Page 3072 - Week 08 - Tuesday, 14 August 2012
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currently involved, and the 135 children they bring to school with them, to know that they matter.
Programs like CCCares are some of the ways in which we show we can learn from the past, some of the ways in which we can ensure as a community that we will never again allow members of our community to suffer the indignity, the stigmatisation, and the lifelong trauma experienced by so many of those whose families were affected by forced adoption practices.
While today’s apology cannot wipe away those years, or the tears, I hope that it may be a beginning of a period of healing.
I would like to acknowledge the work done by the Apology Alliance, which, in arguing for a national inquiry and an apology, has played such a leadership role in forcing us all to face up to this dark chapter of our past.
And thank you again to the many men and women who have, through their own stories, written that chapter into our official history books at last.
To all those affected by forced adoption, please accept this apology in the spirit in which it is offered.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo—Leader of the Opposition) (10.16): I thank the Chief Minister for bringing this motion forward. To my Assembly colleagues and to our guests in the gallery, today is a day of acknowledgement, of apology and of atonement. Today is a day of recognition of past wrongs, validation of past grievances and vindication for those who have fought so long to have their voices heard. Today is the day we accept and apologise for all the wrongs caused by the past policies and practices we now know to be those of forced adoptions. On behalf of the Canberra Liberals, I say sorry to those individuals and families affected by those policies and practices.
The practices outlined in the Senate committee report describe incidents that would clearly cause extraordinary trauma on those who experienced them, who had their newborn babies torn away from them. To those who went through those dark days, I say sorry. The practices as described would also have repercussions to this day for those whose experience started after separation, those who were taken away. To those too, I say sorry.
The practices, as written in awful detail throughout the report, go against basic rights that I personally hold to be of the most fundamental and important in all of human experience—the right of a mother to hold and keep her baby; the rights of a child to know and love and be loved by their parents. As a father, a son, a brother, an uncle—a member of a strong family—it is unthinkable to me that this practice was carried out, that these rights and opportunities were denied to so many people for so many years. It moves me to think of the plight of those people who endured this process against their will, in this of all countries, and in these of all times.
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