Australian Human Rights Commission

Class discussion

The following list includes some of the things governments, churches and the police have done in response to the report’s recommendations:

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  Motion of Reconciliation in Federal Parliament where the mistreatment of many Indigenous Australians who were forcibly removed from their families and communities was acknowledged.
  
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  Most Australian State Parliaments issued a formal apology to the ‘Stolen Generations’ and acknowledged responsibility for the policies and practices which allowed for the forcible removal Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and communities and acknowledged responsibility for unjust laws and practices made by many government departments including the police department.
  
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  Allocation of $63 million over a four year period to provide:
  

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  mental health services including counselling
  
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  family reunion services
  
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  parenting support
  
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  support for the preservation of Indigenous language
  
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  support of the preservation and development of Indigenous arts and culture
  
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  archiving project to preserve historical records and oral history recordings.
  

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  An additional $54 million was allocated by the government in 2002.
  
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  Apologies were made by all major Christian denominations for their involvement in the removal and institutionalisation of many Indigenous children and a commitment to redress these injustices from some churches.
  

Discuss the things that governments, churches and the police have done in response to the recommendations with your classmates. Make a list of any other things that governments, churches and the police could do to help achieve reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

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Note: For recent developments and updates on what recommendations have been implemented from the Bringing them home report log on to the Social Justice section of the Commission’s website at: www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice

Creating posters

1. In your groups plan a campaign together with an Indigenous group to raise community awareness in response to the recommendations of the Bringing them home report.

Use the table below to help outline your campaign:

Name and objectives Identify the objectives of your group or organisation.
What are the issues you are trying to address? Identify the issues or events you are concerned about. Why are these issues important to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians?
Identify your audience? Who are you trying to influence? the government the local community individuals
Identify the desired outcomes for your campaign What changes do you want to take place? Why are your desired outcomes important for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people?

2. Plan and design a poster which promotes the message you wish to promote to raise awareness. Carefully consider:

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  your message – keep it simple
  
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  the design – use images, fonts and colours which are appropriate
  
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  the text included on the poster – be succinct, but make sure you include enough information to inform viewers about the issues you are concerned about.
  

9. Speech

Australian Government responses to the Bringing them home Report

By Tom Calma, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, presented at the conference: Ten Years Later: Bringing them home and the forced removal of children, Indigenous Law Centre and (then) HREOC Conference, Sydney, 28 September 2007.

Thank you Eddie Cubillo for your introduction, and thank you Allen Madden for your warm welcome to country.

I too would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land where we meet today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and I pay my respects to their elders.

Hello also to all my Indigenous brothers and sisters and other friends who are here today. Thank you for joining with us to mark the ten year anniversary of the release of the landmark Bringing them home report.

On behalf of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission I would like to thank the Indigenous Law Centre and the Crime and Justice Research Network at UNSW for inviting HREOC to co-host this conference. It is yet another instance of the legal centres of learning at UNSW demonstrating through their action, the strength of their commitment to fostering and advancing social justice in this country.

Rather than just looking back and taking stock, I hope that today’s discussions will encourage all of us to breathe new life into the recommendations of the BTH report. Their currency has not faded with the course of a decade.

The recommendations continue to set the minimum acceptable benchmark that governments, the Churches, and others who had a hand in taking the children away, must measure up to.

As today’s conference demonstrates, Australians have not forgotten the gravity of the findings of the BTH report. We remain mindful that the gross violations of human rights that were visited on generations of Aboriginal children still (by and large) need redress and reparation. Australia can still do much more, and do it better, when it comes to righting the wrongs that gave rise to generations of Stolen Children.

I also want to draw attention to the important research work, particularly in relation to Indigenous mental health and wellbeing, that the BTH report has triggered.

As a result of the groundbreaking work of experts like Associate Professor Helen Milroy, we are becoming aware of the very contemporary and indeed the future legacies of pain and loss that will be borne by the Stolen Generations, their children, and their grandchildren.

Research like the Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey has shown that it is a legacy that is not monopolised by those who were removed.

It is a legacy that continues to grow and multiply as our Indigenous population increases at a rapid rate.

It is a legacy that journeys from one generation to the next, evolving and wreaking havoc on people’s lives as it goes. It is this insidious cycle that has to be broken. The pain has to stop – and as the BTH recommendations intended – the healing must begin.

In the time available, I also want to outline what the responses of various levels of government around Australia have been to the BTH – concentrating on where I think we more concerted work and investment needs to be directed in the coming years by governments, Indigenous people, and the broader community.