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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-02-12 Daily Xml
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Ministerial Statement

Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme Report

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:08): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement.

Leave granted.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: A few moments ago, I tabled the report on the South Australian Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme by the independent assessor, the Hon. John Hill. In doing so, I commend Mr Hill, who is in the gallery today with some members of the stolen generations, for the thoroughness of his work and the content of his report. He was appointed as the independent assessor in April 2016.

A total of 449 applications for individual reparations were received under the scheme, and the independent assessor met with more than 300 of the applicants who wanted to share with him the story of their removal: 312 of the applicants, almost 70 per cent, were deemed to meet the criteria for a reparation payment. The former government initially set the individual payment at $20,000. The scheme also offered community reparations: 27 projects were approved for the community reparations, totalling $1.65 million.

The community reparations projects included creating memorials in various sites and making improvements to important places, like the Colebrook Reconciliation Park and the stolen generations memorial at Andrews Farm. They also supported a range of healing activities, including facilitating more sophisticated family history research, creating photographic archives and supporting various arts activities that tell the story of the stolen generations in South Australia.

Since the election, it has become the responsibility of my government to determine what to do with the balance of just over $3 million left in the scheme. After discussion with a range of Aboriginal people and organisations, the government has decided to use the balance of the funds to pay an additional $10,000 to each successful individual applicant for reparations. This will bring the total individual payment to $30,000 for each of those 312 applicants. The government believes this is the fairest way to allocate the remaining funding. In our generation, we acknowledge the hurt, the devastation and the wrongs of removal and offer some closure to those who were removed.

I turn now to the independent assessor's report. Mr Hill has found that, while many stolen generation survivors have a sense of grief after enduring physical and mental torture, he observes that most of them also have a generosity of spirit. This speaks eloquently of the resilience of Aboriginal people. They remain a very proud people despite some of the harrowing episodes in our shared history for which no amount of reparations can ever compensate. I commend to all members of this parliament and the wider community that they read Mr Hill's report for, as he says:

There is much for government and society, in general, to reflect on and learn in relation to the policies and practices that produced the Stolen Generations...

We cannot undo the wrongs of the past, but we can do the right thing now and recognise what was done then, and this parliament has done that. In dealing with this issue, the parliament has worked at its bipartisan best to acknowledge an historic wrong. In 1997, this was the first parliament in the nation to say sorry.

In 2010, the Hon. Tammy Franks (also in the gallery today) introduced the Stolen Generations Reparations Tribunal Bill. This led to a parliamentary inquiry into a reparations scheme. The issue was taken up by my party when in opposition through the introduction of legislation in 2014 to implement the committee's recommendations. Ultimately, the former government established the reparations scheme which has become the responsibility of my government to complete.

I will leave my last words on this to those Mr Hill recorded in a meeting with one of the applicants for reparations. She was taken from her mother when aged three years and nine months. In fact, over time, she lost much more than her mother. As she told Mr Hill, and I quote:

…I still feel that I am unloveable.

And I still feel like I don't belong.

And I feel completely caught between two cultures.

And I have trouble comprehending how or why my children would even love me.

I really have trouble understanding the concept of love.

I commend the independent assessor's report to the house. This is an important report, and the government wants to give all honourable members an opportunity to make comment about it.

The SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition.

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:13): Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you to the chamber for the opportunity to say a few words. I thank the Premier for his remarks.

In November 2015, the Weatherill government announced a Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme, including ex gratia payments for members of the South Australian stolen generations. It followed recommendations by the Aboriginal Lands Parliamentary Standing Committee. Under the Next Steps—Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme, South Australian members of the stolen generations who were forcibly removed from their parents became eligible for an ex gratia payment of up to $50,000.

Applications are made to the independent assessor and individuals can meet with and speak directly to the independent assessor about their experiences. The government, as the Premier alluded to, set aside up to $6 million for individual reparations. The second part of the scheme extended to the broader Aboriginal community with a $5 million whole-of-community reparations fund.

It was a notable day in this parliament when the former government introduced the Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme. The scheme had bipartisan support and followed a series of events around the nation that demonstrated a growing understanding of the depth of loss suffered by stolen generations. That loss cannot be measured in dollars. It is measured in fractured culture, heritage and community. In my mind, it was best summed up by the former prime minister Paul Keating in his Redfern speech of December 1992. Prime minister Keating said:

We simply cannot sweep injustice aside. Even if our own conscience allowed us to, I am sure, that in due course, the world and the people of our region would not.

There should be no mistake about this—our success in resolving these issues will have a significant bearing on our standing in the world…

There is no more basic test of how seriously we mean these things.

It is a test of our self-knowledge.

Of how well we know the land we live in. How well we know our history.

Keating said that for Australia to progress as a nation we have to recognise that one culture deposed and displaced another. He said, and again I quote:

We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life.

We brought the diseases. The alcohol.

We committed the murders.

We took the children from their mothers.

We practised discrimination and exclusion.

Prime minister Keating's decision to establish the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families resulted in the Bringing Them Home report, tabled in federal parliament in May 1997.

We should be proud that as a state parliament we took immediate steps to advance the notions of apology, acceptance and reconciliation. Just two days after the release of the Bringing Them Home report, the then South Australian minister for Aboriginal affairs, Liberal Dean Brown, led this parliament in saying sorry. He told this house:

…to the children who were taken from their mothers and fathers, to the mothers and fathers who watched in pain as their babies and children were taken from their side or taken from their schools. To those people, we apologise.

Profound words from Dean Brown. It would be another decade before the federal parliament did the same thing. Eleven years ago this week, former prime minister Kevin Rudd said:

The hurt, the humiliation, the degradation and the sheer brutality of the act of physically separating a mother from her children is a deep assault on our senses and on our most elemental humanity.

So, after much consultation with Indigenous communities, this parliament introduced another step in the direction of facing up to the past wrongs, hence the Stolen Generations Reparations Scheme. This was the right thing to do. It was something that was endorsed, as the Premier said, in a bipartisan way.

When we talk about the importance of white settlement some 230 years ago, can you imagine having a culture that stretches back for literally thousands of generations? It is the oldest living culture on the planet. As an Australian, I am proud to walk together with our Aboriginal brothers and sisters, and I support the comments of the Premier today.

In my office, one thing that has pride of place on my wall is a framed front page of The New York Times that was delivered to US citizens the day after prime minister Rudd gave the apology to stolen generations. I have a framed copy and it is signed by Kevin Rudd, so there is something with Kevin Rudd in my office, believe it or not. He signed the front page of that paper.

What it said to me, as someone who was on the east coast of the US at the time, was that we did not just do something that was good for Australia: we did something that was good for the world. It was worldwide news. It was on the front page of The New York Times—Australia owning up to its past, Australia having the courage to recognise what we did wrong.

Ultimately, that apology is only as powerful as the actions that followed. I am very proud that this parliament in a bipartisan way took that apology and put some actions behind it with this scheme—a scheme that those opposite deserve as much credit for as those on this side of the chamber. It is an example of what we can do when we work together. I commend the Premier's words to the house.

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