Views from Western Australia

In early 2008 a historic speech was made by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd in the Australian Parliament. That speech made headlines around the world. It was widely covered by the media throughout Africa, Asia, the Middle East and continental Europe, countries which normally show little interest in Australian happenings.

It was a speech that was 10 years in the making. In 1995 the Australian Government asked the Human Rights Commission to hold a national inquiry into the policies which authorized the removal of tens of thousands of Aboriginal children from their families in an attempt to assimilate them into white society. This inquiry was chaired by a former High Court judge, Sir Ronald Wilson, and the report it produced was titled ‘Bringing Them Home’.

It was an agonising report, detailing hundreds of tragic stories resulting from these policies. However, by 1997, when it was published, the Government had changed, and the new Prime Minister, John Howard, was utterly hostile to it. He had won the election saying, among other things, that ‘the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of Aboriginal interests, and we are going to swing it back.’ This report was the last thing he wanted.

That Government was defeated in national elections in November 2007. When the new Parliament sat for the first time in February, its first action was to apologise to those who were removed – who were know now as the Stolen Generations. Before making that speech, the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, went to the home of a member of the Stolen Generations in her eighties, Lorna Fejo, and spent two hours listening to her story.

In the parliament he said:

‘We reflect in particular on the mistreatment of those who were Stolen Generations – this blemished chapter in our nation’s history.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia’s history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future.

We apologise for the laws and policies of successive Parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

We apologise especially for the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country.

For the pain, suffering and hurt of these Stolen Generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we say sorry.

To the mothers and the fathers, the brothers and the sisters, for the breaking up of families and communities, we say sorry.

And for the indignity and degradation thus inflicted on a proud people and a proud culture, we say sorry.

We the Parliament of Australia respectfully request that this apology be received in the spirit in which it is offered as part of the healing of the nation.

For the future we take heart; resolving that this new page in the history of our great continent can now be written.

We today take this first step by acknowledging the past and laying claim to a future that embraces all Australians.’

This is what many people had waited for years, for decades to hear. All around the parliament people in tears, as they were all over the country, where thousands gathered at public screenings of the speech. It was a huge event for those who had suffered as a result of these policies.

Kevin Rudd talks about facing the truth. Every nation has aspects of its history which it distorts. For Australia the greatest distortion is in the encounter between the Aboriginal people and the white settlers. As the former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, said, ‘The history we were taught in school was simply not true.’

If you defend a lie, you shut your eyes to those whose experience you deny. You shut your heart to their feelings. So the policies you develop are not based on reality, far less on compassion, and Aboriginal Australians have often had to bear the consequences of misguided and callous policy.

So what do you do about it? An Australian politician, Kim Beazley Sr, said of his 32 years in the Federal Parliament, ‘I have learned that the key to social advance is not power but conscience. All social advance depends on making the conscience more sensitive.’ The struggle to right the wrongs done to the Stolen Generations was a contest between power and conscience. If it had been a political contest, it would have made little impact because Aboriginal people are spread thinly across the country, and have little ability to influence voting patterns. But it became an issue of conscience, and it remained so. That was its strength.

Many Australians reacted to the ‘Bringing Them Home’ report in an entirely different way to the Government. For example, Aboriginal leader, Professor Mick Dodson, said soon after the report’s launch: ‘We have seen a most extraordinary turn of events in this country. Day after day the letter pages in the papers and the airwaves are filled with the reactions of ordinary Australians who were horrified at the truth that they never knew. Never before has Australia really cared about our children, children taken from the arms of their mothers, taken from their culture.’

Why did this happen? I think one key catalyst was the work of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation. This was launched in 1990, under the leadership of Patrick Dodson, and its strategy was to bring Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians together. It developed programs for voluntary groups, and during the next five years, hundreds of groups formed, in universities, churches, schools, civic organisations. It also arranged official encounters, bringing together the Aboriginal leaders in many towns and cities with the Mayor and councilors, the police, magistrates, teachers and business leaders. Through its work, tens of thousands of non-Indigenous Australians heard the experience of Aboriginal people, often for the first time. Many found this to be an eye-opening experience.

Sir Ronald Wilson’s eye-opening experience was the Stolen Generations inquiry. He said of it:

‘It was like no other I have undertaken.  Other inquiries were intellectual exercises, a matter of collating information and making recommendations. But for these people to reveal what had happened to them took immense courage and every emotional stimulus they could muster.

At each session, the tape would be turned on and we would wait… I would look into the face of the person who was to speak to us. I would see the muscles straining to hold back the tears. But tears would stream down, still no words being spoken. And then, hesitantly, words would come.

We sat there as long as it took. We heard the story, told with that person’s whole being, reliving experiences which had been buried deep, sometimes for decades. They weren’t speaking with their minds; they were speaking with their hearts. And my heart had to open if I was to understand them.’

This affected him deeply.  “I came to this inquiry with fifty years behind me as a hardboiled lawyer, mixing it with all sorts of antagonists,” he said “and yet this inquiry changed me. And if it can change me, it can change our nation.”

This enquiry was his last assignment before retiring from public office. So he was free to speak out, and he did so. He went to State Governments, churches, the police, asking for apologies from all who had been involved in implementing the removal policies – and led the way himself.  “I was a leader of the Presbyterian Church in Western Australia at the time we ran Sister Kate’s Home, where removed children grew up,” he said. “I was proud of the home, with its system of cottage families. Imagine my pain when I discovered, during this inquiry, that children were sexually abused in those cottages.” He and the Presbyterian Church apologised wholeheartedly.

His actions struck a chord. In the following months, most of Australia’s State parliaments and churches held ceremonies to hear from representatives of the Stolen Generations, and to apologise for their role in this tragedy. They were very meaningful events.

Then a bigger event came along. One recommendation of the report was that a Sorry Day be held to commemorate the tragedy, and help the healing process. The Prime Minister ignored this. But Sir Ronald did not give up. He consulted Stolen Generations leaders, and they jointly invited thirty people, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, to meet and consider whether a Sorry Day could be held without Government involvement.

It took place in January 1998, and by the end of the day’s discussion, it was decided to try. 26 May was chosen as Sorry Day, since the report had been tabled in the Federal Parliament on May 26, 1997. And two co-Chairs were selected – one Aboriginal and one non-Aboriginal.

The organisers described Sorry Day as ‘a day when all Australians can express their sorrow for the whole tragic episode, and celebrate the beginning of a new understanding…. Indigenous people will participate in a Day dedicated to the memory of loved ones who never came home, or who are still finding their way home…. Sorry Day can help restore the dignity stripped from those affected by removal; and it offers those who carried out the policy - and their successors - a chance to move beyond denial and guilt.’

A former Governor-General of Australia, Sir Zelman Cowen, accepted an invitation to be patron. Then in March the idea was launched to the nation.

The response far exceeded expectations. The Secretary of the Sorry Day Committee was soon getting many phone calls a day from people organising events. Artists painted, musicians composed, writers and playwrights wrote. A well-known actor created Sorry Books – manuscript books in which people could express their apology. More and more books were produced as demand grew from public libraries, town councils, schools, universities. Soon several thousand books were in circulation, and nearly a million people wrote messages, many of them telling of personal experiences which prompted them to contribute.

When the day arrived, it was commemorated by thousands of events. There were theatrical presentations, cultural displays, town barbecues. Universities, government departments, councils, churches held gatherings to hear from Stolen Generations people, and to ceremonially hand the Sorry Books to them. The churches of central Melbourne rang their bells. The Lord Mayor gave the keys of the city to representatives of the Stolen Generations. Over half of the 30-minute national TV news that evening was devoted to Sorry Day events, and to the heartfelt response of Aboriginal leaders.

The Federal Government was taken aback by the strength of the Day. They had no idea how to respond to a campaign which included many people active on their side of politics. So they stayed practically silent. This provoked plenty of cartoons in the press.

But the Stolen Generations were deeply moved. For the first time, they felt that the Australian community understood what they had gone through. From across the country many of them met together, and decided to launch a Journey of Healing, inviting all Australians to play a part in healing the wounds. It is a measure of how moved they were by Sorry Day that the people whose childhoods had been ripped up by callous white attitudes welcomed the white community to work with them for healing.

Again, there was a huge response. A former Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, and a widely-respected Aboriginal woman, Lowitja O’Donoghue, became co-patrons. The Journey of Healing’s message was: ‘You can help heal the wounds of the Stolen Generations. Get to know those in your locality. Arrange for them to tell their stories to the newspapers if they wish, or on local radio. See how you can help them with the difficulties they face.’ Thousands responded. Over 80,000 Journey of Healing badges were sold, each of which carry a message saying that by wearing it you pledge yourself to healing. All over the country, throughout the year but especially around 26 May, events are held to express solidarity with the Stolen Generations. Memorials started to go up.

All this kept the issue alive in the media and the Parliament, to the anger of the Government. The Government produced a report which said that, since only 10% of Aboriginal children were removed, ‘stolen generations’ was a misnomer. This provoked intense anger, and the Sorry Day patrons made their views known.
But the response to Sorry Day had impressed the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, and they decided to launch an even bigger event. They invited all Australians to join them on a walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. A quarter of a million people participated, many of them carrying placards saying ‘Sorry’. It was the largest demonstration in Australian history. Some who walked also paid for a plane to go up alongside the Bridge and write the word ‘Sorry’ in the sky. Many called it ‘The People’s Apology’.
Then a walk was held across a bridge in Melbourne, and 300,000 people participated. Every Australian city and many towns held similar events. In all, about a million people took part.

There were scores of meetings arranged between members of the Government and the Stolen Generations. But their strategy for staying in office was to ensure that the mainstream Australian community was, in their phrase, ‘relaxed and comfortable’, and they did this by focusing on the mainstream community at the expense of minorities. In fact, they indulged a good deal in scape-goating Aboriginal people, including the Stolen Generations, as did some of the media. Once the patron, Lowitja O’Donoghue gave an interview to an unscrupulous journalist. Next morning a twisted version was front-page news, and the Prime Minister immediately went on radio to say, ‘I told you so.’ But this made many in the party uncomfortable, as these front-page headlines show. The struggle between power and conscience was alive.

And many in the Establishment felt keenly the need for a genuine response to the report. The Governor-General, Sir William Deane, invited key activists to Government House, and encouraged them. ‘You have taken on the most difficult area of reconciliation that this country faces,’ he said. He knew the depth of trauma and despair among the Stolen Generations.

Then there was the conflict between differing views as to whether the movement should focus principally on healing the Stolen Generations or on confronting the Government. In the end it did both, though its principal focus was on healing. It aimed to reach out to all who suffered as a result of the removal policies, including the white people involved.

When a million people walked for reconciliation in 2000, the Government had to respond in some way. The Prime Minister announced that they would build Reconciliation Place, in the centre of Canberra and, he said, ‘it will include a memorial to those removed as children from their families.’

Then it was discovered that the Government was creating this memorial themselves, without any consultation with the Stolen Generations, and it was to include a sound-scape of children laughing happily. Immediately there were protests and demonstrations. The project ground to a halt.

Then key people in the movement went to the Government and said, ‘A memorial could be deeply healing if it is created properly. We are prepared to arrange consultations all over the country, not just with the Stolen Generations but with those who staffed the institutions, or fostered removed children. We believe we can reach consensus on what it should say.’ Eventually the Government agreed to this.

Teams we organised in every State and Territory, who consulted hundreds of people. Then they met for three days of passionate discussion. People listened to each other, and many changed their views. By the end they had consensus on a powerful statement about the removal policies.

It was taken to the Government and they sat on it. So, some key people told the Minister that they had invited Malcolm Fraser to give the Sorry Day address in the Great Hall of Parliament House. He had led their own party, yet they knew he would attack their refusal to accept the statement. Within days the movement was asked to discuss the wording. The Government negotiators tried to get it toned down and it was pointed out that it was approved by all sides. Eventually the movement’s Secretary had a phone call at 11pm on the eve of Sorry Day, saying, ‘The Prime Minister will accept the statement if you remove one paragraph’; the response was that was not possible. Next morning at 8am, two hours before Malcolm Fraser was to speak, another phone call said: ‘All right, you can have the whole text.’

And it was a magnificent text; here is one extract:

‘We the removed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children of Australia would urge you to look through our eyes and walk in our footsteps, to be able to understand our pain.  We call on all Australians to acknowledge the truth of our history, to enable us to move forward together on our journey on healing, because it is only the truth that will set us all free.’

The movement organisers always tried to reach out to the Government, as they knew the struggle that was going on in the ranks of the Prime Minister’s party room. When the memorial was to be unveiled, after much discussion, the Sorry Day Committee went to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs with the proposal that the Prime Minister unveil it. They hoped it would offer the chance for a fresh start. By this time the Minister had changed, and was now a blunt-spoken woman. ‘I’m not sending the Prime Minister out on a turkey shoot in an election year,’ she said. So that idea died.

All these struggles meant that the media had plenty of stories. Sorry Day organisers around the country worked hard to ensure that Sorry Day were organised and featured in the media. It became established as a significant national event.

Last year on Sorry Day the Howard Government was still in office, still refusing to apologise. Organisers booked the Great Hall of Parliament, and Malcolm Fraser and Lowitja O’Donoghue invited the diplomatic community. When we had received acceptances from 23 missions, organisers went to the Government and pointed out that they couldn’t ignore this event. They said, ‘Yes, but if we come we will only be attacked.’ Organisers agreed, but said that if they responded by doing more to meet the needs of the Stolen Generations, they might get positive headlines. This seemed to them the best solution, and they decided to fund 22 more counsellors for the Stolen Generations.

This was jointly decided by the Minister of Health and the Minister of Indigenous Affairs. And both of them were sitting in the front row when Lowitja O’Donoghue spoke, challenging the whole Government approach.

However, the Minister of Health’s speech was unexpected. He was one of the Prime Minister’s closest allies. But when he spoke, he broke with the Prime Minister’s approach. ‘The forcible removal of Indigenous children is an episode in our history of which we are rightly ashamed,’ he said. ‘The fundamental premise on which it was based – that children were better off away from their black families – was wrong, indeed repugnant. We should have known it then. We certainly know it now, and we do have to atone for it.’ There was conscience breaking through.

And eventually Australia elected a Prime Minister who was prepared to respond on that level, and to commit his Government to a massive programme to transform the condition of Aboriginal Australia. Whether he will succeed has yet to be seen. But the media’s approach to Aboriginal affairs has been transformed. Whereas last year stories portrayed Aboriginal people as hopeless addicts and worse, now there is vigorous debate on how best to make progress. And Aboriginal people are fully part of the debate, as they must be if there is to be progress.

What are the lessons from this? Perhaps, the most important is that statement by Kim Beazley Sr: ‘The key to social advance is not power but conscience.’ Conscience is a force in every nation. It can be roused through a campaign of integrity. And though it may take time, in the end it will win out over those who put pursuit of power ahead of conscience.

(adapted from a speech given by John Bond in London, May 2008)