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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has used the occasion of the 15th anniversary of the Rudd Apology to the Stolen Generations to recommit to leading his government to the full implementation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
It was the opening statement in a number of speeches made in the House of Representatives 15 years after former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had finally apologized to the Stolen Generations, many of whom were welcomed back to the national parliament this week.
“More than 60,000 years of wisdom from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is all around us, if we care to listen,” Prime Minister Albanese said.
“As we mark the 15th anniversary of the Apology to the Stolen Generations today, we consider how it guides us as we seek solutions for the challenges of the present, and find ways to shape a better future.
“Historically, governments of all persuasions have failed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Yet those members of the stolen generations came here with such grace. So much had been taken from them, but their hearts had so much to give.
“I say to them: your courage showed us that when we’re brave enough to acknowledge failure, we can find the strength to take the next step forward together. The apology was the first act on the first parliamentary sitting day of the Rudd Labor government.
“As Leader of the House on that day, it was certainly my proudest moment in this chamber. And from Prime Minister Rudd we heard the words that reverberated across Australia: ‘I am sorry on behalf of our nation.’
“Like Prime Minister Keating before him, Prime Minister Rudd understood that until a nation acknowledges the full truth of its history it remains burdened by its unspoken weight. In acknowledging the past, Prime Minister Rudd said we were ‘laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians’.
“One of the apology’s great achievements was to keep alive the faith in decency and the hope for reconciliation that illuminate the Uluru Statement from the Heart. The apology could never be the end of the story, but the close of a chapter—and the beginning of a better one.”
The Prime Minister promised that, as of 2024, the closing the gap report will be issued when it was intended—in conjunction with the apology anniversary.
He acknowledged that, in some areas the gap not only persists but gets bigger.
“It is clear that not enough support has been directed towards organisations to deliver for communities. It is clear that we have leapt too swiftly from a climate of forceful intervention to simply telling communities, ‘You’re on your own.’
“We are seeing this in Alice Springs—and in so many communities beyond. I went to Alice to listen, to hear from the people on the ground. I wanted to hear from the women, whose voices have so often not been heard.
“Last week, this government and the Northern Territory government announced a landmark package for Central Australia to improve community safety, tackle alcohol related harm and provide more opportunities, particularly for young people.”
The Prime Minister introduced an implementation plan—in conjunction with the implementation plan from the Coalition of Peaks.
“It is a concrete demonstration of how we will advance real-world solutions that improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,” he said.
“This plan also accelerates specific actions on the national agreement’s four priority reforms to transform the relationship between governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, communities and organisations.”
New measures announced included $150 million over four years for the National Water Grid Fund to support First Nations water infrastructure and provide safe and reliable water for remote and regional Indigenous communities.
A $111.7 million Commonwealth contribution was announced to a new one-year partnership with the Northern Territory government to accelerate building of new remote housing. Another $11.8 million will be spent over two years for the national strategy for food security in remote First Nations communities. Funding of $68.6 million will continue over two years for family violence prevention and legal service providers.
Another $21.9 million will be spent over five years for up to seven place based, trauma aware and culturally responsive healing programs for those impacted by family violence or at risk of engagement with child protection systems. The list went on.
“It will be a long time before we can say we’ve done enough. But we have to do this work—together—day after day, week after week,” Albanese said.
“On 26 May, it will be six years since the Uluru Statement from the Heart was delivered after the First Nations National Constitutional Convention. There has been no haste, no shortcuts. This is the culmination of years of discussion, consultation and hard work by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as well as others, including people in this place.
“And what shines through most brightly is the desire to bring us all closer together as a people reconciled—and our great nation made greater.”
Whilst the Prime Ministers words were not surprising, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, used the occasion to make his own apology.
“The national apology was about Australians acknowledging the sins of the past—’the cold, confronting, uncomfortable truth’, as Prime Minister Rudd put it—and, in that acknowledgement, accepting the flaws and failings inherent in our historical character with the maturity of a modern nation—a modern nation which sees its history in the round, successes and failures alike.
“I want to speak directly to those in the gallery today and further afield who are part of the stolen generation and those who are descendants or are connected to the issue. I want to say, in an unscripted way, I apologise for my actions. The Prime Minister’s frequently able to point out that I didn’t attend the chamber for the apology 15 years ago.
“I’ve apologised for that in the past, and I repeat that apology again today. In 2008, I had been out of the Queensland police force for about nine years, and I still, probably, truthfully, to this day live with the images of turning up to domestic violence incidents where Indigenous women and children had suffered physical abuse, and certainly mental abuse.
“I remember, clearly, attending Palm Island, where I brought back the body of an Indigenous woman in a body bag, who had been thrust off a cliff to her death. I remember thinking at the time that those incidents were still occurring on a daily basis in 2008. The judgement that I formed was that if we were to make an apology, it needed to be at a time when we had addressed and we had curbed that violence and those incidents.
“I failed to grasp at the time the symbolic significance to the stolen generations of the apology. It was right for Prime Minister Rudd to make the apology in 2008. It’s right that we recognise the anniversary today. It’s right that the government continues its efforts, and in whatever way possible we support that bipartisan effort.”
Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Linda Burney, started her address in response to the Prime Minister’s statement will the lyrics from Archie Roach’s song Took the children away.
“Archie spoke of the truth that for many years was denied—denied by governments and denied by parliaments. Children were removed from their families because of the colour of their skin. And it was governments that did it,” Minister Burney said.
“Most Australians didn’t know of this reality. For decades there was a stubborn silence while many of those removed suffered a private pain of unbearable loss. It was, and is, one of the darkest chapters in our history.
“In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody found that of the 99 deaths investigated, 43 were people who had been separated from their families.
“By 1997, the Bringing them home report, which took evidence from hundreds of people from across the country, made 54 recommendations. The report found that between one in 10 and one in three Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families between 1910 and 1970—in most of our lifetimes.
“One of the key recommendations was for an apology to be given by governments. Western Australia was the first state to issue an apology, on 27 May 1997, closely followed by New South Wales in June of the same year.
“By 2001, all states and territories had issued apologies. The only hold-out was the Australian government under then Prime Minister John Howard.
“Recently, I went back and looked at some of the accounts in the Bringing them Home report—so many tales of heartbreak, of lives changed forever.
“The apology delivered by Prime Minister Rudd was, at its core, about healing—healing deep wounds, closing a painful chapter of denial of our history and opening a new chapter of our collective story, a better chapter.
“Now, we have the chance to do something practical together to improve the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, something that will have an impact on the ground and in communities by getting behind the Closing the Gap implementation plan and by supporting, as the Prime Minister so beautifully said, constitutional recognition through a voice.
“To do otherwise risks repeating the mistakes of the past. So I say: don’t hold us back. Let’s move forward for everyone. Eighteen years have passed since Tom Calma, our Senior Australian of the Year, delivered his social justice report urging governments to commit to achieving equality for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in health and in life expectancy within 25 years.
“It’s been 16 years since governments pledged to close key gaps in life expectancy, to halve the gap in mortality rates for children and to halve the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievements within a decade. “
In 2020, governments partnered with the Coalition of Peaks to expand these targets, which now include land, languages and justice outcomes. Despite this, report after report, year after year, as the Prime Minister has said, progress has been slow, too slow.
“Our commitment is to working in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians through the Coalition of Peaks with Pat Turner, and, one day, an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
“The Albanese government’s first Closing the Gap Implementation Plan details the next steps the Commonwealth will take towards achieving the targets and priority reforms of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.
“It includes more than $400 million of additional spending that the Prime Minister outlined.”
Burney focused on the $150 million to be made available over four years to support First Nations water infrastructure and provide safe and reliable water for remote and regional Indigenous communities.
“It is a disgrace that, in 2023 in Australia, there are First Nations communities that still do not have reliable access to safe drinking water—an absolute disgrace.
“It is almost impossible for some people to imagine what it is like to live your whole life in a place where the water is not safe, where dialysis machines can’t work because the water isn’t clean enough. And we all know of the enormous problem of renal failure in our communities.
“We want to better coordinate with the states and territories and with our community controlled organisation partners. This is about getting things done and, importantly, for people to hold us to account.
“Governments are better when they listen and when they are held to account. Holding governments to account was not done in the era of the stolen generations. One wonders: what if there’d been a voice at the time?
“A new generation has the chance to do things differently, to create a better a future. It’s up to a new generation of Australians to help close the gap. We are a great country, and we can be even greater if we get the next steps right by making a lasting difference through practical action—one that gives Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians a Voice.”
Member for Berowra, Julian Leeser then spoke as Shadow Minister.
“We remember the bark petition; the 1967 referendum; the arrival of Neville Bonner in the Senate and Ken Wyatt in the House of Representatives, and so many more since. And on this day we remember the apology: an apology for children taken away from parents, families, community and culture; an apology for the brothers and sisters separated; an apology for the forced relocations away from country; an apology, to use the words from Neville Bonner’s maiden speech, to those who ‘were shot, poisoned, hanged and broken in spirit until they became refugees in their own land’; an apology for the pain that cascades through the generations; an apology that needs to be repeated again and again, whenever and wherever Aboriginal Australians are denied the same opportunities as their fellow citizens,” Leeser said.
“Last Thursday, the Prime Minister said something to me across the dispatch box, and his words have stayed with me all weekend. He said simply, ‘The member is a participant and not an observer’—a participant and not an observer.
“Senator Nampijinpa Price and the member for Lingiari raised the alarm about Alice Springs in their first speeches months ago—from both sides of the aisle, two Indigenous parliamentarians, participants, who have not been afraid to speak the truth: the truth about alcohol, the truth about violence and the truth about our continued failure as Australians
“I want to talk about the failed policies of the present. I want to talk about the people living in the towns and the regional areas across Australia and the intertwining of alcohol, violence and community failure. These are not easy topics to talk about.
“Last week, the report by Dorrelle Anderson, the Northern Territory controller, into Alice Springs was released. It makes for confronting reading, and I want to read you a few lines that cut me to my core. She said: The children who have been spoken to have unanimously voiced their hatred of alcohol and the harm it inflicts on their families. Their simple aspirations are to live in a ‘normal place’, have jobs when they are older and be able to support their families with basic needs.
“The children … voiced their hatred of alcohol and the harm it inflicts on their families— such powerful and simple words. The children are speaking truth to us, and the sad truth is it’s not only in Alice Springs.
“Local voices matter, and they’re just not being heard. The member for Durack has written to the Prime Minister about the Kimberley, the Pilbara and Carnarvon. The member for Durack has met with a collection of Pilbara organisations that include the Pilbara Aboriginal Health Alliance, the Youth Involvement Council, the Yinhawangka Aboriginal Corporation, the Puntukurnu Aboriginal Medical Service and the Robe River Kuruma Aboriginal Corporation.
“They show a deep concern about youth crime and the destructive trail it’s leaving. The federal government invests millions in diversionary programs, and we must urgently determine if our investment is fit for purpose and whether those investments are being delivered as intended.
“The member for Durack says, ‘Isolation is a way of life for many in Durack, but now fearful residents are further isolated, bound within their own homes, too scared to leave.’
“Today, on this anniversary, we must honour the past by answering the failures of this generation towards Indigenous children. The present, in so many regional and remote communities, is terrible. I’m not blaming the Prime Minister or the minister or the state and territory governments. This is a collective failure, and I put my hand up too and share the blame with everyone.
“In all too many places, alcohol is fuelling the most unspeakable crimes against women and children, and this cannot be allowed to continue. That’s why I support the Leader of the Opposition’s call for a royal commission into the abuse of Indigenous children.
“In many cases, these are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the stolen generations.
“The Leader of the Opposition is right to call for a royal commission into the abuse of Indigenous children, and the Prime Minister should agree to it as well. Royal commissions are never comfortable—I understand that—but, frankly, they’re a whole lot better than facing regional failure after regional failure and simply continuing with more of the same. “Let us use this 15th anniversary of the national apology to recommit ourselves to action—action in partnership with Indigenous communities, with the Coalition of Peaks, with state and territory and local governments and with all Australians of goodwill. Let us all choose to be participants and not observers in the repair of our country and the reconciliation of our nation.”
