Wednesday, 20 November 2024
Ms RISHWORTH (Kingston—Minister for Social Services) (09:01): Today I rise to mark the 15th anniversary of the national Apology to the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants. On Saturday 16 November we marked the day, 15 years ago, that the then Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, delivered the apology that acknowledged the years of mistreatment and neglect experienced by forgotten Australians and former child migrants. The apology dealt with an ugly chapter in our nation’s history. It was then, as it remains now, a significant moment in the lives of those impacted by this mistreatment and neglect.
I acknowledge the many thousands of Australians, who may be watching today from outside this place, who as children were taken from their homes or removed from other countries and placed in institutionalised care. I’d also like to acknowledge those who are joining in the gallery. In commemorating the anniversary of this apology, we recognise the lifelong impacts of the abuse and neglect experienced by children in institutions, orphanages and children’s homes—institutions which did not provide the care these children deserved. To those who experienced this: nothing we ever say will take away or dilute the pain, trauma and hurt you all still carry.
As Prime Minister Rudd said during the apology, we all look back on this time with shame: shame that, instead of being provided care and safety, children who were entrusted to institutions, children’s homes and orphanages were abused physically, humiliated cruelly and violated sexually; shame at how those with power were allowed to abuse those who had none.
Until the late 1980s, more than 500,000 children were removed from their families, and about 7,000 child migrants were displaced from their home countries and placed in institutions. The children were typically aged between eight and 13 years old, and some were babies as young as three months. They were placed in institutions for many reasons, including being orphaned; being born to a single mother; family dislocation from domestic violence, divorce or separation; family poverty; and parents’ inability to cope with their children, often resulting from some form of crisis or hardship, including war.
Children deeply felt abandonment and loss, grief through separation from their parents and siblings and the loss of their identity and familial connections. Former child migrants also lost their connection to their home countries and cultures. Many of the forgotten Australians and former child migrants experienced harsh and cruel childhoods, including physical, emotional and sexual abuse. This has caused continued suffering from their experience, and there are circumstances that trigger, even much later in life, such as when they may enter an aged-care facility. The apology acknowledged that the neglect and abuse of these children was unacceptable and conveyed a sincere hope that the national recognition of the trauma they experienced would begin the healing process.
I would like to acknowledge all of those care leavers, all of those forgotten Australians, all of those former child migrants and their advocates for making sure that this apology happened. So many parliamentarians, along with so many people, called for this apology, and now, 15 years on, we acknowledge that apology. We know many forgotten Australians and former child migrants continue to live with trauma, ill health, loneliness, family breakdown and poverty as a result of the abuse and neglect they experienced as children. The trauma these children experienced in care has had a profound impact through their adult lives.
Three Senate inquiries—Lost Innocents, in 2001; Forgotten Australians, in 2004; and Lost Innocents and Forgotten Australians Revisited, in 2009—illustrated the consequences of the deprivation for children removed from their families and placed into institutions. The inquiries brought to light evidence that many children in these institutions were deprived of love, affection, emotional support, food, education—even basic health care. They highlighted the struggle these children face as adults to cope and live a life filled with equal opportunity, as other Australians do. The final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse in 2017 reported that more than a third of survivors who attended private sessions were individuals who identified as either forgotten Australians or former child migrants. The partners and children of forgotten Australians have also felt the impact in how it has affected their personal relationships and relationships with broader society.
To meet the needs of these Australians, a number of services have been implemented by the Australian government in the years since the apology. The national Find and Connect program was established in 2009. This program funds a range of services that include specialised counselling referrals, peer education and social support programs, assistance to locate and access records, and help with reconnecting with family members. Find and Connect is an important program working to uncover histories and reunite lost families. It has helped people trace and reclaim their identity and build relationships with families in the hope of healing. In the last year, more than 2,400 people have accessed this service.
As part of the program, the government also funds the Find & Connect website, which serves as an online resource for people who grew up in institutionalised homes and their families to track down historical records. This is an important service that can make the search for information easier and support those impacted to find the answers they need. The government also continues to support the Alliance for Forgotten Australians and the Child Migrants Trust in their work to connect forgotten Australians and child migrants with their families, often despite many decades of separation, and provide recognition and ongoing support.
We know that nothing can undo to harm that was done that. That’s why the government remains committed to providing better support for those impacted. Since the apology in 2009, the Australian government has acted to provide recognition, healing and support to forgotten Australians and former child migrants. In supporting former child migrants, the government waived the Australian citizenship application fee for former child migrants, as they were not granted citizenship when they were sent to Australia as children and were unable to access social security or visit their families residing in Australia. The government also digitalised as many records as possible from institutions, making sure forgotten Australians and former child migrants were able to locate and search their own records and their own histories.
Through the Find and Connect program, the government supported family tracing for those placed in care with a way to reconnect with parents and siblings after the connection was lost. Between 2009 and 2012, the National Library of Australia undertook the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants Oral History Project, which recorded the lives and experiences of the children. The interviews reveal the lifelong impact of these experiences on those who care, their siblings and their family members, ensuring that their stories are not lost and that the experiences will never be repeated. The government has provided ongoing education and awareness for secondary students in years 10 to 12 at the National Museum of Australia’s exhibition Inside:Life in Children’s Homes and Institutions—again, to build community awareness and prevent the experiences of forgotten Australians and former child migrants from ever being repeated.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse also acknowledged that around one-third of these children placed in these settings were sexually abused, and it recommended a redress scheme to provide recognition and compensation. The National Redress Scheme for institutionalised child sexual abuse is now in its seventh year, enabling survivors of institutionalised child sexual abuse to hold institutions accountable and to have the impact of this abuse recognised. As minister, I’ve been working hard, including through our survivor roundtables and the redress ministers board, to make ongoing improvements to the experiences of those accessing the Redress Scheme, including ensuring it is more responsive to the needs of survivors and is more trauma informed. In addition, the government has provided support to other initiatives that support the ongoing recognition of and healing for forgotten Australians. Acknowledging that entering aged care may be retraumatising, the Real Care the Second Time Around program was developed by the Department of Health and Ageing and Helping Hand to support forgotten Australians engage with aged care and to help service providers respond to their aged-care needs.
As a government, we continue to look at ways we can recognise forgotten Australians and former child migrants. I am really pleased that our government has secured the future of the Australian Orphanage Museum, an initiative of the Care Leavers Australasia Network, known as CLAN, to establish the museum in Geelong, Victoria. The museum’s purpose is to recognise and educate about the neglect and hardship of children who grew up in orphanages, institutions and children’s homes throughout Australia between the 1950s and 1980s. I would like to thank CLAN and in particular it’s CEO and founder, Leonie Sheedy, for working so cooperatively to ensure that care leavers have a physical place of recognition.
Through our investments we are helping to ensure the authentic social histories about the experiences of growing up in orphanages, children’s homes, missions and other institutions are retold and heard. One of the key changes we have made is through expanding access to the National Redress Scheme for former child migrants who are not Australian citizens or permanent residents, recognising that many of these survivors left Australia and have never returned. Along with the Minister for Aged Care, we have also made changes to ensure a person’s redress payment is exempt from their aged-care means test, acknowledging how difficult re-entering aged care can be and how expensive at times it can be. Our government developed the Caring for Forgotten Australians, Former Child Migrants and Stolen Generations information pack, maintained by the Department of Health and Aged Care, to promote trauma aware and healing informed care.
More broadly, through the new Aged Care Act, we’re also making positive changes for older Australians as they enter care and re-enter institutionalised settings. The new, rights based act outlines the rights of people seeking and accessing aged care in a statement of rights and places individuals and their needs at the centre of the aged-care system. Under the statement of rights, individuals will have the right to have their identity, culture, spirituality and diversity valued and supported and to have their funded aged-care services delivered in a way that’s culturally safe, culturally appropriate, trauma aware and healing informed.
The government specifically recognised care leavers, including Forgotten Australians and former child migrants, as people with special needs under section 11.3(g) of the Aged Care Act to ensure that if they are reinstitutionalised their care is responsive to their past experiences and is trauma aware.
This year’s milestone is a valuable opportunity to acknowledge the significance of the National Apology and to come together to remember and reflect. It is important that we continue to acknowledge the past and raise awareness in the community of this dark period in our nation’s history. To support local commemorative events we are providing funding to support service organisations to assist them to host suitable local commemorative events.
But today we remember and reflect on the years of mistreatment and neglect experienced by Forgotten Australians who as children were placed in orphanages and other institutions. We acknowledge the importance of the National Apology then and today. We recognise the trauma the children experienced and that it continues to have an ongoing impact on these Australians.
As we commemorate the anniversary of the apology and continue to make investments to support those Forgotten Australians and former child migrants, we also reaffirm our commitment that this dark chapter in our history should never have happened, and we commit ourselves to it never happening again.
