Territories Stolen Generations Redress Scheme

The Hon. T.T. NGO (15:21): My question is to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs. Will the minister provide an update on South Australian support for the Territories Stolen Generations Redress Scheme?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Attorney-General, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:21): I thank the honourable member for his question and his interest in this area, particularly as he is once again a member of the Aboriginal Lands Parliamentary Standing Committee. I pay tribute to the Hon. Tung Ngo and to our colleague the Hon. Tammy Franks and others who were members of this committee in a previous parliament, two parliaments ago, that took the issue of the Stolen Generation's Redress Scheme as a very serious issue and brought reports to this chamber on this issue. I know that is why the member, as well as many other members, has a very strong interest in this area.

As members would be aware, the stolen generations represents a very difficult chapter in our nation's history. The impacts and trauma of these events are still felt by stolen generations today, their descendants and by Aboriginal people and communities more generally. I was proud, and it was following the deliberations previously of the former members of the Aboriginal Lands Parliamentary Standing Committee, that South Australia, under the Jay Weatherill Labor government, became the first mainland state in the country to have our own Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme, introduced in 2015, funded with $11 million funding that provided an individual reparations scheme that provided ex gratia payments to Aboriginal people who were eligible under the scheme.

I know from being the minister at the time that this reparations scheme, the first in mainland Australia, that it wasn't the ex gratia payments that I think most Aboriginal people who talked to me found the most valuable part of it. It was the ability to have their stories heard, the ability to be believed, to talk about their trauma and what actually happened to them and their families and their communities.

I am also pleased, in another way, that we are supporting the commonwealth government's redress schemes for survivors of the stolen generations in our territories. The Territories Stolen Generations Redress Scheme provides financial payment and support services to survivors of stolen generations and, in doing so, it recognises again the deep and long-lasting hurt and trauma these past events by governments and institutions have caused.

In particular, this territories redress scheme seeks to support survivors who were removed from their families and communities as children in the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory before self-government. The scheme has been established through the National Indigenous Australians Agency of the commonwealth government and began accepting applications from survivors on 1 March this year.

It is believed that some of those children who were stolen from their families were sent, amongst other places around the country, to South Australia and therefore that South Australian authorities and instrumentalities and institutions may have records related to where these children were stolen to, their lives afterwards and the circumstances in which they were wrongfully taken. I am pleased to advise the council that State Records of South Australia is formally cooperating with the territories redress scheme to help find evidence that is needed by the survivors who have been taken as children and therefore support applications to the redress scheme.

The commonwealth's research team is seeking specific records about places and times to help us establish the documents that a survivor needs to show they were removed from their family and their community. In this way, the process is protecting the privacy of people who hold records, both State Records and similar agencies, across the task.

It is not a small task, and I am advised that State Records will be undertaking searches of a database of approximately 150,000 entries, liaising with the redress agency and other government agencies to identify other records, and coordinating loans of physical documents when needed. This is another way our state can acknowledge the wrongs of the past, can look at the circumstances of today and can move forward. No amount of money, no amount of redress will help make up for some of these injustices of the past, but it is in a way the recognition that is needed.