Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Hansard source

I want to acknowledge the members of the working group, because this is a response to the work that you did and continue to do. We all have, clutched into our little hands, copies of the apology from 12 months ago. I think that shows a great deal of hope. We see what was put in that apology, we remember it and we challenge ourselves as to what we do next. The problem with these debates is that we all want to quote the same things, because they are so effective and so valuable.

But I actually want to put on the record, from my memories of the apology from 12 months ago, the part that said:

To those who have fought for the truth to be heard, we hear you now. We acknowledge that many of you have suffered in silence for far too long.

On that day 12 months ago, the parliament gathered along with so many people to share the stories—I use the term 'stories' because it is an easy one to say—of the people who had the bravery, the need and the passion to make sure that there would not continue to be suffering in silence.

As Senator Siewert has said, the experience of being on this committee and hearing the contributions from people across the country will stay with all of us forever. Once you actually meet some of these people and you talk with them you cannot ever forget. Senator Brown, as usual, actually picked the quote that I was going to use. It was about the mother who poignantly said—and her words are reflected by very, very many pieces of evidence—that the reason that she had come to talk to us, and the reason she wanted our parliament to make a national apology, was that she wanted her child to know that she loved her. She wanted there to be no confusion and no uncertainty. She wanted that message of love to be carried through into the next generation.

So many mothers—and fathers, who were often not involved in this process at all, because they were excluded completely—have never had the opportunity to tell their children that they were loved. Over the years, the connections have been lost but the pain has continued. That special bond—which we believe is always there with people who parent children—has been challenged, but it has never been broken. The role of the apology was to acknowledge throughout our country that there was a breaking of hearts but not of any other part. The breaking of hearts was the result of a decision that was taken out of the individual's hands and imposed on them by so many outside forces.

The other element that stays so clearly with us is that this was a system where people were powerless. The cries that came through the evidence consistently said that their voices, their needs and their love were not able to be taken into account—they were outside. It was a system that just swallowed the individuals. The system over-rode any decision and any hurt. The consequences were felt into the future.

We have heard, through the apology process, that there was a challenge put down to our government and to our community. The last paragraph of the apology—it was quoted by Senator Siewert—looked to the future. It said:

…we will remember the lessons of family separation. Our focus will be on protecting the fundamental rights of children and on the importance of the child's right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.

The other voices I hear, when I look at the submissions we had, were the voices of the children who were adopted. I heard again only today that when you hear the term 'forced adoption' you should realise that a child taken away from its parent knows the true definition of 'forced'. That is because no child can make that effective choice. A person who experienced that process said:

…I was stripped of my innate identity, my intrinsic heritage and formally given a new name and family.

The loss and pain of that young person continued; the person who gave that evidence was 42 years old and was living that pain and hurt as clearly, on that day, as at any other time in their life.

In terms of the process, we have the challenge of the apology. It is the first anniversary. We know it is a first step. A few speakers have given acknowledgement to the extraordinary work of the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Their scoping study that has been presented to the Minister for Social Services is a wonderful document. I think it should add to the national and international knowledge of the issues around forced adoption, the trauma and post-traumatic experiences of people who have been caught up in it, and the personal experiences of people who are seeking our help and support. Those people know now in Australia, as a result of that apology last year, that our nation accepts that they were 'sinned against'. That term was actually used, with all the emotive elements of that terminology. These women, these children and these men were victims of a system that actually did not care effectively for their needs.

We have the opportunity to take action into the future—we have heard about the National Archives project; we have heard about the process of raising awareness across our community—but I also think we have to make an acknowledgement that people need clear support in very many ways. As we go forward, with the apology clearly in our hands and in our hearts, we need to know that the action does not cease. We cannot allow this to just fade away into the realms of history. The apology is an acknowledgement document, but, more than that, it is an action document; it is a plan and it is a challenge.

We have the opportunity as a parliament to work effectively together to fulfil the expectations that we gave the people who were caught up in this process 12 months ago. We made a commitment to them that we would support them, we would acknowledge them and we would ensure that in future there would not be legislation or practices put in place in this country that would cause the pain that was caused by the years of forced adoptions processes. That is our challenge and we have it into the future. (Time expired)