Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I, on behalf of the opposition, indicate our strong support for the motion moved by Senator Evans. The opposition joins with the government in acknowledging that the abuse and neglect suffered by many children in institutional and other out-of-home care during the last century was entirely and completely unacceptable. We join with the government in offering this apology to the more than half a million forgotten Australians and former child migrants who had traumatic experiences in institutionalised care across the country. In doing so, we acknowledge and express our sympathy for the suffering of these children.

Under UK legislation, as Senator Evans mentioned, an estimated 150,000 children left the UK as child migrants. It is estimated that something between 7,000 and 10,000 of those children were sent to Australia between 1947 and 1967. The forgotten Australians are the approximately half a million people who found themselves in institutional care in the 20th century between the 1920s and 1970s. It was in the 1980s and 1990s that the stories of these child migrants and forgotten Australians began to come to light, particularly the stories of child migrants through the work of the Child Migrants Trust. Since about 1990, Australian governments of both persuasions have provided funding to the Child Migrants Trust to assist with caseworker and counselling services for former child migrants.

We are delighted that the parliament is acting on the recommendation of the latest report of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee, a committee which, as Senator Evans properly said, has ensured that the stories of children in institutional care and former child migrants have been heard. We also join with the government in acknowledging the work of all members of that committee over the years since its first inquiry in 2001. In that year, the committee tabled its report into child migration entitled Lost innocents: righting the record. In 2004, the committee tabled the report on its inquiry into children raised in institutional care and other forms of care, entitled Forgotten Australians. That was followed in 2005 by the report Protecting vulnerable children: a national challenge. Of course, the committee then tabled its report on the inquiry into the implementation of the recommendations of the Lost innocents and Forgotten Australians reports.

As Senator Evans quite properly said, I think we all owe a great debt to our good friend and former colleague, former Senator Andrew Murray, who proved what you can do even if you are not in government or opposition at any stage in your career. It was he, through his diligence and commitment, who focused this Senate’s and I think the nation’s attention on the importance of looking into the circumstances surrounding former child migrants and children in institutional care. I have no doubt that Andrew will be more pleased than anyone about what has occurred today.

I also want to particularly acknowledge Liberal Senator Gary Humphries, as a very longstanding member of the Senate Community Affairs References Committee and someone who has followed this issue and been closely involved in it with tremendous commitment. Senator Humphries was strongly involved in the 2004 inquiry into the forgotten Australians and with this latest Senate inquiry that looked at the progress made since those earlier reports. He has heard firsthand and directly many of these personal accounts of neglect and abuse. They will have had an enormous impact on him, as they have had on all committee members and Senate committee staff. Andrew Murray said in a speech at the University of Western Australia in 2008 that the committee inquiries he was involved with on this issue impacted heavily on everyone involved. In that speech, Andrew said:

I do not want to give the impression that every child in care was harmed or hated it. I do not want to give the impression that every institution or care-provider was bad. That was not so. There were positive stories. But we also heard stories that defied belief. Submissions revealed horrific stories of slave labour, of physical assault, of sexual assault and rape, of profound emotional abuse and cruelty, of widespread and systemic abuse and neglect.

The Senate’s inquiry into child migrants followed a British House of Commons health committee inquiry into child migration in 1997. That report stated:

Exact number of child migrants to Australia and New Zealand are not known, but it is thought that during the final period in which the migration policy operated, from 1947 to 1967, between 7,000 and 10,000 children were sent to Australia. These children were placed in large, often isolated, institutions and were often subjected to harsh, sometimes intentionally brutal, regimes of work and discipline, unmodified by any real nurturing or encouragement.

In relation to Australia, the House of Commons report further stated:

It is fair to say that the sending agencies appear genuinely to have believed that they were acting in the best interests of the children. … Official assurances to this effect were given to Parliament when legislation enabling child migration was debated. During the passage of the Children Bill in 1948, the Lord Chancellor assured the House of Lords that ‘the Home Office intends to secure that children shall not be emigrated unless there is absolute satisfaction that proper arrangements have been made for the care and upbringing of each child’.

As we now know, and as that House of Commons report found, the reality was very different for those child migrants, with often quite questionable practice used to expedite the process of migration. The House of Commons committee concluded that:

Child migration was a bad and, in human terms, costly mistake.

The British government responded to this inquiry in 1998 and accepted that the policy had been badly misguided. In 2000 our government provided a response to the British government’s position which included a commitment to cooperate with the British to assist former child migrants tracing their families. It was then, on 20 June 2000, that the Senate, on the motion of Senator Andrew Murray, referred the issue of child migration to the Senate Community Affairs References Committee for inquiry and report. As mentioned earlier, this Lost innocents report was tabled in 2001. That committee received 99 confidential and 153 public submissions, most of them from former child migrants. In the words of that committee:

This report recognises that while some former child migrants have prospered in this country, have successful relationships with partners and children and never lost contact with family, many others are not in this position. The report illustrates the consequences of emotional deprivation and abuse in childhood, and the struggle such children face as adults to cope and contribute and to live fruitful and constructive lives.

As the committee noted in that report, many submissions were also received from Australian-born people who were brought up in institutional care in Australia, often in the same institutions as these child migrants. Hence the 2004 inquiry into Forgotten Australians focused on those children. Again, it was on the motion of Andrew Murray that the Senate supported that inquiry in 2003. That inquiry received 440 public submissions and 174 confidential submissions. Many of those were highly emotive, telling very personal stories about personal experiences as children in institutions and how these often horrific experiences had subsequently shaped the lives of those children. The committee report described the submissions as:

… graphic and disturbing accounts about the treatment and care experienced by children in out-of-home care.

In June this year the Community Affairs Committee recommended that the government issue a formal acknowledgement and expression of regret to former child migrants and to children who had suffered hurt and distress or abuse and assault in institutional care. The coalition strongly supports these recommendations and we particularly support and encourage government provision of practical support to assist—as we did in government with the support of the then opposition—those affected by these damaging policies of the past with support for counselling, information, family research and reunion services.

As a society we can acknowledge that a variety of factors contributed to this often abhorrent standard of care and that there is no one person to blame. We do need to recognise that there were many motivating factors, not all of them malevolent, for the policies of the past and that, often, authorities and charities simply got it wrong. We, as the opposition, have tremendous sympathy for the distressing experiences that many faced in institutional care or as child migrants to Australia in the last century. We strongly support this acknowledgement and apology. We provide our sympathy to those who, through forced migration, separation and institutional care, experienced abuse and neglect and the ultimate denial of the freedoms and support most children in Australia happily experience.

There are many lessons to be learnt for all of us from their experiences. It is, as Senator Evans said, a tremendous sign of what the Senate can achieve and we certainly join with Senator Evans in saying that we are pleased that, through the Senate, these forgotten children and these child migrants have been given a voice to allow their stories to be heard and for this apology to be made.