Page 5056 - Week 14 - Tuesday, 17 November 2009
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We have increased the government’s powers to assess and respond to children suspected to be at risk through the introduction of appraisal orders. We have enhanced confidence and a sense of permanency for children and young people on orders by including stability proposals in care plans and long-term orders. We are according greater protection for children yet to be born, who may be at risk after their birth.
Later this month, coincidentally, a charter of rights for children and young people in out-of-home care in the ACT will be launched. The charter accords children who are unable to live with their parents the rights enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Human Rights Act 2004 and the Children and Young People Act 2008.
On behalf of the ACT government, I reiterate the ACT government’s remorse for the enduring effects of past policies upon those Australians who suffered in institutions over many decades during the past century. I acknowledge the extraordinary and burdensome journey made by the child migrants who arrived on our shores in pursuit of what the logic of the day insisted would be a better life, and who have been so scarred, in many cases, by that double-edged sword of opportunity.
I congratulate the Australian government and parliament on its apology and echo it here in this chamber today.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.09): Today, we acknowledge the hurt and the plight of former child migrants and the people in our society known as the forgotten Australians. These include both those who were dislocated from their home countries and moved across thousands of kilometres to countries including Australia, and those already within Australia who were made wards of state.
These are a group of people spanning several generations who, by government policy, were taken from their families and their homes—indeed, in some cases their home countries and their home cultures—and shipped to various destinations around the globe to strange and, it has to be recognised, sometimes hostile environments.
The disruption this would cause to anyone can scarcely be understated. The dislocation that must have been felt by children is scarcely imaginable. As a father of four young children, it is heartbreaking for me personally to contemplate children just like my own being separated from their parents in the way that so many were.
It has often been remarked that the first step to healing is to recognise the pain that has been caused. To this, I add the voices and the thoughts of the Canberra Liberals to those of others who have spoken on this topic, in acknowledging the hurt that has been caused and the harm that was done.
Like many government policies of bygone eras, the proponents of the policy at the time no doubt had justification which suited their purpose or attempted to salve their consciences. However, it is for the policy makers of the present to recognise the poor decisions made by their predecessors, to acknowledge the faults in their logic and
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