Mr GARRETT (Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts) (11:51 AM) —In the very first instance I want to disassociate myself from the remarks of the member for Tangney and note that the parliament as a whole did something yesterday which reflected well on each and every member of the House who supported the motion of the Prime Minister. There can be no doubt whatsoever that the formal acceptance by the parliament of the need to apologise to the stolen generations is something which marks off an end point in what has been a difficult, at times contentious, but ultimately futile debate that we have had in this country about the necessity of an apology. So I rise to support the motion moved by the Prime Minister.

I offer to the people of the Eora or Euro nation an expression that I understand conveys the meaning of sorry: ngang doo ool—I am sorry. I offer it unreservedly as a member of parliament, a member of the Labor Party, as someone who has grown over the years to understand the depth of Aboriginal experience and the sorrow that people have felt not only as a consequence of the state-sanctioned actions of institutions in the past that saw people removed from their families but more generally for the history of our engagement with Aboriginal people which has carried so much heartbreak, so much cultural dislocation and is a burden that we all bear.

It is a truly significant moment when we as a nation finally put on record the simple act of recognition of a past wrong. It is a time when we lift ourselves up as a country, as a nation, and lay another part of a foundation for moving forward with Indigenous Australians, whose forbearance I acknowledge, whose lack of animosity, whose lack of rancour, whose generosity of spirit has characterised this debate and characterised the participation of all those communities that visited the parliament yesterday. But this apology still comes late. For many Australians, but particularly for members of the stolen generation, the disturbing history has been a kind of a cloud that has hung over our heads. The apology is a symbolic statement, but it lifts the cloud. It provides space and opportunity for a more genuine and a more connected relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It promotes a steady footing to take on the important task of redressing disadvantage, of closing the gap that the Prime Minister spoke about in the parliament yesterday.

There was an expression used in the past: ‘white Australia has a black history’. I certainly feel that our engagement with this history is absolutely critical, not only in better understanding what has happened and trying to fathom some of the reasons for that but also, with that better understanding, working out clearly how we can concretely move to deal with those practical issues of disadvantage that Indigenous people still face across a range of factors.

I learnt most of what I know about the history of Aboriginal people from songs—from song makers in the desert, with their clap sticks—when I first visited the Western Desert and was privileged to sit with elders, hear their songs and receive the translation of their songs. Song makers of the modern era are Archie Roach and the Warumpi Band. There are the paintings of Harry Wedge and many other painters too numerous to mention here. This is the way in which that knowledge and that history have been transmitted to us Australians. There is a fantastic repository of music, art and writing by Aboriginal people that we can now draw on and that will infuse us with a better understanding of the sorts of journeys that we need to take in the future.

I did not learn much about it at school, although I am very pleased to say that that situation has changed. There is a much greater addressing of Indigenous history than previously and an acknowledgement of that history. The way in which schools and young Australians respond to this apology I think will tell us that these young Australians do very clearly understand that we are at the dawn of a new age. We do not in any way take away from the work, the efforts and the activities of those who have passed by before, but for young Australians surely an apology of this kind offers them every prospect for working much more closely and much better with one another and also with Indigenous people to address those difficult matters that lie ahead.

The import of the motion, as the House knows, stems from the recommendations of the inquiry by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission conducted by Sir Ronald Wilson into the issue of the forced removal by authorities of tens of thousands of Aboriginal children from their families and their subsequent placement in institutions such as orphanages, often run by the church, and also their adoption. The Bringing them home report, which followed, contained a number of first-person accounts from members of the stolen generations.

No-one could read those deeply moving and personal reflections and not be in some way moved or affected. Indeed, I think it is difficult even for us in this House, where we talk for a living, it sometimes seems, to find words to adequately respond to that situation. Those of us who have families—and most of us here do, I think—are able to gain some insight into and have some empathy for what people went through. They found themselves often taken without notice. They may have ended up as domestic help in a farm or in a region of which they had no knowledge whatsoever, where they had no family and no connections of any kind. Often they were prevented from speaking to their families and from receiving food parcels.

I have to say that I took some exception to the comments in the speech by the Leader of the Opposition, even though we welcome the apology, when he referred to current situations of sexual abuse that people in Indigenous communities face. Let us be very clear about this. When young girls were taken from their families and were part of the stolen generations, they too were subject to terrible sexual abuse, often at the hands of people in the churches. Those churches have apologised for that. They have focused on that. They have reflected on that. They deeply grieve about that happening. But that was the historical reality, and no amount of trying to strike some middle ground between the concerns of the backbench and a wider community can obscure that fact for the Leader of the Opposition.

Even when the removal was voluntary—and sometimes it was: a mother in some instances might have felt that she was in a difficult situation, and she was concerned for the wellbeing of her kids—the child was then faced with suddenly going into a completely unknown environment. There is an account by Anne which says:

In this case there was a kind of consultation, but in many cases there was not. There was no preparation for this shock, this abrupt dislocation, and the ongoing psychological and emotional trauma that people felt was real. For that, we surely should be saying sorry.

There is another aspect to the situation and conditions that the stolen generations faced which I do not think has had enough emphasis in the accounts and recollections of that time. It has certainly been raised by members of the stolen generations themselves. It is to do with the way in which their lives were completely taken apart in terms of family connection. Because many members of families were literally dispersed to different institutions, sometimes ultimately to different states, they were not aware at all of the movements, the whereabouts or the life histories of their own relatives.

I read an account from one person who did not know until 1995 what his brothers and sisters had done or where they had ended up. That is when he finally learned the whereabouts of his brothers and sisters and what had happened to them. 1995 is not recent history; it is yesterday. These effects were being felt yesterday, are being felt today and will continue to be felt into the future.

For the record, we do know that children were taken at any age, and often they were very young. We do know that the policy of the time was to absorb them into white society. We do know that people were graded by the colour of their skin. The terms of reference proposed by former Labor Attorney-General Michael Lavarch followed a sustained campaign to examine this situation. Those things were known at the time and, as a consequence, the commission heard some 500 accounts and had access to another thousand or so written testimonies. After the inquiry had considered those tales, it made the recommendations, including, importantly, recommendation 3:

That recommendation included and identified acknowledgement and apology, measures of restitution, rehabilitation and compensation. On this occasion, the government has moved to address the first of these identified matters and it has made its position on issues of compensation clear. But it is my fervent hope that, in the future, the government, the opposition and the community will begin to consider how the remainder of these issues can be best approached and dealt with. The formal apology was step 1; the Rudd Labor government has moved and made that formal apology.

It needs to be noted that the Howard government’s response to the report at the time was swift. The then Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, Senator Herron, wrote to Father Frank Brennan and said:

and I note that he said ‘could’—

There have been strong echoes of this argument recently from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, but I have heard others speak to this argument as well.

Mr Hayes —The member for Tangney.

Mr GARRETT —The member for Tangney clearly went on at some length about it, I am advised. But here is an argument that is based on a false distinction and on a misunderstanding of what an apology is ultimately really about. It held little weight when it was first put by the former Prime Minister; it holds even less weight today.

But, regrettably, the matter remained unresolved. It was a disquieting reminder of a failure of moral leadership. Former Prime Minister Keating made the Redfern address. Former Prime Minister Whitlam spoke eloquently to Vincent Lingiari. But, for former Prime Minister Howard, the issue just did not present itself in those terms. I will make no further reflections on the former Prime Minister other than to say that this was one of the great deficiencies of his leadership of this country. Not only did the argument that was put ultimately fall by the way in the face of what was so necessary for the course of an apology, it frustrated and stalled the truly genuine and reconciled engagement which we need to have with Indigenous communities and Indigenous leadership on the raft of issues that many in their communities face.

The consequence of the refusal of the former government to countenance an apology was that it suddenly became off limits. There was an idea that you should simply acknowledge the past and agree in that acknowledgement to say something about it. The fact that that acknowledgement could not be made in the highest parliament of the land stayed with people. It frustrated people. It disappointed people. It made them very sad. What was the point of it in any event? There have been culture war discussions about history. Let us be really clear about that history. I am the member for Kingsford Smith. The south of my electorate includes the northern border of Botany Bay. This is where Cook landed. This is where two Indigenous people met Cook with raised spears. This is where one was shot.

This is a community that has had visited upon it a range of difficult and confronting challenges over the years, including being a final refuge for members of the stolen generation. This is a community that still bears up to that history to this very day. Distinguished Aboriginal leader Mick Dodson identified a certain kind of deafness that seemed to permeate our response to the situation during the period of the former government. That certain kind of deafness has now become a listening to what people actually went through, an understanding of the great, great sorrow and hurt that they felt, and finally a recognition that this is about the soul of our country. Making this apology in this way breathes some life into, and shines some light on, our joined future. From this—it is more than a little thing—much bigger things will grow. It was a day of reckoning for the people of Australia and it is a matter of immense importance. I say with profound gratitude that I was a part of a government that was able to say, in the parliament, sorry. (Time expired)