the political community, to agree on a way forward that can be depoliticised. The Leader of the Opposition has an enormous opportunity to play a great role in the future debate—as, obviously, do the government and the Prime Minister.

Many speakers have spoken about the possibility of compensation. I think that has been used as a bit of a red herring for some years in order not to apologise for previous policies which were obviously out of order in the way in which they were conducted. I do not believe, and I did not get the feeling from the Aboriginal community who were there the other day, that there will be a great demand for compensation. Maybe it will be tested in the courts in some circumstances, but I think the real meaning of last Wednesday to the recipients of the apology was that they were finally recognised and that the policies which had harmed their families were recognised in probably the most special parliamentary occasion for many years. I think that was the heartfelt thanks that the lady in the gallery was giving when she just said, ‘Thank you,’ which is what you do if somebody apologises for something they have done inadvertently.

Something like 70 per cent of the population of my electorate are Aboriginal, and I consider myself to have a very good relationship with the Aboriginal people. I have known many of them for many years. I grew up near what used to be a mission near a little place called Caroona. It is now the Walhollow Aboriginal community, and a great community in any right—black, white or brindle. It is a very good community and a very good example of what can be achieved with community leadership, elder participation, particularly in relation to the strong women in that community. That has been reflected in many other areas as well. I would urge people who are a little uncertain about what this means to try to put themselves in the same position—if they had been taken away from their parents for no particular welfare reason but because of the number of their house in the street, the colour of their skin or the name of their family. I think that would be gut wrenching and would be very difficult to live with. They would not have been able—as my eldest son was able—to go to the War Memorial, push a button and trace their family because they would not have known who they were. In that sense, there would have been a vacuum in their lives.

In the few minutes remaining, I would like to reflect on my deceased colleague, Peter Andren, the former member for Calare, on the regard he had for Aboriginal people and the respect they had for him as well. There is no doubt in my mind that his spirit was here on Wednesday and it would have been a great thing for him to have participated.

I noticed that a former New South Wales parliamentarian, Col Markham, was in the audience on the day of the apology. I would like to pay my respects to Col. He was a parliamentary secretary in the New South Wales Parliament when I was there, but he was really the minister for Aboriginal affairs and a man who devoted a great deal of time to the betterment of Aboriginal people in New South Wales. Linda Burney, the Aboriginal minister from New South Wales, was there too. She has put a tremendous amount of work in. It was good to see her in tears, in the sense that she was overcome with the emotion of the day.

A couple of people in my own electorate, Joe and Pearl Trindall, who are in their 80s, are real examples of Aboriginal elders who have done it tough. They are still working hard for their people and they are great examples to the young people. We have to learn that we have to help re-establish communication in a lot of these communities. I have spent a lot of time in inland Australia. I am going back out into the deserts in July to spend some time in some of those very remote areas. In my view, we have to assist in the re-establishment of communication between the elders in the community and the young people. One of the reasons why I was opposed to the intervention in the Northern Territory is that a blanket approach such as that does not recognise the flexibility that is required. Many of those smaller communities in very remote places have not had grog for years. They made voluntary decisions, because of the integrity of their communities, to keep out alcohol, petrol and a whole range of other things.

People assume that in the Northern Territory and Western Australia there are massive problems everywhere. There are problems in some parts but there are many good communities as well. Maybe they are not communities that some of us would prefer to live in, but they are, nonetheless, communities where a sense of family and respect for elders and respect for one another are still very much alive. They are not dominated by alcohol, petrol or other substances.

I take issue with the member for Indi. She complained about having only 15 hours—I cannot remember exactly how many hours it was—to consider the 360 or so words of the apology. I would like to complain about the way in which the government introduced the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 and four other bills—545 pages—and expected it all to be passed in one day. We were expected to believe the Prime Minister and the minister as to the content of that legislation. I did not vote on that because we were not given sufficient time to go through it. I have now had time to read that legislation and there are certain parts of it that I disagree with.

In conclusion, a message to the government: I would bring back the permit system. I think there are some real arguments for the permit system in some of those communities.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Washer, congratulations on your appointment to the Speaker’s panel. I look forward to sharing it with you.

The word ‘apology’ is defined by the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary as ‘a regretful acknowledgment of an offence or failure’. The word ‘sorry’ is defined by the same dictionary as ‘to be pained or regretful or penitent’. In the lead-up to this House’s historic motion of apology, I thought a lot about these two words and what they mean to me. ‘Sorry’ is such a small word, but the sentiment and psychology that complement it are more powerful than any other word I can think of, except perhaps the word ‘love’. ‘Sorry’ is more powerful than regretfulness; ‘sorry’ is more powerful than remorse. These words are all components of what it means to be sorry, but they cannot replace that one five-letter word. Forgiveness is so much easier when someone has looked you in the eye and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ That is exactly what our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, did in this place last week. Feelings of injustice, anger and hurt are nearly impossible to overcome without expressing that word. ‘I apologise. I’m sorry’—there is nothing more powerful. That is why I want to record my apology in this parliament for what happened to the stolen generations.

Contrary to what some historians such as Keith Windschuttle try to argue, along with a coterie of right-wing ideologues associated with Quadrant, fed by the former Prime Minister’s obsession to identify and promote cultural wars in what he divisively labelled ‘a black armband view of history’, about the alleged historical accuracy of the description ‘the stolen generations’, let there be no doubt that policies existed that forcefully removed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their homes and families on the basis of race. I reiterate: children were forcefully removed from their homes and families on the basis of race.

There are those who would argue, notwithstanding the hurt of the forceful removal of children in crisis at any time, regardless of race, that such practices preclude a specific apology to the stolen generations because they were part of a practice that included all races. This is in fact not true. Racist policies existed, no matter what the intention of the framers, administrators or receiving individuals or institutions—policies and practices that were based on racial identification above and beyond more generic criteria to determine state intervention to protect children at risk.

Sadly, some of the key findings of the inquiry which resulted in the Bringing them home report, released on 22 May 1997, included some very disturbing conclusions. Nationally, between one in three and one in 10 Indigenous children were forcefully removed from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970. Indigenous children were placed in institutions or church missions, were adopted or fostered and were at risk of physical and sexual abuse. Many never received wages for their labour. Welfare officials failed in their duty to protect Indigenous wards from abuse. Under international law from approximately 1946, the policies of forceful removal amounted to genocide. From 1950, the continuation of distinct laws for Indigenous children was racially discriminatory.

Forceful removal began in the mid-1800s and continued until 1970, only some 38 years ago. The governments at the time believed their official laws and policies to assimilate Indigenous Australians into the wider community were warranted. We know that they were not warranted and that other options existed. The 1997 inquiry into the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, entitled Bringing them home, conservatively estimated that at least 100,000 children were removed from their families—that is, 100,000 children were directly affected; 100,000 children were taken involuntarily from their parents. I think about the flow-on effect from this: parents, grandparents and siblings, and the generations of descendants directly affected. No-one can put a definitive number on that. Descendants have felt the effect of their loved ones’ anguish and pain for many years, so more people continue to be affected.

Close to one-quarter of removed children who were fostered or adopted and were questioned in the Bringing them home inquiry also reported being physically abused. One in five reported being sexually abused. One in six children sent to institutions reported physical abuse and one in 10 reported sexual abuse. The figures in books are statistics, but the thought of each and every one of these children being physically beaten, sexually violated or psychologically abused is devastating.

Along with thousands of Australians, over many years of contemplating the sad events surrounding the forceful removal of Aboriginal children from their families, I can only try to imagine the pain and suffering associated with this policy. I can barely comprehend the gut-wrenching devastation each and every mother would have endured, for instance, upon having a child or children taken from her in such dramatic and sudden circumstances. I cannot imagine how I would feel if authorities who forcefully removed a child of mine told me my child was dead or if I subsequently found out that this was not true. I can only try to understand the plight of a child being taken and thrown into a foster home or institution where it is forbidden to speak their native language. Nothing could be more frightening. In one swift move, these children lost their family, their culture, their connection to traditional land and their entire sense of identity. It has also been reported that many Aboriginal women were bullied into signing blank ‘assent to removal’ forms.

Personally, I have always struggled to understand why there has ever been an argument over whether a federal government apology to the stolen generations was necessary. Each and every state and territory issued a formal apology to the stolen generations more than a decade ago. Our country has held a National Sorry Day for almost a decade. We have also had a National Sorry Book for the same period of time. The first and foremost recommendation derived from the Bringing them home inquiry was that we acknowledge the truth of what happened. The delivery of an apology was the first step in healing for the stolen generations. A federal government apology is clearly and obviously was needed if we want our country to move forward. Along with many others in this parliament and this country, I believe this apology is well overdue.

Critics have argued, on the basis of former Prime Minister Howard’s argument, that the current parliament should not apologise for the failings of previous governments. But I disagree. We as a government must recognise and acknowledge our collective past as a nation in order to move forward together into our future. We are very quick to acknowledge and acclaim the virtues and successes of our ancestors. It is historically indefensible to argue, as Liberal Senator Herron did on 4 March 1998, that:

An apology could imply that present generations are in some way responsible and accountable for the actions of earlier generations, actions that were sanctioned by the laws of the time, and that were believed to be in the best interests of the children concerned.

To be clear, and contrary to what some commentators would have us believe: the Commonwealth government was actively involved in the practice of removing children through both its support of such resolutions as the 1937 Commonwealth-State Native Welfare Conference and its early administration of the Northern Territory. Despite protestations to the contrary by Douglas Meagher QC, there is clear evidence that the Commonwealth did embrace Dr Cook’s assimilationist policies. For example, on 22 February 1933, JA Carrodus, who was Secretary of the Department of Interior of the Commonwealth, said: ‘The policy of mixing half-castes with whites for the purpose of breeding out their colour is that adopted by the Commonwealth government.’

Under Paul Hasluck’s administration, policy was regularised so that removals had to be approved by the Director of Native Affairs and be in the best interests of the child. But, when administrator FJ Wised recommended that no child under the age of four be removed except where the question of danger arose, Hasluck is recorded as insisting: ‘No age limit need be stated. The younger the child is at the time of removal, the better for the child.’

The Commonwealth’s much later opposition to special laws for Indigenous children did not constitute opposition to the practice of removal of children, as it was clear the courts were prepared to equate Indigenous poverty with ‘neglect’ and an Indigenous lifestyle with ‘uncontrollable’. But it was not true until the mid-1970s—when Indigenous legal services, not initially funded by the Commonwealth, started to represent children and families involved in separation orders and Indigenous childcare groups started to offer alternatives to the removal of children from their families—that the number of forced separations started to drop dramatically. In other words, there were alternatives.

Further, it has been noted that, in most jurisdictions, removals were taking place without court orders, thus infringing the legal principle, derived from the common law, that children should not be removed from their parents unless a court, on evidence proving removal is in the best interests of the child, decides otherwise. Indeed, in the 1950s, in the Commonwealth-administered Northern Territory, thousands of children were removed without any court or legal process involved. The Commonwealth was involved. We are liable.

I raised the semantics of the wording of the actual apology at the beginning of my speech but I would like to touch on it again. I think back to times when I have been seriously hurt or have felt an injustice has been inflicted upon me, and I think about how I felt when those who hurt me refused to say sorry. Then I think about the relief I felt when someone hurt me but later told me that they were sorry, and the member for New England eloquently gave examples of that. Obviously, I have never experienced anything of the same gravity as the stolen generations. I cannot imagine it. But from my own experience I can say this: sorry. There is nothing to misinterpret about that word. It means one thing and one thing only. ‘Sorry’ is the word that had to be said, and I am so proud that our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, stood in this parliament and said it. I am also pleased that the Leader of the Opposition also said sorry and that this our parliament is saying sorry.

In contemporary Australia, there is still much to be done to improve the conditions of our Indigenous people. There remains a 17-year gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It is scandalous. We now need to work together as a country to improve the quality of life of our Indigenous population. Poor health and poor education continue to take a huge toll on Indigenous Australians. We need to work hard together as a nation to change these things. And, like many here, I was very proud when the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition stood together and received the thanks of our Indigenous elders after giving the apology. Together they have created a working force to try and tackle some of these problems in a very practical way.

When thinking about the future generations of Indigenous Australians, I consider the words used by Reconciliation Australia CEO Barbara Livesey in a letter she recently sent to all federal parliamentarians:

Success is built on people working together and respecting each other. If Indigenous children grow up believing that their views, culture and history are respected, then they will be more likely to have the confidence to achieve and succeed in all areas of life.

I agree wholeheartedly with this comment. Last week’s apology is the first step towards achieving this success for future generations of Indigenous Australians. This apology is about moving forward into the future together as a country. This apology means acknowledgement. It means regret. It means remorse. But, most importantly, it means we will work together to ensure these terrible events and individual and family experiences never ever happen again. I am proud to say ‘I am sorry’ and to be part of the parliament that has finally said, ‘We are sorry.’

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Washer, let me add my congratulations to those of others on your elevation to the Speaker’s panel.

The bond between mother and child or a mother and her children is seminal to most societies. The nurturing process may take on many guises and be expressed in many cultural practices but, in the end, it is the fundamental feature of the human condition, regardless of race, colour or religion. That is why the legal systems of the world uphold the bond between mother and child and only seek to sever it in the most exceptional of circumstances. Even foul and despotic regimes have baulked at crossing that fine line that allows the separation of children from families. It is hard to contemplate the grief of Indigenous mothers who suffered when their children were taken from them, or the sadness and bewilderment of children from simple outback environments and what they felt when thrust into institutional care, in many instances with little prospect of reunion. Some never saw their parents again. Certainly some foster parents and religious organisations and institutions did deliver a better lifestyle and future for Aboriginal children. But, equally, others were uncaring and, in some instances, manifestly cruel. Worse still, some of this was done in the name of a loving God—even to the extent of falsely telling children that their parents were dead. How could you just tolerate a thing like that?

Against that backdrop, we are challenged to examine how Australian society measures up over recent generations in the treatment of its Indigenous citizens. While I do not subscribe to generational guilt and while our judgement of past actions may be tempered by the mores of the day and the good intentions of some participants, it is time to strip away the veneer and to examine the forced separation, the hurt it has caused and the long-term effects it has had on many Indigenous Australians. I am prepared to put my own reservations aside and approach this with a generosity of heart and a spirit of healing because, if this apology does not flow from such a spirit and from sincerity, we will not move forward and, when the rhetoric fades away, Aboriginal Australians will be no better off.

I subscribe to the apology statement by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, though I must be honest in saying that I am ambivalent to the word ‘stolen’. The report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families—the operative word being ‘separation’—is very important. But that said I embrace the 17 clauses of the apology.

It would be fair to say that separated children have become in the minds of the Indigenous community emblematic of a history of injustice and marginalisation. But, as much as it is an emblem of the past, it can also be a touchstone for the future. I therefore extend my apology and sorrow and pledge myself to that future.

Sadly, amongst these expressions of goodwill and healing that we have heard this week, there are others out there with agendas masquerading as being necessary adjuncts to an apology. Those who would use it politically demonstrated that by their manipulative encouragement of people to turn their backs on the Leader of the Opposition—people, I might add, who should have known better. Didn’t they realise that their partisanship nearly defeated the inclusion which we all craved? There are those who will use this line in the sand to try to revive an indulged elite who failed their people over recent decades. Further, there will be those who want to retain the permit system to obscure transparency and accountability. Finally, there will be those who would use it as an excuse to encourage compensation and more radical political agendas.

But even let us put those to one side. I firmly believe we must aim for two tangible outcomes from this apology. Firstly, Aboriginal Australians need to genuinely accept and embrace the apology. That will be a most potent tool for breaking down the barriers and bringing all Australians on board in a joint effort to craft a future. Secondly, there must be a total commitment from all sections of Australian society to improve the lot of Indigenous communities encompassing a full range of measures—health, housing, education and employment.

The parliament’s apology should be seen as a defining line in the sand on all matters of Indigenous welfare. It should not be and has never been tolerable that Aboriginal Australians have shockingly bad indicators in almost every measure of wellbeing. According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health performance framework report of 2006, Indigenous Australians are hospitalised almost three times as frequently as other Australians. They have a 17-year-shorter life expectancy. They live in overcrowded homes on very low incomes. Around half of all Aboriginals drink alcohol to dangerous levels and the same number are chronic smokers. A conservative estimate shows that almost a quarter of all Aboriginals over the age of 17 have experienced violence or have been physically threatened, while an Aboriginal child has a three to four times greater chance of being abused and neglected than he or she would in the mainstream community.

How this can be acceptable today in the Australia we live in is well beyond me, and it is down to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians to accept responsibility for it. Paternalistic attitudes, no matter how well intentioned, have spawned a welfare mentality crippling many Aboriginal communities and drastically reducing self-reliance, personal responsibility and self-determination.

I feel that, for decades now, political correctness and confected cultural sensitivities have been the greatest hurdles we have faced in fixing the serious problems of Aboriginal Australians. One Indigenous leader has said:

Culture is often invoked as a justification for this lowering of expectations and standards. It will be invoked by indigenous community members as well as those developing policies and delivering programs, as a justification for not upholding rigorous standards that apply in the mainstream. We must be careful to ensure that we are not unconsciously using culture as an excuse for failure, poor performance and under-achievement … why is ‘cultural appropriateness’ never invoked as a justification for higher standards and higher expectations—and higher levels of achievement, rather than lower? Beware whenever the words ‘culturally appropriate’ are used: it is usually an alibi for low standards and dumbing down.

Those are not my words; they are Noel Pearson’s from his 2004 position paper Bending to dysfunction, bending to the problems, and I admire his courage and leadership in delivering it.

Fear of offence has left governments and the wider community hesitant, nervous and ultimately reluctant to take the big steps that are sorely needed. For far too long we have fiddled around the edges of an overwhelmingly bad situation, the vast majority of Australians wringing their hands in concern but not prepared to face up to the difficult decisions which must be made. With all due respect, holding hands and singing Kumbaya and We shall overcome might make someone feel better, but I bet it is not an Aboriginal struggling to hold onto his life on some basic reserve.

I acknowledge that some inroads have been made in recent years and that progress in some areas is accelerating. But I implore the new government, and the wider community too, to steel its resolve to keep on the straight and true track. We have drawn a line in the sand, and now is the time for big steps.

The Northern Territory intervention was a dramatic and determined action, although I concede not universally popular. But I believe it was a new beginning for families living in isolated Aboriginal communities. I applaud the new government’s commitment to keep that going. It might not be perfect, but the situation that the government faced was not perfect either. For too long, the plight of Aboriginal Australians has been buried at the bottom of the too-hard basket, papered over with banknotes. That exact approach has left us where we are today, and we all carry some responsibility for what has happened.

Those who are at the coalface of working to make life better in remote Aboriginal communities—police, nurses, teachers—deserve a gold medal. The path that they are on is tough: too little manpower, too few resources and not enough resolve at the highest levels of bureaucracy and government. ‘Shoved under the carpet’ is an apt phrase.

Let me end on an optimistic note. Aboriginal advancement has been accelerating over recent years. Indigenous Australians have excelled in a multitude of fields including medicine, health, law, art, sport, the stage and politics. There have been some marvellous Aboriginal leaders in the past, people such as Harold Blair and Neville Bonner, and more recently people like Tania Major, Noel Pearson and Chris Sarra. They are beacons for future generations, and we would do well to listen to them and work with them to make sure Aboriginal Australians have a better future.

On Wednesday a marvellous event occurred in this parliament. It was charged with goodwill and great emotion. It was a new beginning for Aboriginal people if one thing happens, which is that the symbolism of that day is captured and crafted into a future for Aboriginal people. We all bear a lot of guilt and I repeat my sorrow, but what we must not do is lack commitment from here on in. Unless there is a great commitment from all Australians, and a great acceptance and welcoming from the Indigenous population of Australia of this apology, then a lot of this will be lost and that would be a tragedy. I commend all 17 points of the statement by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition, and I commit myself to see that it is carried out.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Washer, can I take this opportunity to also congratulate you on your elevation to the Speaker’s panel.

It is without any reservation that I rise to speak in support of the Prime Minister’s motion of apology to members of the stolen generation. For many years, members of the stolen generations, as well as their families, communities and community leaders, have campaigned for an apology. They have sought an apology in recognition of the pain and suffering caused by past government policies that made it lawful to forcibly remove Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their mothers and fathers, thereby severing the sacred bond which exists between children and their parents and, in particular, between children and their mothers, tearing countless families apart and opening up new wounds for a community and people already heavily burdened by the violence of the past.

From the outset, I want to recognise the struggle and the enormous sacrifices that so many members of Australia’s Indigenous community have made and continue to make in their efforts to seek recognition and justice. The apology, which took place last Wednesday, is not about our benevolence as a parliament or as a nation in saying sorry. It is about the history of Indigenous struggle in this country, a struggle in which Indigenous Australians have continued to fight for agency against an often hostile response. And it is about the history of Indigenous suffering under successive government policies and laws that institutionalised discrimination. It is this struggle that has brought us to this point in our history as a nation, and it is this struggle that I would like to pay tribute to today.

Last week’s apology was a long time in the making and many of us believe that it was long overdue. One of the most significant turning points in this parliament’s move towards an apology was of course the 1997 Bringing them home report by Sir Ronald Wilson, the former High Court judge and president of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Bringing them home documented the removal of nearly 100,000 Indigenous children from their families between 1910 and 1970 as a result of laws and policies that made the practice of forced removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children lawful.

Whilst these laws have now been relegated to the past, the suffering they caused remains very much alive for many of our Indigenous community. Looking at the gallery as the Prime Minister and indeed the Leader of the Opposition were making their speeches of apology on behalf of the Australian parliament, what was so evident was the pain that members of the stolen generations and their families still felt, as well as the enormous importance they attach to an apology. Last Wednesday was a sombre and at the same time momentous day in which grief, pain, relief and joy all combined in a single moment that few of us will ever forget.

This apology is equally significant for non-Indigenous Australians and the way we have written our history across this great country. It is evident that a majority of Australians support the apology precisely because they recognise the wrongs of the past and understand the importance of reconciliation as a way for our nation to move forward. Many Australians watched last week’s apology at home, at work, in school or on large public screens set up across the country. What is telling is the way so many Australians sought to share this moment with others around them, whether they were close friends, work colleagues or even strangers. This was more than just wanting to share an important moment in Australia’s history; it was a collective expression of a nation’s willingness to recognise the suffering of fellow Australians and a recognition that moving forward as a nation meant moving forward together.

Last week’s apology was not about unfairly attributing individual blame to today’s generation of Australians for wrongs done in the past or forcing guilt on those who played no part in determining the policies that gave rise to the stolen generation; rather, last week’s apology was about a nation coming together in its willingness to acknowledge suffering, both past and present. It was about mutual respect. Last week’s apology was an act of recognition and an act of decency that helps to fill in some of the gaps in those official narratives that herald Australia’s birth and success as a modern nation whilst marginalising the history of Indigenous Australians. It is also an act of recognition and decency that helps bind us closer together as a nation, one that is willing to reflect honestly upon its past as a way of building for its future. We cannot be held directly responsible for past wrongs and to argue as such would be meaningless, but we have an obligation to be responsible for the Australia we live in today, for the privileges and opportunities we enjoy but that not all Australians have equal access to.

Present-day Australia is not immune from inequality, and no greater inequality exists than that between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Taking responsibility for the Australia we have inherited means recognising the inequalities that continue to cut across present-day Australia and taking action to end them. It is also part and parcel of striving for a better future for all Australians. This apology attests to our nation’s evolving character, and it is also a test of our resolve to close the gap that still exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in such fundamental areas as life expectancy, educational achievement, employment opportunities and so on.

Just as we struggle to close the gap between rich and poor and just as we struggle to make sure that gender is no longer an obstacle to individual opportunity and achievement, so we must continue to struggle to make sure that Indigenous Australians have the same opportunities in life that non-Indigenous Australians enjoy. This apology acts as an impetus to make sure that our words are matched by actions. Few underestimate the many challenges that lie ahead, but the Rudd government is committed to meeting them.

Our approach is one based on flexibility that recognises the different needs of different communities rather than tries to force a one-size-fits-all model. As the Prime Minister announced during his apology speech, over the next five years the government will make sure that every Indigenous four-year-old has access to early childhood education with proper preliteracy and prenumeracy programs. Education is the key pathway to building a secure future and creating individual opportunity. All the research shows that preschool education has significant advantages when it comes to educational successes later on in life. That is why the government has made this commitment to preschool education for all Indigenous four-year-olds. This is crucial if we are going to reverse the trend of lower school retention rates and poor educational attainment amongst sections of Australia’s Indigenous community. The government has also committed to finding 200 additional teachers in the Northern Territory and to working closely with state and territory governments to increase school attendance rates and ensure adequate classroom space, especially for Indigenous students in some remote areas.

A lot more also needs to be done in the area of health care, and the Rudd government has already started on the path to improving Indigenous healthcare services by upgrading remote health clinics and extending sexual assault counselling and renal dialysis services. This is about matching words with action. One of the government’s priorities is to expand detoxification and rehabilitation services across the Northern Territory to tackle the alcohol addiction problem.

I also welcome the bipartisan commission announced by the Prime Minister last week, whose initial brief will be to look at improving Indigenous housing and constitutional reform. These are just some of the undertakings of the Rudd government. They follow on from an apology that I hope leads to a new chapter in Indigenous affairs in this country and a further strengthening of the relationship that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians based on mutual recognition and respect. Many in this place, in speaking to this motion, have posed the question: what if it was your children or grandchildren taken away from you? It is a question that should give us all an opportunity to pause for thought.

However, there is another question that goes to the very heart of the ethics that surround this difficult chapter in Australia’s history. It is a question that was posed by the famous sociologist Zygmunt Bauman in his book Modernity and the holocaust. Writing about how we approach the tragedy of past events, Bauman suggests that, rather than asking the question, ‘What if this happened to me?’ we should think seriously about whether we would act unjustly if ever put in a situation where the denial of justice was demanded of us, whether by our political leaders or by some other authority. It is a question whose ethical force does not lie in an emphatic no; rather, it is a question that we must necessarily keep asking ourselves, a question without end that serves as a way of warding off future injustices. Last week’s apology was an important turning point in Australia’s history, and I am very happy to have this opportunity to support this motion.

Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to follow the honourable member for Calwell on this apology to the stolen generations. Whether or not we like it, last week was a very historic week for the parliament and the people of Australia. For the first time in more than a century of national parliament we had an Indigenous welcome. We as a parliament of Australia formally acknowledged the fact that we have a very proud Indigenous community. I thought that the welcome was just outstanding and I think it made us all feel so very, very proud.

I would also like to place on record my appreciation for the Leader of the Opposition, Dr Brendan Nelson. Some may criticise the speech he gave on the apology; others may not. History will be the judge. But he gave the great gift to Australia of bipartisan support for this apology to the stolen generation. I want to acknowledge it and say as a member of the government quite sincerely how much I appreciated it.

It is fitting in talking about an apology to acknowledge the Ngunawal people, the Indigenous people of Canberra. I would also like to acknowledge the fact that in Chifley we have a multicultural group of Indigenous people. I would like to sincerely acknowledge the Dharruk people, the original Indigenous people of that area, but also acknowledge that I have elders of many other peoples as well in my electorate. It is a blessing.

I have to say that the apology is something that is very close to my heart and my home. My electorate of Chifley has the largest urban Indigenous population in Australia and for the past decade has been the only community to continue the annual walk and gathering for reconciliation. I reflect on the recently gained section of my community, namely the eastern Blacktown end. In 1814, Governor Macquarie built a school for Aboriginal people in Parramatta. They had been gathered there after European farmers drove them off their land to use it for their own cultivation. When the suburb of Parramatta began to expand, the new settlers complained about living so close to the Aboriginal people. So from there the school was moved further west to the corner of what is now Richmond Road and Rooty Hill Road North. The area around the school and the land that had been granted to the Aboriginals became known as ‘Black’s Town’, and from there the suburb of Blacktown gained its name.

I am proud to recognise the Indigenous history of my electorate, just as I am proud of the Indigenous people of my electorate of Chifley today. I am fortunate enough to have active and talented elders and community leaders in my local Indigenous community. These elders and leaders act as mentors and leaders for the younger Indigenous members in Chifley. I have spoken in this House before about Father Paul Hanna, who worked in the Holy Family Parish. He is joined by elders such as Uncle Wes, Auntie Gloria and Auntie Mavis—a Dharruk elder and direct descendant of Maria Lock—and many more who find their work with young people of particular significance. They run camps and holiday programs to give disadvantaged Indigenous residents a chance to see what their land has to offer and to pass on the wisdom of their ways, their traditions and their stories to the next generation.

We always talk about the Indigenous connection with the land, saying that this is a spiritual connection. I do not know that all of us can aspire to have that depth of understanding and feeling for it, but I can say that there are many non-Aboriginals who, when we are at sea or working the land, have a spiritual connection with it. I am certainly one of those and I feel that connection has better enabled me to serve, especially the Indigenous community of my electorate—at least, I certainly hope that that is the case.

I certainly thank the elders for the journey that they have taken me on. For over a decade the people of my community, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, have gathered for the annual Walk for Reconciliation, to continue the traditions of native people of this land, to reflect on their history and to send forward the message of reconciliation. For years I have joined them, both in helping to organise the event and in walking in support of my local Indigenous people. I have always been proud to stand in support of them during those events in the wilderness years, and last week in parliament I was honoured to be part of a government, a Rudd Labor government, which finally recognised the ultimate act for reconciliation and said sorry to the stolen generations and the Indigenous peoples of Australia and acknowledged the Indigenous owners of the land by holding a welcome to country at the opening of parliament.

In my own electorate I am often asked what this means: does it mean that the current generation should accept the guilt for the past 200 years? I think the answer to that is no. This apology is not about apportioning blame for the past but is about recognising that children were forcibly removed from their families and acknowledging the pain and suffering that was caused to Indigenous children, their mothers and fathers across the nation. This country set the world’s best practice in displacing our Indigenous people. This apology is about opening our eyes to the gross mistakes that have been committed in the country we love so dearly. We open our eyes so that we can look into the future and accept responsibility for closing the gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and accept responsibility for providing better health service to neglected Indigenous communities which have seen health standards fade at the cost of their children’s wellbeing.

Saying sorry is about taking strides towards giving quality education to Indigenous communities, as our Prime Minister has already pledged to do during his address. But most of all it is about all Australians moving forward together as a people. I am again proud to be a member of parliament which will put party politics aside to create a cross-party task force to tackle Indigenous issues in our country. I note that all state and territory parliaments have already apologised to the stolen generations. Yet there is a significance to this House, a significance which comes with an apology from the federal government. It is the importance of giving the message of reconciliation a national voice, which is our ultimate responsibility in this House. We act with the intention to honour the Indigenous people of this land while reflecting on their past mistreatment. This is certainly not an easy topic to raise. It is certainly a recognition of the blemishes on our nation’s history. But we should also stand proud that, in this House, we no longer accept that we can brush aside our mistakes, leaving them ignored, and hope that problems that they have caused will go away. We recognise that inaction is never the answer, and it is far from what we were elected to do in this House. We recognise the voice of Indigenous people of this country, which on its own is not loud enough. So we in turn lend them ours. We lend them ours because we see the mistakes that they have had to face and face to this day. When the Bringing them home report was tabled it brought to light several upsetting circumstances. It is a particular disappointment that the first lines of such a report read:

Grief and loss are the predominant themes of this report. Tenacity and survival are also acknowledged.

The main findings of the report were that, nationally, between one in three and one in 10 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970. Indigenous children were placed in institutions, church missions, adopted or fostered, and were at risk of physical and sexual abuse. Many never received wages for their labour, which was often backbreaking work carried out to build the foundations of our country. Welfare officials failed in their duty to protect Indigenous wards from abuse. Under international law, from approximately 1946 the policies of forcible removal amounted to a form of genocide, and from 1950 the continuation of distinct laws for Indigenous children was racially discriminatory.

But this only explains the need for a symbolic apology, which ignores the ongoing problems. The report has also shown us that the stolen generations mistake is not at all a phenomenon of the past but the removal of Indigenous children continues today. Indigenous children are six times more likely to be removed for child welfare reasons and 21 times more likely to be removed for juvenile justice reasons than non-Indigenous children. For this to be the case, when we know full well with regret about the forced removal of children, is appalling. I think all members must agree that, when such a resounding detail remains true, more needs to be done to rectify these issues with some haste.

Before the apology was made last week, people were still asking: ‘Why apologise?’ The thinking was that this was a problem of many generations ago. It is important that we note that not to recognise and not to act on issues that are left from those mistakes still to this day would cause dire consequences, and all members who welcome this apology should be commended for realising this fact. It is with these findings and these intentions that I am proud to support the apology made by the federal Labor government, an apology which faces the future to fix the wrongs of the past so that all Australians may continue to move forward together, one nation.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You do not get many weeks like last week in the federal parliament. And the interesting thing was that the significance which has brought us to have the debate that we are engaging in now was a moment where we did not pass a law. It was a moment where none of the constitutional responsibilities that we take on as members of parliament in the black-letter form were actually what was making the difference. It goes to something I referred to in my first speech in this place: the fact that the greatest power that the House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Australia have goes way beyond our constitutional power—that, at our best, we have a capacity as a parliament to affect how Australians relate to each other.

I first discovered this back in 1996 after the then member for Oxley made her first speech and made particular comments with respect to immigration. It started an extraordinary debate across the airwaves that then went to debates across the dinner tables in people’s homes. I remember my wife coming home from work at Greenacre Childcare Centre and saying that there was a noticeable and sudden difference in the way that the children were playing. It sounded like an extraordinary link that made no sense—and yet how do you explain it when children in a long-day care centre are using racist taunts, in a widespread fashion, that for the previous year none of those children had used?

The mere fact that something is said in our federal parliament actually reaches out to the community and legitimises what is being said. In the same way, I found this again late last year when I met with members of the African community in Darwin. One woman stood up and expressed her concern that, as a result of comments made by federal parliamentarians, her children were now being teased in the playground in a way they never have been previously. She remarked to me, holding her baby, which I think was her fourth or fifth child, ‘You have to understand, Tony, we haven’t chosen Australia; we went to the United Nations in Darfur and said, “Please find us a home,” and Australia chose us.’ After her children had been treated in that fashion her line to me, which will always stay with me, was, ‘I now wonder whether we will ever be home.’ If there is any group of people who should always feel ‘home’ in Australia it is the Indigenous population of Australia.

The report Bringing them home came down more than a decade ago. The apology itself never went to laws that would be passed within Australia. The apology did not go to the exercise of executive power. Yet it did go to an extraordinary power that is held within the House of Representatives, and that is the capacity to affect the way Australians treat each other and relate to each other. That is actually what happened last week. Some people who had been critics of the apology for long periods of time had run an argument that we should not feel a sense of guilt, we should not hang our heads in shame. What we saw last week was a sense where an apology, an acknowledgement of history and a willingness to say sorry pointed not to hanging heads in shame but rather to providing an opportunity where we can walk tall together.

The best indication I could have as to what a difference the apology would make to how Australians related to each other was given to me in two ways: on the day before and on that morning. On the morning, by a very simple accident of history, I ended up receiving a call and being asked to assist in escorting the members of the stolen generation who were to sit on the floor of the House of Representatives to their seats. One man from Mutitjulu remarked to me as we made our walk across the green carpet, ‘I cannot believe I’m actually being welcomed here—welcomed to the federal parliament.’ That gives a particular significance to the welcome to country which was given to us.

The day before that, unexpectedly and driven entirely by the students themselves, the students at Kingsgrove High School decided to put together their own petition. It was done by the students, not by the teachers. They simply wrote:

Petition: apology for the stolen generations.

We the undersigned students and teachers at Kingsgrove High School support the national apology being made to the stolen generations. This is an important initial step towards the achievement of justice and equality for Indigenous Australians.

This is from an area that has very few—it has some—Indigenous residents. The ages running through the petition are generally from 14 to 17, with the occasional teacher in their 40s. These students made a decision on a school playground that they believed that there was a statement being made in the federal parliament that was deeply relevant to them as Australians.

They presented this to me in my office in Parliament House the day before the apology with a letter. The letter read:

Dear Mr Rudd

Kingsgrove High School students acknowledge the importance of showing support for the Aboriginal people by choosing to participate and support the federal government’s formal apology held in the nation’s capital Canberra on Wednesday 13 February. Students from Kingsgrove High feel the federal government’s apology will go a long way in terms of helping to bridge the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people.

For example, it will:

… help create pathways for Indigenous children to make better choices in life and realise their dreams.

Twenty students along with three teachers have made the journey to Canberra to witness this historic event and represent the youth of our school community. The Prime Minister, Mr Rudd, has shown exceptional leadership in initiating this legislation. It will show that the healing process starts with the word sorry. This historical legislation—

as they described it—

… will be an important step towards the achievement of justice and equality for Indigenous Australia. All Australians should be proud that after so long our representatives are doing the right thing and this will be recognised by Australia and the world. In support of the national policy, students and staff of Kingsgrove High School have signed a petition recognising this event and indicating that from all our multicultural backgrounds this legislation has universal acceptance.

Yours sincerely

The students of Kingsgrove High School

While the petition was not in the correct forms of the House, I still received it gratefully and I think it is important to have it here on the record in the federal parliament.

The night following, there was a function for the group Heywire broadcast on ABC radio where students had come from all around Australia, from country regions, and had been part of the Heywire process of putting together their own stories—their own stories regarding the different issues and challenges that young people face in the areas in which they all lived. I was taken aback by speech after speech of the young people who had been down for the week, who just wanted to talk about the leadership that they felt had been offered in the apology.

What they had done as young people from the bush was put together their stories, and I think it is important to remember that the national momentum did not begin with legislation in terms of doing something about this; the national momentum did not actually come from a recommendation contained within the Bringing them home report; the national momentum came from the stories contained within that report. These are stories where individual lives turned upside down, told simply, provided a level of shock, provided a real level of horror in their message such that we wanted to give that natural, immediate human reaction, on hearing what had happened to people’s lives in the names of laws put through the parliament, by saying to those individuals, ‘We are so very terribly sorry.’ To have been a member of parliament at the time that that step was taken is perhaps one of the greatest privileges I will have as a member of parliament in my time here. It was good that it was done in a bipartisan fashion and was recognised by all as being the first in a series of steps that we can now embark on as a nation together.

Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is hard to think of novel and heartfelt comment after the debate because so much has been said already that one would wish to echo. So I am going to just place on record some of my personal reflections and some thanks to people who over the last 20 or 30 years have been important in moving towards the day we were able to witness last week—when we witnessed the historic occasion of the Australian parliament recognising the first peoples of this country and expressing our sorrow for some of the events that had been carried out in the names of other parliaments before us and expressing our sorrow for the stolen generation.

I want to first mention a fellow Tasmanian, a man called Tom Airey. Tom is a man whom I sought at one stage to put forward for an award in the Order of Australia for the work he had done on reconciliation. He is no longer young, but his mind is still sharp, and he was sharp enough to tell me where I could go in that regard, taking the view that what he had done was no more than any other citizen should in advancing an interest that he believed passionately in. He did not want any special recognition through an honour for that work. But, at a time when the idea of reconciliation was deeply unpopular, Tom continued to hold a passion and a commitment which he lived through his life of action in Tasmania, and I want to honour him in this speech.

I also want to recognise the work that Henry Reynolds did in publishing what I think was a crucial book in opening many Australians’ eyes to the lived experience of Indigenous Australians as they experienced European settlement in this country, and that is The Other Side of the Frontier. We are all in this parliament because of the fact that our ancestors, either recent or past, came to this continent, which had previously been in the possession of the Indigenous Australians, and we have been the beneficiaries of the form of governance, the advances that have occurred in technology and the wealth that has been generated since European settlement. We have to recognise that, from a different perspective, it was seen as dispossession. It was seen as a war in which fairly defenceless people—or people with limited capacity for defence—heroically in many cases resisted what they saw as an invasion. They were pushed back in many places. I think anyone who knows the history of my state of Tasmania would be familiar with the tragedies of the encounters between Indigenous Tasmanians and European settlers—the infamous ‘black line’ where people were hunted down, not very successfully, in attempts to round up the last of the Indigenous Tasmanians; the removal of those who were found, ultimately to Bass Strait Island; the lessons taught in schools for years thereafter that there were no more Tasmanians left and that the last Tasmanian Aboriginal was Truganini, who died many years ago.

The fight was led by someone whom I do not always agree with but whom I have to recognise for his passion and commitment over many decades, Michael Mansell. He continues to be provocative and, if I can say so in this parliament, thank God that there are such provocative people, even though at times I guess that all of us find their provocations difficult. Michael Mansell first made Tasmanians aware that there was still a robust community of Tasmanians alive and kicking who recognised their Aboriginality and who wanted to demand recognition. And so, although I have had my differences from time to time with Michael Mansell and will continue to do so, I put on record in this debate an appreciation of the service that he has played in both the Indigenous and Australian communities.

I also mention two people whom I worked with when I was Principal Solicitor for the New South Wales Aboriginal Legal Service, Cecil Patten and Paul Coe. Both were involved in those early days of the debates about Indigenous self-determination. Again, they were sometimes difficult people, people who have not always had a simple past, but they are people who impress me immensely and led me to have many of the views that I still hold about the importance of recognition of Aboriginal identity and the right to self-determination, and I am certain they played their part in the events that we saw last week.

Lowitja O’Donoghue is another person that I would like to recognise in this regard. Lowitja was a Chair of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and was a powerful spokesperson for the Indigenous community in that role, but she would have been a powerful spokesperson for the Indigenous population without that appointment and without that role. She is a person in whom humanity is best seen. There have been many occasions when discussing Indigenous affairs with Lowitja O’Donoghue that tears have been left in my eyes because of the straightforwardness of her account and the bluntness of her expression of what seemed to be so simple a set of propositions that we were so heartless in rejecting for so long.

Can I also mention the fact that I am just a little saddened there was no obviously self-identifiable Indigenous Australian in our parliament to have served before Neville Bonner, representing the Liberal Party of Australia, and Aden Ridgeway, representing the Australian Democrats. I hope it is not long until I will be able to be proudly speaking of a member of the Australian Labor Party who represents us in this parliament from an Indigenous background, because we need to find space in our ranks for the whole of the Australian community.

In reflecting on that, I go back to the days when I worked for the New South Wales Aboriginal Legal Service and recall that for some time I was also the principal solicitor for an organisation called the National Aboriginal and Islander Legal Services Secretariat. It was set up to coordinate the work of all legal services across Australia with an Indigenous background. That organisation put in a submission to the constitutional commission that was then headed by, I think, Gough Whitlam and a number of others reviewing the constitution.

One of the submissions which I participated in drafting that was put forward on behalf of the National Aboriginal and Islander Legal Services Secretariat was a proposition that is reflected in a recent proposition by Michael Mansell that Indigenous Australians should be directly represented in the parliament. Michael Mansell’s proposition, which he advanced with his usual enthusiasm for controversy on the day after the sorry statement, was that there should be a separate Indigenous state. It is not too far from the proposition that was advanced by the legal services secretariat, which was: wouldn’t it be a good thing, because we do not have geographical areas where Indigenous people are anywhere near the full majority, but why not have 12 senators elected from Indigenous Australia participating as a separate electorate and represented in our Senate as such?

Of course, if we were to move in that direction, it would be something that needs a lot of reflection and thought, but it is not different from, for example, New Zealand, where there are specified seats for the Maori, who have therefore parliamentary representation. I think it would be difficult to find that process in our House of Representatives. Constitutionally it does not fit very easily, but recognition of the idea of self-determination and the claim of sovereignty that has been made and never surrendered by Australian Aboriginal people, through a kind of treaty process that then leads to the recognition of the entitlement of Indigenous Australians to be represented in the parliament, is not an idea that we should turn our backs on.

In speaking of turning backs, at this stage of this contribution to the debate, I truly welcome the bipartisanship that was manifested in the day where both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition stood together after the debate in recognition of a common interest that we all share in putting this behind us. There is no doubt that, in the Australian community, not every Australian welcomes the fact that the political leadership has said sorry. That is also probably the case with the fact that a long time ago we buried the idea of white Australia and that was done on a bipartisan basis. Once these things are done, they can never be turned back. That is the importance of the fact of that bipartisanship. Once both political leaders and their parties accept the reality of the necessity to move beyond where they were stuck in the past, we have a political consensus that enables us to think afresh about the practical measures that are still necessary to make good the opportunities for Indigenous Australians to live a full and enriched life in an Australia we all share. It gives us the opportunity to be genuine about our relationships in a passionate way but without the kind of partisanship that has divided us in the past.

Finally, can I recognise those on both sides of politics who have worked so hard. I know that there have been people like Robert Tickner, who gave up an enormous amount in his personal life through the great debates about Wik and Mabo. I know there are people like former Senator Chaney, who made a tremendous contribution to debate from the Liberal Party. Nobody owns this exclusively. We did have a dead period of 11 years where change was resisted, but we have passed that.

It is now healthy for us to recognise that in the path that has led us here there have been many of those ordinary citizens like Tom Airey, who I mentioned earlier. There have been brave activists, like Michael Mansell and Coe and Cecil Patten. There have been academics—people like Henry Reynolds. There have been parliamentarians like Neville Bonner and Aden Ridgeway, who made the breakthrough of being Indigenous representatives in this parliament. There have been politicians on both side of the political divide like Robert Tickner and Fred Chaney. There have been distinguished former judges like Sir William Deane, who caught our hearts in the way he articulated our common interests, and there have been passionate former prime ministers like Paul Keating and Gough Whitlam.

I still remember the handing over of the dirt by former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in the first of the land returns, in the early days of my political involvement. I still treasure that memory as a great honour—although, standing for the Labor Party in 1977, as I first did when Gough Whitlam was leader, it was a little like being the voluntary passenger on the Titanic. We were not long for the world! But I do have the singular honour, I think, of being the only current member on the Labor side who can say they stood for Labor in a federal election when Gough Whitlam was still leader of the Labor Party. I was a member of this party when Paul Keating made his famous Redfern speech, which I think was another great staging post along the way for the events that happened.

Finally, can I acknowledge all my parliamentary colleagues on both sides of the House, and particularly Prime Minister Rudd, who made the decisive move to end a period where we had failed to come to terms with our history and so powerfully cemented a moment of national unity in a way that cannot be rolled back.

Debate (on motion by Ms Jackson) adjourned.