Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As someone who was not a member of the committee and was not able to participate in this inquiry, I would like to congratulate all on the Community Affairs References Committee and everyone who participated in the inquiry. This was an incredibly disturbing Senate inquiry and an incredibly powerful report, entitled Commonwealth contribution to former forced adoption policies and practices. Only recently I became aware of the expression 'the baby scoop era', which is used to describe what has happened to these people. It is an awful expression, isn't it? It is quite visually challenging, the notion of wrenching a child from its mother's arms, but it is what happened, not just here in Australia but also in Canada, the US and the UK, and it was very much the method of the times. I have read many of the stories documented and I have read many of the submissions, and I am sure they are quite traumatising for everyone.

I have known other stories, personally, and I remember very vividly when I was growing up a young woman being sent to Brisbane. She left town as a wide-eyed, bright young thing and came back six months later distressed and depressed, and eventually she attempted to take her own life. At the same time, girls from an orphanage came to my school, and I remember a discussion in fifth form when one of the girls did not come back to school. There were lots of stories about what had happened to her, told with great fear and trepidation by her friends, and we were just gobsmacked that something like this could be happening. Not long ago, at a school reunion, the issue was raised again as three former classmates revealed to me something of the experiences of forced adoption within their families, which was really quite a shock to me.

As we have heard from the other speakers, the inquiry has received horrible testimony to dreadful evidence. The callousness is gut-wrenching. That is what really comes through. The personal accounts that we saw, and the practices revealed, on the Four Corners program this week really do attest to the courage of the women who are able to tell their story. They did that on behalf of those who could not, and I congratulate them for their courage and their grace.

In 2002 there was a New South Wales parliamentary inquiry into adoption practices, where many similar stories were told of threats made, promises given and the sense of powerlessness and ensuing heartache. Dr Merryl Moor, at the beginning of her 2005 PhD thesis on the subject, to which she gave the title Silent Violence: Australia's White Stolen Children, quoted Jigsaw, that fantastic organisation from Brisbane:

In relation to adoption the question needs to be asked: In what other period of human history did young mothers willingly defy nature and give away their babies en masse to strangers?

It was an unspeakable act of cruelty. We know when we speak of forced adoption that we are talking about something that is culturally imposed and, as we have heard from Senator Boyce, this is very different from someone who makes the tough decision to have a child adopted.

The work of the Community Affairs References Committee is exemplary and so potent and powerful. Since 2007 we have seen acts of injustice recognised. The apology to the stolen generations was, I think, a potent moment in the healing of the Australian psyche. The apology to the forgotten Australians, children raised in institutional care, also helped to ease the pain and hurt of lost childhoods and identities. Today, through this report, I do not just hope but know that we are giving hope to the thousands of young women—and in many cases their parents, families, partners and children—who were forced to relinquish their babies that there can be some redress, some formal acknowledgement of their hurt and pain and some sense that governments, churches, communities and institutions were all wrong.

We all know that many of those involved in removing Aboriginal children from their homes did so in the belief that it was for the greater good. No doubt the same applies to those who thought adoption into a two-parent family was automatically a more desirable outcome than life with an unmarried mother. But the fact that a practice was followed in good faith does not necessarily make it right, and that is what we have heard today. This is the evidence, the culmination. The Four Corners program showed just how much this weighed on the minds of social workers, hospital staff and, I am sure, many adoptive parents.

In 1492, when 'Columbus sailed the ocean blue', as I remember it from my school days, one of the things he did when he got to America was to basically kidnap a Native American child. He later adopted him, had him baptised and called him Diego in order, he said, to save his immortal soul. It might have suited Christopher Columbus very well to have a local translator whom he could control, but I am also prepared to believe that he genuinely thought young Diego would be better off with him than with his own family. However, the sincerity of his belief certainly did not and does not justify the actions. The forced removal of babies in Australia may have been seen by many as an act of kindness intended to save those children from harmful environments but, just as in the case of Christopher Columbus, we know that is simply not good enough.

What we have seen in this Senate report is nothing less than a catalogue of human rights violations, and that is the truth. These were violations of the rights of mothers such as the wonderfully outspoken Christine Cole, whose experience as a 16-year-old inspired her to research the issue and to write her doctoral thesis. It is difficult to convey to people living in a society that values and enforces an individual's civil and human rights what life was actually like 40 or 60 years ago for vulnerable young women who lacked knowledge, support and resources—and, frankly, even for those who did not. Girls were not instructed about pregnancy, labour and delivery. Pregnant girls were hidden away or sent away, to the eternal shame of their families. They were isolated and not provided with information, as we have heard already this afternoon. In short, they were not recognised as legitimate mothers and, when their babies were forcibly removed, nor were they recognised as legitimate mourners.

The work of psychologists such as John Bowlby and Elizabeth Kubler-Ross has taught us a lot about love and loss and grief, and the pages of this report bring those psychological theories vividly to life. It is not only the mothers whose human rights were violated; so were the rights of countless children who were denied access to their natural heritage. I would use the term 'ill-conceived' to describe the practice of forced adoption. It was ill-conceived because of the absence of integrity and respect. These values are fundamental to how a society should work: integrity is being forthright, accurate and honest with all partners involved in decisions; and respect is recognising each person's right to autonomous decision making, or what some people call the ethic of self-determination. Adoption is a lifelong process, not a one-time event. When engaging in such a process the innate dignity of human beings—and this, of course, includes the children—must be considered.

Columbus might not have realised this, but we do. The report makes it abundantly clear that human dignity was not a consideration in the case of these young women and their babies. The dominant themes were of raw emotions—betrayal, humiliation, condemnation, abandonment, trickery, grief and, of course, abject loss. The report brings great heartbreak into the light from the shadows of the past—the not too distant past. And although, as Senator Siewert has said, this makes harrowing reading, it is always a good thing when the truth is revealed, even when the truth is what psychiatrist Geoff Rickarby has rightly described as 'a stain on our history'.

Nothing can heal the experience of love and loss of these women, who carry it with them every day. But I sincerely hope that, through this report and the recommendations, we can help remove their sense of shame and restore their dignity and self-worth. My favourite poet, Leonard Cohen, would surely say of this report, 'Nothing's perfect, there's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.' I hope the light shines brightly.