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While you’re here, don’t forget to check out the answers to the other questions submitted by our readers
Angus asks:
Why are current generations of Australian's being asked to say sorry for the past mistakes or policies of previous governments. I do not believe that I have anything to say sorry for!
Answer:
The current Government is apologising for wrongful policies of governments. No individual Australian is being asked to take personal responsibility for actions of past governments.
Reconciliation Australia’s Co-Chair, Professor Mick Dodson who co-authored the Bringing Them Home report says: “Individual Australians are not guilty for what happened to Aboriginal families. I know of no Indigenous person who told their story to the inquiry who wanted non-Indigenous Australians to feel guilty - they just wanted people to know the truth. They wanted to tell the stories of their lives. To have the truth of their experiences acknowledged. Many people who gave evidence to the inquiry said that the telling was itself healing - knowing that at last they were being officially heard.�
Alice asks:
Question: I was looking for a copy of the speech which I'm sure I heard on the TV was to be released today after 5am, will it be pulished on this site? Looking forward to tomorrow, its history in the making and important at that.
Answer:
Please click here to download the speech (PDF 16KB)
Anonymous asks:
How will this apology affect Australia's contemporary generation in forms of liability for FURTHER compensation to the indigenous Australians?
Answer:
An official apology is not directly related to compensation. All State and Territory governments have apologised and this has not triggered any rush of compensation claims.
The Bringing Them Home report recommended the establishment of a national compensation fund for people affected by the forcible removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. The aim of the fund would be to offer reparation to those affected and avoid the courts having to deal with costly individual litigation.
Tasmania is the only Australian State which has set up a compensation fund. The Australia Government has said it will not establish a fund at the national level but will direct funds to counselling services for members of the stolen generations and services that help people who were removed as children to find their families and communities.
Indigenous leader Mick Dodson expresses the idea that “reparation is a concept which is broader than compensation. It means trying to repair the damage caused by removal, trying to give back at least some of what was taken and lost. It is trying to make up for the hurt…We must understand what people have lost, and how those things might be returned.�
Mick states that the final component of reparation is compensation. If the Federal Government does not create a national compensation fund, people affected by the stolen generations do have the right to bring a legal action.
Mick Dodson goes on to say that “while the suggestion of compensation is controversial for some people, most of the categories of harm for which people would be claiming compensation already exist under Australian law - such as physical, sexual and emotional abuse, economic loss and pain and suffering. Money cannot bring back the years of lost childhood, but justice demands that stolen children should be treated equally by the law.�
Tony asks:
“Didn’t John Howard already apologise on behalf of Parliament in his Motion of Reconciliation in 1999? I remember he expressed “deep and sincere regret that Indigenous Australians suffered injustices under the practices of past generations, and for the hurt and trauma that many indigenous people continue to feel as a consequence of those practices�. If the apology is about showing empathy, respect and understanding rather than accepting guilt or blame, then I think we’ve already apologised. Why do we have to do it again?
Answer:
The Motion of Reconciliation was not an apology. As the Bringing Them Home report identified, an apology must be more specific. First, it must acknowledge the facts of child removal on the grounds of race and the damage this practice caused. Second, it must also accept moral responsibility for those actions. The Motion of Reconciliation did not specifically mention the separation of Indigenous children from their families. Nor did it acknowledge the government’s moral responsibility for the actions of previous governments.
“Some people are saying that it’s only the government saying “sorry�, not the Australian people. But the government is elected to represent us. Doesn’t this mean that it must be apologizing on behalf of all Australians?
Answer:
The government is not apologizing on behalf of individual Australians. It is only apologizing for the actions of past governments. While it is true that we have a representative democracy (meaning that the government is elected to represent us), this is not the basis of the apology.
Instead, the apology is about a concept called “continuing responsible government�. This means that the government is accountable to the people for its actions, and those of its predecessors. In saying “sorry�, the government is simply “coming clean� or holding itself accountable for the policies of its predecessors, which it believes were morally wrong.
The government is not apologising in the name of individual Australians, or asking us to personally feel guilty for something we did not do.
Even though all of the State and Territory governments have apologised without creating a rush of compensation claims, I am getting nervous about the talk I’ve been reading in the media about big class actions against the government if it refuses to pay compensation. How can we be sure that the apology won’t open the floodgates to compensation claims?
Answer:
It is unlikely that an apology will expose the government to additional legal liability for the actions of previous governments. These are some of the arguments experts have made:
First, the federal government never ran a national child removal policy. Instead, each of the States had their own laws and programs. The only exception was in the Northern Territory, where the federal government had responsibility for passing child removal laws due to constitutional reasons. However, the federal government endorsed assimilation as the official national objective in Indigenous affairs at the Commonwealth/State Conferences on Native Welfare in 1937 and 1951. In this sense, it helped to set the policy environment in which child removals occurred, but it did not directly participate in the removal of Indigenous children in each of the States.
Second, an apology is about admitting moral, not legal, responsibility. In 1997, the High Court held that previous child removal laws in the Northern Territory were constitutional. This means that the government had the legal power to pass those laws. In apologising, the government is simply saying it was morally wrong to exercise that legal power. The South Australian Supreme Court decision of Trevorrow suggests that stolen generation members would have to prove at least one of two things. They would have to show that their removal from their families or placement into State care was illegal, for example the government did not follow its own established laws or policies. Alternatively, they would have to prove that their removal or placement was negligent, such as where a child was placed into an abusive environment.
Third, if an apology is made in parliament, some have argued that it will be protected by parliamentary privilege, meaning that it cannot form the basis of a legal action.
This means that anyone who wants to bring a court case seeking compensation for their wrongful removal as children must have existing legal rights. These rights are totally separate to any government apology. In this sense, a “stolen generations� claim would be no different to any other case that comes before the courts.