Motions

South Australian Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (12:00): I move:

That this house notes the report of the South Australian Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme by the Independent Assessor, the Hon. John Hill.

In speaking to this motion, I will briefly add to the ministerial statement I provided to the house on Tuesday. My statement explained how the government proposed to deal with the residual amount of just over $3 million remaining from the reparations scheme. I note our decision has attracted some criticism from the former minister for Aboriginal affairs, the Hon. Kyam Maher. I regret this because we did undertake extensive consultation with a range of Aboriginal people and organisations about this. The very strong view expressed was that stolen generations moneys should directly benefit members of the stolen generations themselves.

The apology to the stolen generations 11 years ago was a long overdue recognition that some past policies and past actions of governments and other institutions were very disruptive and damaging to many Aboriginal families and people across the country. At the time, the apology symbolised a willingness of government and Australians to listen to Aboriginal people who had, for so many years, tried to speak out and share their own and their families' stories of removal and separation—and, in too many cases, abuse.

All state parliaments have issued apologies to the stolen generations, but it was the South Australian parliament that moved first, and that is something we should be proud of in this place. Three state governments, including South Australia's, have now initiated stolen generations reparations schemes. The scheme in South Australia was established with support across this parliament to acknowledge the pain and suffering experienced by many South Australian Aboriginal people. It also provided an opportunity for people to talk about the experiences of separation from family and how the trauma remained with them throughout their life.

Through the Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme here in South Australia, payments have now been made to 312 people. A community reparations fund was also established. This fund was overseen by an Aboriginal reference group and, following an expression of interest process, the fund provided financial support to 27 projects that related to the stolen generations.

In relation to the individual reparations scheme, I again urge all members, as well as the wider community, to read the Independent Assessor's report. Within the next few weeks copies will be provided to all the people who met with John Hill to share their stories, including those ultimately determined to be eligible for reparations payment. The report is also available online at the Aboriginal Affairs and Reconciliation Agency's website. We have increased each individual reparations payment to $30,000 for the 312 successful applicants. I will soon write to recipients of the additional payment to provide details of the process.

In closing, I would like to commend Reconciliation SA for the annual Apology Breakfast held yesterday to mark the 11^th anniversary of the apology and to honour and recognise survivors of the stolen generations. It was a wonderful experience to be amongst the 1,800 people who attended. It is always a very, very difficult occasion, but nevertheless it is, ultimately, an important occasion to mark, one we observe every year.

I was particularly pleased to be there to hear Susan Russell's very moving and genuine Welcome to Country, as well as to hear John Hill and Dr Jenni Caruso discussing the meaning and outcomes of the Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme and what more we could be doing to support those survivors and their descendants. I also had the great fortune to hear Jack Charles tell us a little bit more about his remarkable life.

To me, a real highlight of yesterday's breakfast was to hear the music presented by Vonda Last and Julian Ferraretto. In particular, it was wonderful to hear Helen Connolly, the joint Chair of Reconciliation SA, talk about that music. Often we can speak about some of the wrongs that have been committed in the past, and we do that often and it is appropriate to do so, but music also has an incredible way of moving us, and yesterday it was wonderful to hear from Vonda and Julian. I know that for many people that was a real highlight of the breakfast.

Events like the Apology Breakfast are very important. It was also wonderful to have not just a large crowd but a variety of people, from our Governor, His Excellency the Honourable Hieu Van Le, down to the youngest school child, all showing their respect and affection for South Australia's Aboriginal people and their culture.

We were also able to acknowledge and to some extent make amends for the past and, importantly, draw on the enthusiasm and commitment of all those participating to help build the best possible future for today's and tomorrow's generations. Because of the increasing number of school students attending this breakfast, we can be, I think, increasingly confident that many more people will take the walk of reconciliation in the future. I commend the Independent Assessor's report to the attention of this house.

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (12:06): I indicate that I am the lead speaker, and I am honoured to rise on behalf of this side of the chamber to support the government's motion. We have many times, but probably not sufficient times, talked about the tragedy and the catastrophe that happened to Aboriginal people, not just at the point of the original arrival of settlers from Europe but the horror that was perpetrated upon the Aboriginal community of having children taken away.

It is a mark of our common humanity that we all now understand the crime of removing a child from a family who is doing nothing more than trying to raise and love that child in the comfort, not only of their family but their culture.We now all recognise the harm that was done both to individuals and to the continuity of the Aboriginal culture is a source of great shame for our history. The fact that we are all able to recognise it collectively is something we should feel a degree of confidence about in our capacity to improve as a society and a culture.

I particularly want to honour the incredible resilience and strength of Aboriginal people. I very briefly had the honour of working at Wilto Yerlo in the University of Adelaide. I think it has changed more recently, but at that time it was the hub of support for Aboriginal students, for the recruitment of Aboriginal students and a lot of the teaching, particularly through the Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (CASM).

The Aboriginal Director, Mercy Glastonbury, was unable to continue due to ill health, so we needed to go through a recruitment process to find an Aboriginal leader and we did so. In that brief time in between, I was put into the role of running the place. The way in which Aboriginal people so generously talked to me about the damage that had been done to their individual families, their communities and their culture, and the way in which they talked about how they had made efforts to repair the harm, was profoundly moving to me.

The capacity of so many Aboriginal families to find each other again, to work out where a child who had been stolen fitted when they came back as an adult, and the way in which they felt the deep hurt but were determined to repair within their own community, was absolutely inspiring to me. When Dr Roger Thomas, who I believe is now Professor Roger Thomas, took over Wilto Yerlo, I felt that I had an immense opportunity for an education.

That resilience and strength of the Aboriginal community is everywhere you look. For some of the survivors of the stolen generations to come into this chamber when this motion was first flagged the other day to hear painful subjects talked about, to be present and to listen, shows tremendous courage and resilience. I honour their resilience and their capacity to the extent that it exists for forgiveness for what happened and for a determination that we truly reconcile, which means that we walk together in the future.

However, the good words that we have had from various political institutions, which are immensely important and should not be trivialised in the least, cannot be enough. We have to do more. The reparations project, which was undertaken in South Australia and about which we are talking today, as I understand it, was the result of a recommendation from one of our own parliamentary standing committees, the Aboriginal Lands Parliamentary Standing Committee. This project has done something to make a material attempt at amends as well as a very sincere verbal attempt at amends, and I think that it is highly significant that that has taken place. We have had a former member of his house, John Hill, undertake an audit and we now have the report that we are receiving today.

The real question for all of us in this chamber and all of us in South Australia and Australia is: where next? As much as we have collectively accepted what happened, and the Aboriginal community has done its best to move beyond what happened, and the reparations and the apologies have made some contribution to their willingness and capacity to do that, as much as all of that is enormously important we nonetheless have a huge task ahead of us, collectively, if we are truly to be a reconciled nation and if a child born into an Aboriginal family is truly to have all the opportunities that an Australian child should have available to them.

In many ways, it is a blessed child who is born into an Aboriginal family, not least because of the amount of love and care that they will receive but also because they are heir to the oldest living culture in the world. Everywhere I go overseas, I tell family and friends in far-flung places that we have something that no-one else has: this extraordinary Aboriginal culture. Unfortunately, for too many Aboriginal children, their life expectancy is not that of a non-Aboriginal Australian. Their chances of education attainment and completion, of work and of staying out of the criminal justice system are not what they should be.

There are many extremely successful Aboriginal people, and to talk about a statistic does not doom any individual child, but we have to be honest about the experiences that we still perpetuate on the Aboriginal community and on Aboriginal children and collectively be absolutely resolved that we will improve outcomes. We have seen with the new SACE, some years ago, a dramatic increase in the number of Aboriginal students who complete high school each year. It is still not enough, though. It is wonderful that there are more, but we must not think that there are enough.

We need to improve the health outcomes. We need to improve the capacity of Aboriginal children to know truly that they are Aboriginal, to truly understand their language and their culture, yet be equipped to walk in two worlds so that they can have every choice available to them. Having been to the APY lands several times as minister for education, I know how hard the community there works to allow their children to have every opportunity, and we need to be truly partners with them in that.

I think if we bring the energy and commitment that we show when we talk in sorrow about the past to an optimism about the future and a willingness to be truly partners, then we may see increased improvements. I am very pleased that this has always been and continues to be a bipartisan view. I am very pleased that it is a government motion that we are supporting today because I think it is important that, as much as we enjoy our partisan debates—and some of them are extremely serious and extremely real—we demonstrate a shared commitment for the sake of our Aboriginal culture, communities and particularly individual children.

I will finish on a particular note. One of the greatest joys I have when going to events is, if they are sufficiently large events, hearing a Welcome to Country. Otherwise, we have the acknowledgement of country from a non-Aboriginal person or a person who is maybe an Aboriginal person but not from the area. When we have the Welcome to Country, it is wonderful to have elders like Uncle Lewis O'Brien give us a little story, a little joke or a little lesson in Aboriginal culture, or just in humour, and at the other end to have some very young Aboriginal people who get up and not only welcome us to their land but do so in their language, a language in Adelaide that was almost lost.

It gives me a huge degree of hope and pride that that is something that is becoming almost unremarkable now and becoming a feature of the way in which we open serious events and serious meetings. With that, I commend the government on this motion and support it.