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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1702 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

Historical precedent is also relevant in terms of the federal government's inaccurate and divisive submission to the Senate inquiry into the stolen generation. In that submission the federal government sought to deny the systematic and forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families by simply saying in one part of that submission:

This statement constitutes a national disgrace, and the offending submission should be rejected. The claim contained within that submissions that only 10 per cent of Aboriginal people suffered from the removal policies is based on the wilful misuse of statistics. The ABS survey referred to was based only on a small sample. The sampling was undertaken in 1994, by which time many of the people affected by the policies at the height of this practice would have died, particularly because of the appallingly low life expectancies that indigenous people experience in Australia. Furthermore, between 1991 and 1996 there was a huge increase of 33 per cent in the number of people in Australia declaring their Aboriginality in the census. But only those who declared their indigenous dissent up to 1991 were included in the ABS survey.

Even more disturbing is the absence of any acknowledgment that more than one person in the family or community may have suffered from the forcible removal of another close to them. Hence, siblings, grandparents, parents and friends of those removed were all affected, and some never saw each other again.

We acknowledge the impact the loss of loved ones has in our response to other aspects of national life-for instance, in our response to war. Every war, the First World War in particular but also most recently the Vietnam war, has affected the outlook of a whole generation, even though not the whole generation left our shores to fight in the war. We do not say that war impacts only on those who were there. We acknowledge also the pain and suffering of those who were left behind. Similarly, we need to recognise that the indigenous communities whose children were forcibly taken suffered a similar sense of grief and loss. In acknowledging this, we must also realise that there was more than one stolen generation.

In a letter to the Canberra Times on Monday of this week, a group of commissioners for the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, headed up by Professor Alice Tay, the current president, pointed out:

The letter was written in response to recent comments from former Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Peter Howson. Given that both sides of politics have accepted the outcomes of the Bringing them home report, to deny the existence of the stolen generation in a government submission is nothing short of unconscionable. To deny the existence of the stolen generation is to deny indigenous people proper acknowledgment of their grief and suffering as a result of the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families. Given what has occurred, acknowledging their pain is the least we can do.

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