Moving Forward - Achieving Reparations for the Stolen Generations

Moving Forward - Achieving Reparations for the Stolen Generations

Andrea Durbach, Director, PIAC.

Welcome to Conference. Thank you for warm welcome, Marjie Cook, and for the opportunity to gather on your land over the next two days to consider the critical issues of identity and justice for the Stolen Generations.

For too long now, representatives of the current Federal government - most of whom are far removed, both physically and emotionally, from the experiences of the Stolen Generations - have offered an inept and dishonourable response to the needs of the Stolen Generations. The Government has suggested that a "statement of regret", an allocation of sixty-three million dollars over 4 years aimed at so-called 'practical assistance', and their subsequent denial of the very existence of the Stolen Generations may suffice to allow us as a nation to turn our backs on the cruel legacy of our indigenous past and move forward, blind to the future.

At the opening of the Australian Reconciliation Convention in Melbourne in 1997, Dr Alex Boraine, the Deputy Chairperson of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, responded to our Prime Minister, John Howard: "It is wrong, " he said "to simply say, "Turn the page." It is right to turn the page, but first you have to read it, understand it and acknowledge it. Then you can turn the page. There has to be a time of repentance, not of parading national shame, but of establishing a coming together to acknowledge the failures and sins of the past. I find it breathtaking," said Dr Boraine, "that a government can refuse to acknowledge the damage that was done, the damage that continues."

Our conference, Moving Forward - achieving reparations for the Stolen Generations, is in part a response to a Government that has failed and continues to fail, to lead our country towards a future that understands and is transformed by its past. Importantly, it is about taking responsibility so that we can move forward; it is about acknowledging the magnitude of the harm suffered and the enduring pain borne by the Stolen Generations and it seeks to develop an innovative, compassionate and appropriate mechanism for providing reparations to the Stolen Generations.

In the light of the Federal Government's consistent refusal to apologise to the Stolen Generations and provide redress for their harm, litigation has been commenced, often as the only or inevitable option or last resort open to the Stolen Generations to exact some justice from Government. However, our experience of working with members of the Stolen Generations since the tabling of the HREOC Report, Bringing them Home, in 1997, in advising and representing Stolen Generations clients in litigation, led us to doubt the capacity or the appropriateness of the legal system in its archaic construction, to adequately assess and compensate for the immeasurable damage which has arisen from the Stolen Generations experience, damage which continues to manifest in present day Australian life.

It is in this context that PIAC, in consultation with representatives from the HREOC National Inquiry Secretariat, Link-Up, ATSIC, the Aboriginal Legal Service, the Aboriginal Medical Service, the NSW Dept of Aboriginal Affairs, the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and others, developed a proposal for the establishment of a Stolen Generations Reparations Tribunal in 1997.

The proposal for the establishment of a Stolen Generations Reparations Tribunal is not a radical initiative. Examples of similar models of redress have been developed and have existed in Australia for decades, such as statutory compensation tribunals or schemes for victims of crime and war veterans. Indeed, the Federal Government recently demonstrated its capacity to provide redress to Australian Defence Force Prisoners of War of the Japanese, by committing ex gratia payments of $25,000 to each Prisoner of War, civilian internees and detainees of the Japanese or their surviving spouses.

The proposal for a Reparations Tribunal offers one practical measure which might, in the words of former Governor-General, Sir William Deane, constitute a vehicle of "redress for present disadvantage flowing from past injustice". This conference brings together people from around Australia and from Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States of America, who will present their own experiences of healing and reparations - all of which address a legacy of injustice and offer additional ideas and models for how we in Australia can move forward towards implementing a considered and viable response to the specific needs of the Stolen Generations. A compassionate response to those who suffered abuse and lost their language, their land, their culture and ultimately, their identity.

Thank you to all our overseas speakers, our Australian speakers and workshop presenters and to you all, our guests, for coming from all over Australia and indeed the world to join with us as we debate and develop a strategy in an attempt to heal, in the words of Robert Manne, "the continuing pain" that has taken hold with the "bewildering" removal of child "from mother, family, community, world."

I wish you a constructive and successful conference.