Bringing-Them-Home-Report-Web

Children’s Act 1864). The proponents of the Act ‘were motivated by fear of the dangerswhich idle and disaffected lower classes posed for society, as much, if not more, thancompassion for the young people concerned’ (page 2).Sociologist Robert van Krieken detected a marked difference in the policy approachto Indigenous and non-Indigenous children by the end of the nineteenth century. Non-Indigenous children and their families were part of the ‘civil society’ which engaged incomplex interactions with State agencies (1991 page 7). Indigenous children and theirfamilies, on the other hand, were outside civil society and policy with respect to themwas baldly based on social control; it ‘fit[s] the model of one dominant group regulatingand in fact transforming the everyday experience of another, almost entirely against theirwill’ (1991 page 8).It made little difference what the family situation really was or how the children were cared for,because being Aboriginal was in itself reason to regard children as ‘neglected’. Even on the rareoccasions when officials did not regard Aboriginal culture with contempt and fear, the emphasison marriage and having fixed housing and employment in definitions of ‘neglect’ was inherentlybiased towards seeing all Aboriginal family life as neglectful (van Krieken 1991 page 8).Basic safeguards protected the integrity of non-Indigenous families and the wellbeingof non-Indigenous wards of the State. These safeguards were cast aside when itcame to Indigenous families and children throughout Australia.There was a significant divergence between the imported British notions of fairnessand liberty and the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Australia. The major componentsof forcible removal were,1. deprivation of liberty by detaining children and confining them in institutions;2. abolition of parental rights by taking the children and by making children wards of theChief Protector or Aborigines Protection Board or by assuming custody and control;3. abuses of power in the removal process; and4. breach of guardianship obligations on the part of Protectors, Protection Boards andother ‘carers’.Deprivation of libertyRespect for individual liberty is fundamental to the British common law inherited bythe Australian colonies and subsequently the States and Territories. It traces its origins tothe Magna Carta of 1215, a compact between the King and the barons of England. KingJohn promised that the barons ‘have and hold the aforesaid liberties, rights andconcessions, well and in peace, freely and quietly … for ever’ (article 63). These libertiesincluded the freedom from being seized or imprisoned ‘or in any way destroyed’‘excepting by the legal judgement of his peers, or by the laws of the land’ (article 39). Ifthat promise was or had been breached, liberty was to be restored (article 52).Gradually respect for individual liberty extended beyond the barons to all people in