Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship (Senator Evans) to a question without notice asked by Senator Murray today relating to Indigenous Australians and the stolen generation.

During question time, I asked the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Evans, whether the government agreed that the rape or abuse of an Indigenous child or of a non-Indigenous or foreign child in an institution or in care was just horrific and whether the government agreed that taking an Indigenous child or a non-Indigenous or foreign child from their family and home was appalling if it led to their being put in situations of neglect or abuse. I asked the government whether it planned to deliver an apology to former child migrants and non-Indigenous Australians raised in institutional care last century and whether it can explain why tens of thousands of adults who endured ruinous care experiences as children get an apology but hundred of thousands of other adults do not.

Without verballing the response, my take on his answer was that the government basically said that it had not made up its mind yet—which is good, because it is better than no. The conservative estimate is that over 500,000 people fall into the three cohorts of child migrants, Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians. It is the case that, as vulnerable children, these people endured childhoods often bereft of the nurturing and stability that family life can provide. Many were subjected to ongoing humiliation and systemic abuse that was often criminal in nature. No matter what the race or ethnic background of these children, their experiences were all too similar.

Whatever the reason and whatever the rationale underlying government policies concerning the removal and so-called protection of children last century, the downfall has undoubtedly been the poor execution of those policies. Just as the Bringing them home report recommended an apology, so too did the child migrant and forgotten Australians reports—unanimously, I might point out—recommend an apology. Although I recognise the political dimensions to another apology of this nature following the Stolen Generation apology, quite simply it is and remains just the right thing to do.

I acknowledge that the timing, content and presentation of an apology to child migrants and non-Indigenous Australians will matter greatly. I also acknowledge that consultation is necessary. But it is the right thing to do because the race based past policy of removing Indigenous children from their families has its counterpart in the race based child migrant schemes from Britain, Ireland and Malta last century. This history was also race based, as the policy was motivated by a desire to populate Australia with a potentially healthy and productive white workforce. While not race based, the removal of hundreds of thousands of Australian born non-Indigenous children had its foundations in families doing it tough. Children were made wards of the state after being charged in the courts with being uncontrollable, neglected or in moral danger. The children who went into those institutions were not always orphaned.

The appalling treatment of vulnerable kids had its match in prisoner of war camps. Places like Bindoon in Western Australia, Goodwood and The Pines in South Australia, Westbrook in Queensland, Box Hill and Bayswater in Victoria, and Parramatta and Hay in New South Wales were akin to concentration camps that incarcerated and brutalised far too many young people. Some beatings even resulted in physical impairments later in life and, of course, there were many rapes, assaults and abuses carried out in those institutions.

If the measure of society is the extent to which it protects and nurtures its children then, historically, we as a nation have little to be complacent about. If the Prime Minister, cabinet minsters and members of parliament took the time to read the submissions and reports of the three inquiries, I imagine there would be almost total support for the Prime Minister apologising to all of our citizens who suffered as children in care and who continue to carry these scars. The nation was set on a path of healing by the Rudd government with respect to the stolen generation; much more needs to be done with respect to former child migrants and forgotten Australians.

Question agreed to.